New England B.S. Thread

Where in NH are you located? Like I mentioned earlier in here I usually do most of my maintenance in the garage at work (parking garage). More than welcome to meet up and help if schedules match up.

 

Just a bit yeah, thanks anyway! I wouldn't mind it but when my shop inspected my truck last they fucked with the adjuster for the drums and then didn't put it back, so now it's kinda sketchy to drive. I'm gonna replace them soon enough where its not worth it to adjust them, for me.

 

Manchganistan, I also work for the University System of NH btw

 

I don't have any drama, but maybe I can tap into the brain trust here and drum up some convo? I am a complete moron when it comes to electrical stuff. I can replace a crank in a motor but don't ask me how to test a relay or any of that nonsense. Anyway, I am getting no answers in my snowmobile forum either sooooo.... I want to add a battery to my enclosed trailer to power the interior LED lights when it's not hooked to the truck. The thing that makes this tricky is there is a breakaway battery for the electric brakes that I don't want to foul up. So here is what I have in the trailer..

The plug/harness comes in from the truck and goes to a distribution panel/box. Then there is the battery and charger for the breakaway battery:


This seems to have a wiring diagram, but it doesn't really talk about what circuit the interior lights are on:


So I basically just fumbled around and the only way to get the interior lights to turn on was hooking up to the red and white as shown in this photo:


My question is, am I compromising anything having it hooked up this way? I don't want to backfeed anything into the vehicle harness, I'm sure of that. It seems alright but like I said, I am clueless about electrical crap.

 

No shit, which school? If Sundays work for you that's pretty much the only day I have free now with hockey season starting up I'm usually working M-Sa.

 

Not like it's real interesting but here is what is inside the breakaway battery box. It's a battery and wired inline to that is a small charger:

 

I'm sure the Mayor of Nashville drinks Sam Adams freely, Still calls it "Columbus Day", Would arrest a felon who is in the country illegally, would speak out against urinating on American flags in a veterans cemetery without waiting 3 days and being pushed to by press inquiries...and would not allow elderly relatives to be shackled and beaten....
https://thesomervillenewsweekly.blo...of-alleged-crimes-carried-out-and-covered-up/

 

I can't help but I do wish you the best lol

UNHM. I doubt I'll have a chance to get up there to get the stuff I need done before I go off-roading next weekend, but I'll definitely hit you up when I got other stuff to do!

 

I didn't even know about the amazingness of Luxardos until a very dedicated friend introduced me to them..."No, you need one of THESE in that drink" and you realize what a critical component it is...

 

I'm assuming that the interior lights run from a switch inside the trailer, correct?
You could always tap into the hot wire and ground past the switch, with a separate switch to run them from the battery rather than the vehicle. That way you wouldn't have to worry about backfeeding to the truck when running on the battery, or backfeeding to the battery when running on the truck.
On the downside, you'd have two different switches rather than one, so it may not look as clean.

 

From my experience drinking, cocktails that are good tend also to be greater than the sum of their parts

 

Sounds good just let me know

 

A Manhattan is not the same without a Luxardo. And I recently had a bartender try to convince me that the Bada Bing cherries are better... PPPPFFFFFTT!! Outta here with that noise, woman! The Bada Bing cherries were tasty for sure, but no equal to Luxardo.

 

Yeah, I considered that. I think if that is the only way to be safe I will just keep the battery unattached and just plug the terminal on when I want to use it.

 

Without looking at anything in depth here...My first concern would be that the break away battery kit is "always off" unless triggered by the trailer disconnecting while towing...Once that disconnect happens the kit "turns on" and then applies the brakes and stops the trailer...Since you've wired into the lights with the kit "disconnected" by it's trigger switch you won't know if you've compromised the circuit until the trailer breaks free and you NEED the battery to work...and that would be the worst time to find out if you've bypassed/shorted/fouled something...So if there were a way to trigger the break away on purpose with that wiring set up you could see if it still works...but then if it screws something up you've broken your kit...

I'm sure an electrician can take a virtual peek, but they're never comfortable commenting on this stuff...kind of like asking a doctor to look a picture of a rash "Is this cancer?"

 

Without seeing the setup and checking wiring in person it's the best I've got

I'm only at the semi-competent journeyman level when it comes to electricals anyway; if it's mechanical I can handle it 99% of the time, but electrical I'm only a little better than 50%

 

I think you're overthinking this but I have a couple questions. The trailer obviously has brakes, do they work with your truck's brake controller or only if the break away device is activated?

The breakaway device is just basically a plastic circuit breaker. Pull the piece out, contact is made between the 2 points and the brakes come on. Insert the piece back into the break away switch, contact is broken and the brakes should release.

When you say you don't want anything backfeeding, do you want the truck to charge the trailer while you drive? Usually, the truck's electrical system has a relay for the 'hot' wire in the towing harness meaning that, while the truck is 'on' (or the new trucks can sense when something is plugged in), it will push power to the trailer, charging the battery on the trailer. When the truck is off, the trailer can try to backfeed the truck but it will only make it to the relay and it's a broken circuit (in short, it shouldn't be able to backfeed anything on the truck's electrical system and cause any harm, that's how most campers are set up).

I can take a few photos of how my camper is set up as it's basically the same as what you're trying to do. I have a battery, brake control box and all of the crap inside the camper being powered off the battery on the trailer. When I drive, the truck charges the camper.

 

If I understand correctly, it looks like you've hooked in the main battery positive to the negative of that battery. And the negative from the main battery to the positive of that battery. So you're running them in series, which may not be the best idea. Generally you want to stay positive to positive, and negative to negative.

 

The trigger is a breakaway switch that is attached to the tow vehicle by a steel cable/tether. I think it's a "one and done" kind of thing, I assume the tether yanks something out of the little box that is attached to the trailer tongue that engages the battery. I don't believe I am messing up anything of that circuit because it's the black wire that doesn't even go to this distribution box, but I am not sure.

I think I'm gonna call the place I bought it at and see if they know.