TRS Event TRS 25th Anniversary Fall Adventure - Land Between The Lakes - September 5th – 8th, 2024

[Rick W]

About the only thing that is standard in automotive wiring is red for positive battery voltage, black for ground and the colors for standard trailer wiring like brown for lights, yellow for one turn signal, green for the other turn signal, etc. everything else in the vehicle is determined by the manufacturer. So, it is best to get the wiring diagrams for the exact vehicle you’re working on.

I guess I’ll just stick to my current practice of plug and play, and grabbing all the fuses out of every car I can when I’m out at the scrapyard.

 

[Uncle Gump]

@Jim Oaks says the key to a perfectly smoked pop tart is all about technique.

 

[Curious Hound]

Try to figure wiring out on a Renault...

So many white wires.

It’s French. They have “surrendered” their wiring.

 

[Jim Oaks]

@Jim Oaks says the key to a perfectly smoked pop tart is all about technique.

View attachment 116386

Wow. Look at that guy. I wonder where he got that Pop Tart toaster?

I hope you all like ball caps and koozies. LMC Truck sent me 50 of them.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

@Jim Oaks says the key to a perfectly smoked pop tart is all about technique.

View attachment 116386

Is that who that was? He just kinda popped up out of nowhere...

 

[Snoranger]

@Jim Oaks says the key to a perfectly smoked pop tart is all about technique.

View attachment 116386

I remember that morning… it was F’in cold that morning.

 

[Curious Hound]

Yeah. That first year at Badlands had some reeeeeeal chilly mornings.

 

[Curious Hound]

He just kinda popped up out of nowhere..

Stumbled out of a tent back by the fence line.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Yeah. That first year at Badlands had some reeeeeeal chilly mornings.

Oh it wasn't that bad...

 

[Curious Hound]

Oh it wasn't that bad...

It wasn’t, really. I just wasn’t As prepared for it as I should have been. Actually gave one of my jackets to someone less prepared.

but there WAS frost that last morning.

 

[Uncle Gump]

It was this morning... it was cold.

 

[Snoranger]

It wasn’t, really. I just wasn’t As prepared for it as I should have been. Actually gave one of my jackets to someone less prepared.

but there WAS frost that last morning.

If you look at the window of my F150 and the top of the awning in the background of Chef Jim’s pic, you can see frost.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Yes, I’ve discovered having a third brake light wire, trailer brake wires, etc. is pretty common from the mid 90s moving forward. A lot of times you can find a dealer or aftermarket wiring harness to jump those things towards the trailer. Personally, I hate spending 30 or $40 for three dollars worth of wire.

What I have not been able to find is a concise place that has the wiring color codes, locations and charts so you can find it easily. I’ve been able to run it down on a specific vehicle, but it seems to be different from vehicle to vehicle.

Yeah, my first Ranger, when I bought the cap and had it put on, the shop tapped the brake wire in the taillight and put some filter thing on that they claimed was needed so the third brake light on the cap didn’t come on with marker lights or blink with turn signals. Now I’m thinking they might just not have had any idea what they were doing. Of course, I haven’t checked that truck, but it’s probably the same as my green Ranger since they both are 2000 XLT extended cabs and apparently both had factory tow packages since I know my blue one was tow packaged and HD suspension/brakes even though it was a power-nothing 2wd with a manual transmission. I think it would be possible with some wire from a junk truck to just tap right into the factory plug for the 3rd brake light feed.

And yeah, you would probably have to get a subscription to like AllData or something and look every vehicle up individually. There’s no real consistency for vehicle wiring. I even found that the factory manual isn’t always right. The factory electrical manual for a 2000 Ranger shows the ground for the trailer wiring as a black wire. There is no black wire. At all. But there’s a white ground wire and it’s a bit of factory wire. Go figure.

 

[sgtsandman]

Try to figure wiring out on a Renault...

So many white wires.

It could be worse. On the Boeing KC-135, all the wires are white. You have to read the printed number code on the wire insulation in order to figure out which wire is which.

 

[Jim Oaks]

It could be worse. On the Boeing KC-135, all the wires are white. You have to read the printed number code on the wire insulation in order to figure out which wire is which.

OMG!!

Why all white?

The next time I see someone that wired everything inside their truck with red wire, I'm going to tell them to join the Air Force.