So my new to me 96 chevy conversion van is serving me well. However it has this nagging issue while towing. It pops the brake fuse. With no brake lights, the brake controller doesn't get the signal, and therefore doesn't activate trailer brakes.
Trailer doesn't cause this problem with other vehicles.
Fuse survives just fine when no trailer is attached.
It uses a 20 amp fuse.
While trailer is connected, one step on the brakes kills the 20 amp fuse. Also kills a 25 amp fuse. A 30 amp fuse will survive a random amount of time, but eventually fails while brakes are activated.
No obvious shorts that I've found.
Logic tells me to look where the trailer wiring splices into the van's wiring. It is not factory wiring.
Connections look fine. No exposed copper.
My one thought which may not be valid at all is the ground. The trailer connector ground is tied into the ground wire at the van's brake light bulb. Given that it is the common ground between the trailer brakes and lights......could that be a contributing factor? My thought is if I ground to the chassis somewhere it might reduce the load, but that is just a wild ass guess with no real foundation in education. I always assume it's the ground.
I'd try a clean chassis ground first, my .02
My '09 Express does it once in a while too.
Brakes and lights....same deal.
A while back I ran a separate "jumper" wire to ground the trailer to the van.
Not elegant but I ~think~ that has solved it.
You could also use the brake pedal switch to activate a relay that powers the brake controller and keep them on seperate circuts.
Looking on youtube, etrailer.com has some help videos and their plug in harness has a separate ground wire. I'll give that a try.
Also, maybe pony up the $15 for a circuit breaker instead of a fuse. It is brakes after all.
oldopelguy wrote:
Also, maybe pony up the $15 for a circuit breaker instead of a fuse. It is brakes after all.
It is brake lights, not brakes. I have the circuit breaker installed per the tekonsha instructions.
If a circuit breaker keeps breaking and resetting I haven't really solved the problem.
The circuit that trips is for the brake lights, cruise control and something else that isn't all that important. They have separate circuit for ABS and all the more important stuff.
The plug on your van is wired wrong. If it kills the brake light fuse only when the van is connected to the trailer, but the trailer does not kill fuses in other vehicles...
So I moved the ground wire from the chassis wiring harness to it's own ground on the frame. Seems to have cured it. Back to a 20 amp fuse and no problems.
I don't understand totally why that works, but it does.
The weirdest fuse issue I ever had was in a dual filament bulb, I guess one filament was broken and when you turned the lights on and went over a bump the one filament would touch the other and blow the fuse.
