So I’ve wired a couple of trailers and fixed a couple for mates (I’m a industrial sparky by trade – a long time ago…)
I applied the same as what I would
do for cable jointing in wet or underground.
Get yourself some 3m glued
heat shrink, 3:1 shrink ratio, for going over the outside of the total cable,
make sure it goes past the stripped section by 75-100mm on both sides of the finished
joint area.
Don’t try and make the
jointed area to short.
When you join the individual
wires, don’t make them the same length, stagger them so the joins are not in
the same place, ie from the stripped out cover, cut the green at 40mm, red at
60mm, etc… The reason for this is it makes a smaller diameter joint and also
makes it a bit more flexible for resistance to vibration wearing.
Put smaller heat shrink on to
the wires, again make sure you have a decent over lap for the actual stripped
copper bit, 20 mm each way.
Strip the internal wires. I
would suggest about 15mm
When you join the copper,
lightly twist both together (make sure you have clean fingers while doing this,
ie keep the copper as clean as possible – it makes it easy and better to
solder), and solder. Best way is soldering iron under the wires, and ‘walk’ the
solder from the iron onto and around the wire – you should end up with the
solder being on the top of the wire while the iron is under it.
It will sort of suck into the
joint – hard to describe, you’ll see it happen though, it means the solder is
right through the joint. The joint shouldn’t have any ‘blobs’ siding on the
bottom and should be smooth looking – no copper sticking out or solder sharp
bits.
Then shrink the internal heat
shrink and slide down the outer glued heat shrink and shrink down.
Over all joint area should be
around 200mm and outside heat shrink around 350-400mm
If you want to get really
into it, you can wrap the internals with self amalgamating tape before the out
side heat shrink gets shrunk, but three is a bit of a knack getting that
correct – ie you need to put it between the internal wires as well as around
for it to actual do anything, and can/does make the joint slightly bigger. I
would personally do it though.
I haven’t ever heard of any that I’ve done this way crapping out. Doesn’t take to long to do either.
Gary Roe wrote: Excuse me, I have a problem with my led trailer light. Wired and installed these and everything works except no constant running lights. Brakes and blinkers working but that’s all. Any suggestions? |
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