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Larry Larry is offline
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 5,275
Default need help re trailer lighting

"rich" wrote in
:

Please help me if you can. If I understood the internal workings of a
1157 bulb..I'd feel better about this issue..



You assumed wrong. The 1157 has two filaments....one for STOP/TURN and
one for parking/taillites. It's made for American cars that share stop
and turn bulbs in one light.

Your vehicle has 3 circuits, separate stop and turn lights. Trailer
manufacturers and trailer light manufacturers still think this is 1949
and everyone's boat is being pulled by a Plymouth or GMC pickup, not a
Jap SUV.

So, what you need is the proper trailer light adapter for your
vehicle....and they are ALL DIFFERENT!

Still ****ed about losing WW2, the Japs are getting even by using a crazy
arrangement for these taillights in their vehicles. Instead of switching
power to the bulbs....like normal humans....oh, no, they're switching
GROUND!, leaving the bulb hot on both sides. This, of course, requires
you to buy an expensive electronic module, like everything else in the
damned SUV to operate the trailer lights.

I went through this with a friend trying to get a trailer hooked to a
Honda SUV. He had to shell out for a special converter module, about
$90, to get this crazy taillight nonsense Honda has to light up simple
trailer lights. They're switching GROUND! Of course, Japanese cars were
all POSITIVE GROUND until Americans said they wouldn't buy them that way.
Wrong polarity, wrong driver position for American tastes.

What vehicle are you using? We'll have to know that to figure out which
module you'll need....(sigh)

http://www.drawtite-hitches.com/electrical/modulite.htm

Oh, by the way, let me warn you. These lights are NOT connected to
simple switches or relays in many vehicles, but to the MAIN COMPUTER
WHICH CAN EASILY BE DESTROYED AS YOU SCREW AROUND TRYING TO HOOK UP
TRAILER LIGHTS and short something to something or hook ground to what
you THINK is ground! Be forewarned if you try to play games without the
proper module, you may be buying a computer that makes your desktop
computer layout look like buying a ham sandwich in comparison. Car
computers are priced like the gas they burn......

--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.