Trailer light converter

[Nathan123]

My dad has a 99 ranger. The trailer light converter keeps burining out. One day, he lost the left turn signal on the trailer. We checked the trucks output, and found that it was sending power for left turn into the converter, but it wasnt coming out to the trailer plug. So we simply bought and installed a new one. Within a few days, the left turn signal was gone again. Long story short, we replaced this thing 3 times (at 40 bucks each), and have rewired both of our trailers. The trailers are wired correctly. I can use them just fine with my bronco ii (it doesnt have the orange turn signal, therefore no converter necessary). The last converter that failed makes the right turn not work. All three we replaced were made by hoppy, they all looked different, two came from napa and one came from a hardware store. What's the problem here? I'm afraid to spend another 40 bucks on a converter that will only last one or two outings with the trailer.

 

[yyc_tbird_sc]

How many lights are on the trailer? I'm sure that there is a certain load that those converters are good for, above that and they'll burn out.

 

[shane96ranger]

I would suspect a bad ground on the trailer as your culprit. My trailer is an old Ranger bed, and I kept popping fuses on my old Explorer. I rewired the whole trailer and got the same results. After some head scratching, I found out one of the bulb sockets was bad, causing a direct short inside.

 

[Nathan123]

When we rewired the trailers, everything was new, wire, lights, connectors, etc. Each light has a ground wire running from it to a bolt on the frame (all the lights share that one bolt). Then one wire comes off that bolt and goest to the trailer's light plug, so it is using the trucks ground, it isnt relying on the trailer frame to ground the lights. One's a boat trailer, the other is a 4x8 utility trailer, and each has two amber side marker lights (takes the little flat base bulbs) and two tail lights (takes an 1157 bulb, does brake/turn/parking lights, has one little flat base bulb as a side marker light). The truck was bought off the dealer in 2000, from a 1 year lease with like 40 thousand on it. That original converter that came with the truck lasted 9 years, all of a sudden quit, and now new ones just keep burning out. I'm stumped.