How to Strip the Wiring on a Trailer

Video Transcript

"In this step we're going to talk about the proper service procedure for stripping all the old wire off of our trailer. What I'm going to do is my new wiring package doesn't come with this heavy duty boot, I'll just take and cut off the old connector and salvage that boot for later re-installation, alright. I'm going to take and set this in my tray, and like I said, we're going to save it for later re-installation. From here we're going to begin removing the wiring from the body of the trailer. Now you're going to have a ground wire up here you're going to need to snip as well, and pull the rest of it through the loops that hold it to the vehicle. Now various manufacturers use various methods for attaching the wiring to the frame of the trailer. This manufacturer used something that looks pretty much like a cotter pin to go around the wire through the hole and they bent the tabs out on the bottom to hold it tight. What I'm going to do is bend the tabs out, and pull the cotter pin out and show you the style that they used to mount this wire. Alright, once you have the ears snipped of the bottom of the cotter pin you can take and pop it out with your pliers, right there. You can see it's just your conventional cotter pin, but it's a good way to hold wiring steady. Go ahead and ship this off, it's okay to, I hate to use the word but, it's okay to hack all this wiring off. We're not going to be reusing any of it, it'll save you from trying to pull eight feet of wiring through every single hole that the wiring mounts to on the vehicle, on the trailer for that matter. As you can see what we've ran into here, is a wire nut. Now these things have no waterproofing ability, it will actually cause you trouble later on down the road. You can see how corroded and rusty it is inside, what this will do is actually blow the fuse to your tail lights, brake lights or turn signals. So you're not going to want to reinstall anything like this. If your wiring kit comes with them, throw them away, you're going to want to use waterproof connectors or a standard butt connector, with shrink tube. As you can see I've got another cotter pin right here, that's one of the ears on it. We're going to bend it straight, just like that and push it through. Right there, you can see the cotter pin and how they used it to hold it down, go ahead and cut that chunk of wiring off and discard it. You're going to continue on with this procedure, until you get all the way back to the bulbs. This is the proper method you're going to want to use to strip the wiring off of your trailer."