Saturday, June 28, 2014

Trailer Time!

It took two days, but I managed to pull the wires up through my conduit and back into the electrical box in the back of the trailer.  It took a lot of manipulating and maneuvering, but I managed to get all the right wires into the right spots. 




I ended up taking the wheels off; something I thought would be a lot harder than to do. 
















Thankfully I had bought a lug nut wrench that had the four typical sizes.  The lug nut wrench from the Honda did not fit the teardrop's.  With the wheels popped off, I could wiggle my arm up into the well and fish the wiring through. 








The lug nut wrench I bought from Harbor Freight folds up so that it can fit in the storage bin of the teardrop.  What a genius design!











This time, I decided to 'fix' some of my mistakes from wiring the trailer the first time.  I had used butt joint connectors, which worked fine, but did not keep out moisture if it worked its way up and under the electrical tape.  So, I purchased butt connectors that were 'heat shrinkable.'  When the joints are connected, heating them with a lighter 'seals' them and makes a water-tight connection.  I should have done it this way the first time.  There are a few connections on the trailer that still need to be 'switched,' but they were good enough at this time.






I also used zip ties to snug all the wires into place.  I must say, they look particularly nice and neat. You can see in the image that there is now a two-stage battery charger that is 'in-line.'  This is to keep the battery from 'over charging' when on the road. 


The piece of this puzzle that I'll need to keep in mind is that whenever the teardrop is connected to the Honda Civic, I'm essentially sharing the charge of the tow vehicle.  The battery charger will stop the charge when the battery is full, but I'll have to be careful of leaving the car plugged in because even the tiny LED battery meter will draw some power and could possibly pull down the car's battery too.  I'll just have to either disconnect the charging circuit or use the master kill switch.

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