Day: December 22, 2012

It’s been raining lightly, yes still :-|, for almost the whole morning so when it stopped I thought I’d take the opportunity to see if I could fix my trailer indicator problem. It seems almost impossible to find a clear colour coded wiring diagram for my car on the internet so knowing that I’d already searched and got the information once I decided I’d have to rely on my original notes. The left indicator wiring colour is black/white.

As soon as I removed my rear lamp I could see what the problem was. There are two black/white wires – the heavier one that I’d tapped into obviously does the reversing light and I just knew that the other one was for the indicator. I checked it the best I could using my Robin meter but by now it was already beginning to drizzle again, so I thought to heck with it, just re-do the connection. And I was right, when I connected the trailer cable and switched on the left indicator I heard the tell-tale beep sounding reassuringly loud and clear and the trailer’s indicator was flashing merrily away.

But this was with my new trailer lighting board which I still had connected. What about if I went for broke and plugged in the trailer’s own cable, which the previous owner had said was ‘a revoir’? By now it was drizzling pretty hard but I couldn’t wait to find out. I switched over the plugs and first tried out the rear lights. They were fine. Then I tried each indicator in turn, with and without the rear lights. Perfect. Now finally, the brake lights. I had to find a length of wood to wedge my brake pedal and they also worked OK – so then I had to try them with rear lights and with the flashers working. Everything worked great and even all of the bulbs were OK, so it looks as though the previous owner was just being cautious in his ad. By the time I’d cleared everything away I was pretty wet but I was pleased to have sorted everything out. I’ve already ordered a single registration plate (in traditional French aluminium rather than plastic) to go on the back of the trailer and I’m going to look for some aluminium to make some new mudguards for it. When they’re on I think I’ll have a nice little trailer that will be worth quite a bit more than I paid for it, so I think it was worth getting wet to find that out 🙂