Should I ground my trailer lights to the frame or just wire them to the harness?

[bluebombersfan]

My last trailer I had I could not get a good ground. The lights were extremly dim, and were not even visible during the day. After a while I just gave up grounding them and wired them directly to the harness and finally they worked well.
I have seen other trailers with the ground wire grounded and noticed they too had horrible lighting barely visible during the day.

So I'm just wondering why this happens? I upgraded to a bigger trailer and am wondering if I should just do the same and wire them directly instead of grounding them.

 

[Sasquatch_Ryda]

Wiring them directly leaves less points for corrosion/high resistance to take place which will cause dimming and issues.

 

[85broncduece]

If you ground to the frame you need to ground the harness too. The ball itself doesnt make a good enuff conection. Its really the same thing but saves wire unless you use the flat harness wireing with the groung allready there.

 

[bluebombersfan]

I think so

I grounded both sides on good points and it still sucked, I had the grounding wire from the harness directly on the trailer, I think that grounding it just doesn't work on such a low power circut. Where as on a car the Battery provides plenty of juice directly grounded to the frame which works great, I think it's vice versa with trailer lighting.

It's just too bad that the manufactor's don't just add the extra wire to make this more convenient to hook up directly.

But I guess it comes down to them saving pennies of copper that it would take for an extra wire.

 

[adsm08]

Ground is ground.

Postin' from teh Galaxy

 

[projectnitemare]

^ Ground is ground no matter how your achieve it. Corrosion will happen anywhere. Most wiring kits are set up to ground to the frame. You can run it either way, both are correct. I put a clean ground to the frame, paint over the chassis ground, water proof splices. The tail lights are normally junk before I ever have wiring issues, which is quite a few years. When i replace lights, I replace the wiring.

 

[naford]

I believe that each connection takes away roughly .7 volts. Now if you have a bad connection not only will that value go up but will cause the connection to get warm because of resistance. This will also cause the resistance to go up. You didn't mention if it was a factory harness or one of those vampire harnesses from like Uhaul.