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which_chickHad more Shit Sandwich on Friday (road work), it was... slightly less shit. At this point it's a process of very gradually diminishing returns on the work, as ever. *sigh*
The horse trailer, happily, is now done with the welding part. (When you are poor-ish you get "some assembly required" trailers not necessarily because they are cheaper than "ready-to-tow" trailers but because they can be paid for in an add-a-bead fashion where you don't have to have all the money up front. You can kind of upgrade it as you have money, a little at a time.)
Regular readers may recall that earlier this spring, I bought a $4500 three horse gooseneck slant with rear tack compartment that was in the low-price aisle because it had some fairly substantial rust and an idiot (not me. I mean, sometimes I am that idiot, but this time it was not me) pulled out the entire wiring harness because #reasons. After I bought it, I drove it home on the Turnpike with no lights or brakes, for like... an hour and a half of driving? Nobody arrested me, so... victory!
Anyway, our poverty glass is half full and we're gonna focus on the positive. The trailer frame was rock solid. The floors were in great shape. The trailer itself towed beautifully, felt like it wasn't there. It even came with... floor mats. Floor mats that had been cut for some other trailer, and had never been cut to fit *this* trailer.
Anyway, I have owned a not-useful-for-hauling-my-horse horse trailer for like two and a half months. That's STILL the trailer I have, but there is light (lol) at the end of the tunnel, here.
At this point, I have a trailer with WAY LESS RUST, no stupid rear tack compartment, mats that have been reasonably cut to fit the floor of the trailer and secured to same, and about 2/3 of a wiring-n-lights system installed.
Wait, where did the rust go? Also, what happened to the rear tack compartment? Two birds, one stone. My welder disassembled the rear tack compartment, cut it into pieces, and welded it to the exterior skin of the trailer where the sheet metal had rusted out. Since the RTC was not structural in nature, removing it did nothing detrimental to the sturdiness of the trailer. Winning. (The welder did have to buy about sixty dollars of materials but most of what he needed for the repairs came from the disassembled tack compartment.)
Tack will now be stored in the small front compartment (with door). We removed the saddle rack from the tack compartment during its disassembly and subsequently welded it on the wall of the small front compartment. A person can still get into the front compartment, but it was never super-roomy and now is a bit less so. As I do not plan to "hang out" inside my horse trailer, this is OK. It's easy to get to saddles and the bridle hooks and I have room for a bale of hay and some buckets and the tire-changing kit, so... I can live with this.
At any rate, what with all the welding, there was heat. Heat is not ideal for plastic-coated wires intended to deliver electricity to things like trailer brakes and trailer lights and trailer turn signals. Happily, since the prior owner ripped out *all* the wiring and left it in snarls all over the trailer floor, no wiring was endangered by the welding process. However, also... there was no wiring in the trailer in places where there should definitely be wiring.
I had a guy who was gonna get on the wiring and light kit once the welding was done because he wasn't getting the hours at his work. However, he is now getting the hours at his side hustle job ($300 per day) which pays better than I can so... guess who is getting to learn about trailer wiring? Me, that's who!
Also the guy said, upon seeing the job that the prior owner had left me, that it would be impossible for the wires to be re-run through the existing channels and blah blah blah which is redneck speak for "I do not really want to do this but you are friends with my wife so I can't say no in so many words."
Well. Impossible, please meet my little friend the fish wire. (You use it to "fish" wire through channels and walls and stuff.) Turns out that it is NOT impossible to run wires through the existing channels. Not impossible at all. Kind of fiddly, would be easier with a buddy, but still, entirely doable.
Following my WalMart outing (Their prices on LED trailer lights are better than the prices at AutoZone or Tractor Supply. I comparison shopped.) where I Bought Stuff, I made a plug-in that goes to the truck 7-blade socket. I did not hook up the back up lights and the 12-volt power supply because neither of those is used in my horse trailer. Both of those wires are folded back upon themselves and taped. (This way they are not gonna cause trouble but can be hooked up later if we want.) The plug in is attached to a honkin' big (big around) 7-strand wire of the type used for trailers. It's way too long, but I'll triple-check measurements before I cut it, just to be safe.
Anyway, the honkin' big 7 strand wire needs to go into a seven-gang trailer wiring junction box, which is On Order From Amazon. It's supposed to arrive on Thursday. Once the junction box is mounted on the trailer (under the gooseneck, out of the weather), I'll split out the seven wires to the seven posts in the junction box. From there, other, somewhat less-beefy wires run to the various parts of the trailer to do Trailer Things, mostly run the lights. (The trailer has brakes, but I am hiring a professional to play trailer brakes, check the breakaway, etc. I do not do that part.)
From the junction box to inside the trailer is Not Hard. There's a small hole in the corner of the floor of the gooseneck part where the wires can totally 100% run and did, in the past, run. From there, they enter the front tack compartment. Here, a space for the GROUND (white) can be sanded off and the ground can be screwed to the trailer frame. It needs to be bare metal-to-metal contact for the ground. In trailer wiring the body of the trailer is your ground.
Then, the brown wire (running lights) needs to hit... all the lights. There are a lot of lights.
There are ... amber running lights. 3 in a group in the front, one on each side halfway back. The wires for these lights have been run to where they will be hooked up. I did that today. The three front amber lights have the mounts installed but (a) need the second screw for each one and (b) need access hole for power wire to connect drilled. I didn't have a good metal drill bit. Oops.
The SIDE amber lights are bigger than the front 3 grouping and they need bigger self-tapping sheet metal screws because the mounts sit higher off the metal. I need 8 (2 for each light, I have two amber and two red.) in total, will pick up at hardware tomorrow.
There are red running lights. Two on each side at the rear, plus a group of 3 in center rear. Haven't installed any of these lights or mounts yet. I have run the (Brown) wire for these lights to the back of the trailer but I have not junctioned it to provide for these lights yet. (The trailer is black. It was hot today.)
There are taillights, 2. I have uninstalled the old taillights and installed the new taillights.
I haven't hooked them up, but the Green and Yellow (Right and Left, respectively) wires are run and that should be good to go once I hook up the wires and junction off the brown to provide them with power. The taillights will pull power off the same brown wire that powers the red running lights because I ran three wires back the length of the trailer and that was... enough.
I am used to house wiring where you run one wire per circuit, but I can't do one wire per light because it's too many wires. The rear of the trailer has three wires coming from the front end and that's plenty. One yellow, one green, and one brown. (They are all black but I have colored electrical tape to identify them.) I feel like one 14 gauge wire can run 7 led lights. It'll be fine. Watch this space for updates later in the week. :)
The horse trailer, happily, is now done with the welding part. (When you are poor-ish you get "some assembly required" trailers not necessarily because they are cheaper than "ready-to-tow" trailers but because they can be paid for in an add-a-bead fashion where you don't have to have all the money up front. You can kind of upgrade it as you have money, a little at a time.)
Regular readers may recall that earlier this spring, I bought a $4500 three horse gooseneck slant with rear tack compartment that was in the low-price aisle because it had some fairly substantial rust and an idiot (not me. I mean, sometimes I am that idiot, but this time it was not me) pulled out the entire wiring harness because #reasons. After I bought it, I drove it home on the Turnpike with no lights or brakes, for like... an hour and a half of driving? Nobody arrested me, so... victory!
Anyway, our poverty glass is half full and we're gonna focus on the positive. The trailer frame was rock solid. The floors were in great shape. The trailer itself towed beautifully, felt like it wasn't there. It even came with... floor mats. Floor mats that had been cut for some other trailer, and had never been cut to fit *this* trailer.
Anyway, I have owned a not-useful-for-hauling-my-horse horse trailer for like two and a half months. That's STILL the trailer I have, but there is light (lol) at the end of the tunnel, here.
At this point, I have a trailer with WAY LESS RUST, no stupid rear tack compartment, mats that have been reasonably cut to fit the floor of the trailer and secured to same, and about 2/3 of a wiring-n-lights system installed.
Wait, where did the rust go? Also, what happened to the rear tack compartment? Two birds, one stone. My welder disassembled the rear tack compartment, cut it into pieces, and welded it to the exterior skin of the trailer where the sheet metal had rusted out. Since the RTC was not structural in nature, removing it did nothing detrimental to the sturdiness of the trailer. Winning. (The welder did have to buy about sixty dollars of materials but most of what he needed for the repairs came from the disassembled tack compartment.)
Tack will now be stored in the small front compartment (with door). We removed the saddle rack from the tack compartment during its disassembly and subsequently welded it on the wall of the small front compartment. A person can still get into the front compartment, but it was never super-roomy and now is a bit less so. As I do not plan to "hang out" inside my horse trailer, this is OK. It's easy to get to saddles and the bridle hooks and I have room for a bale of hay and some buckets and the tire-changing kit, so... I can live with this.
At any rate, what with all the welding, there was heat. Heat is not ideal for plastic-coated wires intended to deliver electricity to things like trailer brakes and trailer lights and trailer turn signals. Happily, since the prior owner ripped out *all* the wiring and left it in snarls all over the trailer floor, no wiring was endangered by the welding process. However, also... there was no wiring in the trailer in places where there should definitely be wiring.
I had a guy who was gonna get on the wiring and light kit once the welding was done because he wasn't getting the hours at his work. However, he is now getting the hours at his side hustle job ($300 per day) which pays better than I can so... guess who is getting to learn about trailer wiring? Me, that's who!
Also the guy said, upon seeing the job that the prior owner had left me, that it would be impossible for the wires to be re-run through the existing channels and blah blah blah which is redneck speak for "I do not really want to do this but you are friends with my wife so I can't say no in so many words."
Well. Impossible, please meet my little friend the fish wire. (You use it to "fish" wire through channels and walls and stuff.) Turns out that it is NOT impossible to run wires through the existing channels. Not impossible at all. Kind of fiddly, would be easier with a buddy, but still, entirely doable.
Following my WalMart outing (Their prices on LED trailer lights are better than the prices at AutoZone or Tractor Supply. I comparison shopped.) where I Bought Stuff, I made a plug-in that goes to the truck 7-blade socket. I did not hook up the back up lights and the 12-volt power supply because neither of those is used in my horse trailer. Both of those wires are folded back upon themselves and taped. (This way they are not gonna cause trouble but can be hooked up later if we want.) The plug in is attached to a honkin' big (big around) 7-strand wire of the type used for trailers. It's way too long, but I'll triple-check measurements before I cut it, just to be safe.
Anyway, the honkin' big 7 strand wire needs to go into a seven-gang trailer wiring junction box, which is On Order From Amazon. It's supposed to arrive on Thursday. Once the junction box is mounted on the trailer (under the gooseneck, out of the weather), I'll split out the seven wires to the seven posts in the junction box. From there, other, somewhat less-beefy wires run to the various parts of the trailer to do Trailer Things, mostly run the lights. (The trailer has brakes, but I am hiring a professional to play trailer brakes, check the breakaway, etc. I do not do that part.)
From the junction box to inside the trailer is Not Hard. There's a small hole in the corner of the floor of the gooseneck part where the wires can totally 100% run and did, in the past, run. From there, they enter the front tack compartment. Here, a space for the GROUND (white) can be sanded off and the ground can be screwed to the trailer frame. It needs to be bare metal-to-metal contact for the ground. In trailer wiring the body of the trailer is your ground.
Then, the brown wire (running lights) needs to hit... all the lights. There are a lot of lights.
There are ... amber running lights. 3 in a group in the front, one on each side halfway back. The wires for these lights have been run to where they will be hooked up. I did that today. The three front amber lights have the mounts installed but (a) need the second screw for each one and (b) need access hole for power wire to connect drilled. I didn't have a good metal drill bit. Oops.
The SIDE amber lights are bigger than the front 3 grouping and they need bigger self-tapping sheet metal screws because the mounts sit higher off the metal. I need 8 (2 for each light, I have two amber and two red.) in total, will pick up at hardware tomorrow.
There are red running lights. Two on each side at the rear, plus a group of 3 in center rear. Haven't installed any of these lights or mounts yet. I have run the (Brown) wire for these lights to the back of the trailer but I have not junctioned it to provide for these lights yet. (The trailer is black. It was hot today.)
There are taillights, 2. I have uninstalled the old taillights and installed the new taillights.
I haven't hooked them up, but the Green and Yellow (Right and Left, respectively) wires are run and that should be good to go once I hook up the wires and junction off the brown to provide them with power. The taillights will pull power off the same brown wire that powers the red running lights because I ran three wires back the length of the trailer and that was... enough.
I am used to house wiring where you run one wire per circuit, but I can't do one wire per light because it's too many wires. The rear of the trailer has three wires coming from the front end and that's plenty. One yellow, one green, and one brown. (They are all black but I have colored electrical tape to identify them.) I feel like one 14 gauge wire can run 7 led lights. It'll be fine. Watch this space for updates later in the week. :)
no subject
Date: 2023-05-30 10:08 am (UTC)