Bought this trailer, now for the wiring.

Cost me a bit, but I think it will be money well spent as I wil be leaving the Oregon coast for better climate soon. I already modified the heavy duty hitch to fit and will now have to learn the correct way to wire her to the four wire color-coded harness. Any ideas and opinions are welcome, especially wiring advice. There are more pictures in my gallery of the trailer. Cheers!

 

(lawn service guy speaking)

Buy a new wire harness for $6.00 - do not repair a cut-up harness.

The yellow line is in the middle of the road (left turn signal)
The green grass is to your right (turn signal)
Brown is running lights - white is ground, and should be black.

Another kind of trailer harness splits the brown down both legs along with either a yellow or green - and you're supposed to use the trailer frame as the common (white) ground.

Then you hook the short white wire to the frame, near the coupler with a screw, making sure you clean down to bare metal.

Also - the whole self-cancelling and flashing parts need a TOTAL of 54 Watts (plus 8 for the indicator bulb) so you may need to buy LED's for the trailer lights. Good idea for the running lights too. Buy some reflector tape too while you're spending money.

 

I pull a trailer with my Venture, here is a list of suggestions I have. All from mistakes made and problems solved.

Use a powered relay type tail light converter to run the trailer lights. This type will isolate the trailer lights from the bike electrical system. Lesson learned from having a light short and pop the fuse in my bike. Not a good thing at night with no lights.

Run ALL trailer lights LEDs. Regular bulbs will be too much for the alternator to handle. My first road trip to work resulted in a dead battery because the alternator could not charge the battery. NOTE- a solid state light converter will not work with LED lights, thats why a relay type is needed.

When wiring the trailer lights run a seperate ground wire. Do not rely on the frame to ground everything. It will eliminate problems in the future.

Most Ford SUVs and trucks were equipped with a nice 4 prong trailer plug and mounting bracket. They are easily mounted on a bike to plug your reailer into. Junk yards are full of them for cheap.

 

Excellent advice from Lew.

Auto parts store or trailer place will have the 5 to 4 converter that combines the brake and turn signal lights on the trailer.

 

Also a word of (raw) experience:

If you plan to tow a trailer any distance with a chain-driven bike, CARRY the tools to adjust the chain with, and maybe even a new chain and set of sprockets.

 

and chain lube.