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Trailer running lights not working

24K views 11 replies 9 participants last post by  Bcgs  
When I had a Honda towing relay setup in the panel below where the tire wrench and jack go, there is a fuse there. I kept on burning that relay and the computer out on the other side rear that consoles the tow lights. I switched to a Toshanka setup from ETRAILER. Putin a new light buy and installed all LED LIGHTS on the trailer.

I searched for my 06 Ody online on a Auto web page and found one with my needs reasonably close by.
2 tips:

When changing to LED's on a trailer, a good ground is imperative. The ground that may have worked for your incandescents may not work with LED's.

I got some very strange results when I simply swapped in LED's for the incandescents in the existing fixtures. Lower left running light would blink when the right directional was turned on, right brake light would dim slightly when the left taillight blinked, stuff like that.

My original fixtures were the kind that the mounting screw for the fixture provided the ground connection via the sheet metal of the trailer. I replaced the running light fixtures with the kind that have a ground wire pigtail and added grounding pigtails to the brake/turn signal fixtures. All grounds are now attached to the frame of the trailer with self-tapping screws. The pigtails provided a much better ground connection and all the weirdness went away.

I love the "pop" of the LED running lights. Sometimes, when it's really dark out, I hit the lock/unlock button on my fob just to see the LED's flash. :D

The other tip is that if you are simply swapping the wedge type incandescents for wedge type LED's you need to buy LED's that match the color of your lenses. I'll admit that I thought you simply replaced white for white. That's not the case. All you get with a white LED is a bright white spot in the middle of the lens. It's got something to do with the fact that white LED's are not made up of the normal RGB peaks that an incandescent is. I read up on the physics of it at the time but I don't remember the details anymore.