Thread: Flashing green trailer light with the indicator?

I gueried here...

Dash Trailer Warning continuously flashes

O, so is yours flashing constantly? So even if the indicators are not on, the trailer indicator light is still flashing?

Originally Posted by twr7cx

O, so is yours flashing constantly? So even if the indicators are not on, the trailer indicator light is still flashing?

yeah, non-stop. Kinda annoying.

Where does that green wire start?

Easo

From what I can gather, the trailer warning lamp will flash only when the indicators are used and, I think, will flash faster if a lamp is blown.
So if all your lamps are okay, I'm inclined to agree with Bob that you have an earthing problem on your trailer, and/or your trailer plug or trailer lamps are wired wrongly.
Do you have access to another trailer that you can compare it with.
Just thinking out loud really, as I haven't had this problem myself.

Not a Discovery 2 owner and don't wish to disrupt the thread particularly, but I have a problem that seems related. Not an auto electrician either, although I have mucked around on old Land Rover and tractor wiring over the years with fair success.

I am wiring up new LED lights on my boat trailer after a fair bit of recent grief with the original submersible bulbed units. This will involve a complete rewire front to end with new materials and new submersible LED combo lights.

Anyway, I wired the lights up off the trailer as per the instructions that came with the lights. I have 5 core trailer wire running from each light unit through to the plug (7 pin) where the tail, stop and earth are joined as a single wire, and the left and right turn are just a single wire taken from the respective right and left light units. I then plugged this rig into my wagon - Volvo XC70 - to test them before gumming it up with silicone and fixing them to the trailer. They seemed to work fine which was a relief (flash, turn, brakes and tail). However the two turn indicators remain on with a weak light as long as it is plugged in with or without the ignition key removed. So, there must be a circuit working in there - it is only the turn lights that have the glow and both are on together. When the turn lever is activated they flash correctly.

On the Volvo, like I gather also on the Discovery, when a trailer is plugged in and the turning circuits are working a small green indicator light comes on the dash. With the lights wired up, as described above, the indicators are working fine but this small indicator light is not coming on.

Any suggestions on what might be going on (other than an amateur playing around with electrics)?

Cheers.

Originally Posted by robbotd5

My Van has LED lights and the green trailer light does not come on when I indicate. Where as with a box trailer hitched up with incandescent globes it does.
Regards
Robbo.

Not sure if you got an answer to your issue or if the following helps.

I wired LED lights up to my boat trailer the other day (see later post 11th Aug) and after the unlock key was activated on my Volvo wagon, the amber lights glowed and stayed on - otherwise they worked fine. The green trailer flasher indicator on the dash (not the turn signal indicators) also did not work. My box trailer with ordinary bulbs works just fine - so it was not the car plug.

When you put a test screw driver on the earth and turn terminals of the trailer plug the glowing stopped. I'm not an auto electrician, so I took it to a real one who played around with the trailer plug for a while and determined that it needed some form of low level resistor wired in between the earth and each of the two turn terminals - however, for some reason this resistor had to include a bulb (as per the test driver) and draw about 2 watts - several resistors without bulbs did nothing. However, when I wired in two small 12 V 2W bulbed light units as suggested the glowing stopped and the dash indicator works just fine. I just taped them up and enclosed them within the plug unit.

So, worth a try and may work for you - costs about $2 for the bulb units or use old ones from a Commodore dash light unit. On the other hand it may have nothing to do with your problem.......... Seems to be an issue with modern cars and LED trailer lights which don't draw much power.

Cheers,

Originally Posted by waz

Do you have a bull bar with indicators in it? If so, the system is picking up the extra load in the circuit and is assuming that this extra indicator is a trailer indicator and it is working correctly.

Change the bull bar indicators to LEDs.

Waz

i just changed my arb oness for these: (off ebay)



they are nice and bright and dont trigger the trailer lamp in my td5

I don't mind the extra light flashing on the indicator curcuit due to my bull bar.
If it doesn't flash I know I have a globe blown