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Last Changed 4/10/2009
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One wiring trunk distributed from the
Electrical Compartment is the wiring to the trailer jack.
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To start, here is a comparison with the standard Truck Trailer cable
jack and the RV Trailer cable jack. Only three wires are common.
The biggest difference is a truck trailer has separate turn and
brake lights while an RV trailer has combined turn/brake lights. |
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You cannot just tie the circuits together because doing so would
activate the right and left lights with any of the three signals
(stop, right turn, left turn). We could have used a couple of power
diodes to provide the isolation needed. However diodes drop .6
volts across them. The wiring for the Volvo supplied enough current
but following the basic rule of overkill in wiring, We decided to
use a power tail light converter to insure full power to the trailer
lights. |
click on image to enlarge |
We copied most of this from
Jack Mayer.
Jack has a lot of good information on his site. We
will be coping a lot of the things Jack has done.
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We copied
Jack Mayer
and used a Hoppy 46255 powered tail converter. The
Hoppy converter takes the right turn, left turn, and stop signals in
and puts out the combined stop/right and stop/left signals. The
Hoppy 46255 is powered so whatever we drive off of the Hoppy is not
a load to the truck circuits. We also used two terminal strips but
we used the standard styles. We find it easier to stack multiple
connections using screw connections then stuffing multiple wires
into the sleeve of the European style terminal strips. We have the
advantage of an isolated electrical compartment so the terminal
strips are less prone to shorts. We will probably put plastic
covers over the terminal strips when we are done. |
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<update>
The Hoppy 46255 lasted until it became a victim of TIF (Technician Induced
Foul-up). In other words, until Mark crossed a wire
while checking lights. The Hoppy 46255 is designed to protect the truck wiring but necessarily itself. We acquired a Hoppy
46365 which cost a few dollars more but the 46365 is designed to protect itself as well as the truck. The size of the 46365 is
a little larger but it easily fit where we had the old Hoppy. |
click on image to enlarge |
The Volvo trailer wiring is brought into one terminal strip. The
trailer wiring is brought into the other terminal strip. The Hoppy
converter is connected to the two terminal strips as well as the
brake controller wiring. This gives us a common place to connect
the add-on lighting of the rig like the headache rack cabinet.
We mounted a circuit breaker on the distribution to control the +12
volt power circuit to the trailer and that is also attached to the
trailer terminal strip. We may add a
Battery Combiner to the +12 volt trailer circuit to provide
battery protection for the truck batteries while maintaining a good
charge voltage. |
