7 pin cable

marpel wrote:
Thanks for all the replies:

Just to clarify though, the new cable was not too short as the new box was placed right beside the old box, so the, loosely strung, replacement cable appeared able to reach the old box quite easily.

And BB_TX, your description was exactly what I was planning on doing. Take photos or label current box layout and just repeat with new cable. Logically seemed pretty straightforward.

Just figured, because no-one seemed to want to tackle the junction box connection in any of the vids/tutes, that I was missing something that made it difficult.

Marv

Guy in the video was a bone head and taking the lazy way by not dealing with the wires in the original junction box. Basically a "cut and match color" approach.

The cable has a wire color code, the wires from the trailer body terminating in the original junction box will not have the same color coding. This presents a problem if you just remove all wire nuts and wires at the same time (which the bone head in the video most likely would have done).

The simple and easy way to change the cable without losing track of the correct color coding is to cut the wires from the cable you are replacing, leaving an inch or so of the old wire with the color showing. Now you can remove the old cable, insert the new cable and one by one match the new cable wire colors doing one connection at a time..

This method works well but I have run into a couple of cables that had some non standard colors or wiring of the plug.. Check and verify the positions on the plug with the wire color. A Digital Volt Meter (DVM) set to OHMs will allow you to check and verify each position without needing to plug cable into vehicle.

I actually bought an extra 7 pin socket that would be mounted to a vehicle and ran wires out of it and labeled each wire as to the function. Then I made a cable with a fuse and gator clips on each end to connect a small 12V battery to test trailer plugs before connecting to my vehicles..

Just towed a 35ft park model for my FIL recently, was able to use my test socket to verify the 7 pin cable was indeed wired correctly before committing my vehicle to that unknown plug..