Teardrop: Let There be Lights

As I’ve mentioned before, there will be two circuits in the Teardrop. One for the running lights powered from the tow vehicle (I’ll call this the running light circuit), and one for the accessories (I’ll call this the accessory circuit) that we install in the Teardrop, like lights, fan, and so forth. These will be powered from a battery mounted in a tongue box.

The first thing I did was mount a spare 12V battery I had to the tongue. This way I could simulate either circuit without actually needing my vehicle. It was just a small battery that I pulled from and old UPS, but it’ll work nicely.

I attached a couple of blade connecters to the ends of the running light hot and running light grounds that terminate at the tongue. Remember that the other end of the running light ground from the vehicle was run to a bus bar at the back of the trailer where all the rest of the running light grounds would terminate. This was to avoid grounding to the trailer chassis which has always been problematic due to weather and rodents.

Then, I connected the accessory circuit battery cables to the fuse box (both hot and ground) and the ground ran to the tongue while the hot ran to a 30A circuit breaker in the cabin. This not only provides protection for the accessory circuit, but also will be used as a main breaker.

Originally, I’d been using a soldering iron to make the connections, but it was getting more and more difficult to get it to temperature so I switched to a handy little butane torch I picked up years ago called the “pencil torch.”

What would have taken 5 or 10 minutes to heat up, was done in 45 seconds. I switched and never looked back.

When both circuits were ready for power, I started with the rear right running light and when I first connected it up to the battery, I felt like Frankenstein… I had finally brought something back to life from lifelessness. It was a great feeling.

The rest of the running lights were easy to install, but then there was the hatch lights.