Trailer wiring adapter

GlennWest · April 4, 2016

My bed builder installed the Jackalopee and installed a 7 plug round blade hookup. It is metal and heavy duty looking. Seems better quality than the rubber spade units rv normally use. I started researching it and found adapters for it to rv plugs. Is the wiring the same? Never seen these before.

Bob A · April 4, 2016

If I understand your discription there not the same, that is a plug for semi trailers

Bob A · April 4, 2016

Brake lights and signals are on separate circuits so defeats what the jackelopee does.

GlennWest · April 4, 2016

After more research I found this out. I will rewire it. I asked them not to install the jackolee but they were trying to help. Had it shipped with hitch. Darn shame. That is a heavy duty adapter.

Bob A · April 4, 2016

You could still use it if you change the wiring and put matching end on your trailer but no other truck wiring would match up

Phil D · April 4, 2016

You could still use it if you change the wiring and put matching end on your trailer but no other truck wiring would match up

Or, with a short piece of seven-wire cable (either RV or commercial), a male commercial plug, and a female RV socket, simply make an adapter.

Mark and Dale Bruss · April 5, 2016

In the HHRV Resource Guide, 7,6,4 Way Wiring Diagrams show the difference between the 7-round pin truck cable compared to the 7-blade RV cable. Quite different.

Bob A · April 5, 2016

An adapter won't work because the brake and signal wires are not combined

Phil D · April 5, 2016

An adapter won't work because the brake and signal wires are not combined

An adapter won't work on a standard commercial socket, but he said that they also installed the Jackalopee, and an adapter should work if the Jackalopee is installed inline and functioning properly. In that case, there would be a combined signal on the stop/tail pins in the commercial socket that they installed.

Assuming that the cable feeding the existing commercial socket is connected to the Jackalopee, it's no longer compliant with the standard commercial pinout. Some or all of the pins will be non-standard, depending on how they connected the wires to the output side of the Jackalopee. The first order of business will be to determine what signal is on which pin, but it should be entirely possible to adapt whatever the output is to an RV plug.

phoenix2013 · April 5, 2016

I've done many installations (with and without Jackalopee) including on all four RVs I owned over the years, utilizing something other than the cheap ass RV plug and socket garbage embraced by the RV industry. The flat bladed RV pins are designed to allow you to drive the RV off the dealers lot and then proceed to tarnish and loose contact. On my fist RV, while working for Raytheon, got a salesman's sample pair of gold plated aviation plugs, probably $300 bucks of MIL speced connector. Trailer got junked connectors still worked. In more recent times on mine and others I use the round DOT plugs and sockets.

Same DOT socket as used on the truck and the corresponding DOT plug on the trailer umbilical, after I cut off the molded on RV garbage. Most owners for whom I did it were concerned that the pins and associated wire colors are different, true. But all the seven wire colors are identical, so insert the wires according to their colors into pins marked with those colors. Do the same on the plug, color to color will match, life will be good. The initial objection from the owners is, "but if I want to sell the rig the plug will be wrong, they will not be able to use it". My answer, "enjoy reliable connectors for the the years of your RVing, the week you sell it, purchase and install garbage plug back on".

GlennWest · April 5, 2016

Ok. Thanks Henry. I will check output and make sure wired for rv. If all is good I'll change rv cable. Really agree the one on there is far superior to the rubber flat blade rv plugs.