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TheBeans's avatar
TheBeans
Explorer
Oct 18, 2020

Pigtail not fitting....

We just purchased a new tow vehicle (same make/model as our former TV, just younger) and the trailer's pigtail won't seat firmly into the socket on the truck. It's a 'blade' set of pins and the amount of pins and location of them are all matching and the pigtail goes in just fine but no amount of jiggling or pushing makes it go all the way in. We've tried a little WD-40 and that didn't make any difference. The plug cover (which is hinged to pull upon in a downward fashion) has a plug 'stop' that braces up against the pigtail in the right place but doesn't hold it securely at all. A few jiggles down the road and I'm sure this thing will disconnect. A search yields up that many people have the same issue and just use small bungee cords to secure the pigtail to the plug-cover where the 'stop' is. Not sure that this is the best answer. Do we need to replace the pigtail so that we get a secure/full seat on it when plugged into the new truck or is this as good as it's going to get?
  • TheBeans wrote:
    Lots of great advice here---thank you, everyone! We really didn't like the whole bungie-and-a-prayer idea so we're glad to see there are other things we can do first! I'll keep you posted if we run into other problems as we try to get this resolved.


    Test fit the new plug first before you cut the old one off the trailer.
  • Our truck is a 2020 Ford F150 and has this same plug (see photo above posted by mkirsch). While looking thru the owner's manual last night I found the plug's part number so now we're going to check it against the pigtail itself. They look identical to the naked eye but maybe they are just a smidge different that we don't easily see. I'm thinking we'll probably need a new pigtail, but at least that's an easy fix.
  • I've run into this with a couple trailers. Looking into my socket, I could see where the blades were contacting the edges of the blade-receptacles in the pigtail. Just a very slight nudge to the blades using a screwdriver was all it took to line things up. Note: One time I really tried smashing it in there, and it bent over one of the blades. That one took a bent pick to straighten it.
  • carringb wrote:
    I've run into this with a couple trailers. Looking into my socket, I could see where the blades were contacting the edges of the blade-receptacles in the pigtail. Just a very slight nudge to the blades using a screwdriver was all it took to line things up. Note: One time I really tried smashing it in there, and it bent over one of the blades. That one took a bent pick to straighten it.


    That's true. I've even found that the right amount of strategic wiggling will let the plug fit.

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