Piggybacker wiring

[MidnightSpook]

Anyone out there pull a Piggybacker with their 2nd Gen?

I used to have an older model Piggybacker that I pulled with my first 2nd Gen and it had regular bulbs in the tail light. I hooked it up with a Hopkins converter and everything worked great.

I just bought a newer Piggybacker to pull with my 05 and it has LED tail lights.

I hooked it up with a Hopkins 46155 converter and everything went well, but the flashers and turn signals don't work as expected. I can see a small flicker with the blinker/flasher on, but I figured an extra set of LEDs would light up.

The tail lights have a label on the that state 1 wire for tail, 1 for stop turn and 1 for ground.

 

So.....has anyone on here with a newer piggybacker had this issue?

[Condor]

Anyone out there pull a Piggybacker with their 2nd Gen?

I used to have an older model Piggybacker that I pulled with my first 2nd Gen and it had regular bulbs in the tail light. I hooked it up with a Hopkins converter and everything worked great.

I just bought a newer Piggybacker to pull with my 05 and it has LED tail lights.

I hooked it up with a Hopkins 46155 converter and everything went well, but the flashers and turn signals don't work as expected. I can see a small flicker with the blinker/flasher on, but I figured an extra set of LEDs would light up.

The tail lights have a label on the that state 1 wire for tail, 1 for stop turn and 1 for ground.

 

So.....has anyone on here with a newer piggybacker had this issue?

 

If all the lights are LED's, and your Piggy Backer is a 5 wire trailer, just wire it in directly... I just wired up my 5 wire trailer using an isolater, but consensus among the guys was that I might not have needed it, but had standard tungstons. The @ndGen wires are located under the riders seat on the left side next to the aux power connection. Get ahold of Dano with any questions. He did mine....

[sarges46]

Hey...I have a piggy backer too....oh wait it's your old one! Lol. Its still kicking around and hauling our goodies for us John! Marilyn pulls it with her vstar.

 

Good luck getting your new one going.

[1 - UP]

Check to see if your adapter is for LED lights. I had a Modulite adapter for my 2 gen that had the regular lights, it is now converted to a Trike. The trike has LED tail lights and so does my cargo carrier. I had the same trouble that you are having now. I changed the Modulite to a newer one that would handle LED lights. I have no trouble now.

Ken:fingers-crossed-emo

[MidnightSpook]

I've checked everything that I can check without having my Fluke (I do have a simple circuit tester)

The Hopkins 46155 converter (says it's compatable with LED) hooks up to the stop, tail, left, right and ground on the bike side and the output to the trailer is tail, stop/left, stop/right and ground.

I've tested (with the circuit tester) to make sure that the output of the converter works as designed and it does.

The trailer is wired with the tail spliced to each side and the grounds spliced to each side. The turn/stop lines are ran directly to the turn/stop on the LED tail light.

 

This is what happens.

- tail and markers work as expected

- break works as expected

- turn doesn't work, but I do have a good turn indication with the tester as it goes into the LED tail light. Just for kicks, I applied the brake and wala the blinker works.

 

Only thing I can figure is that maybe the the LED light requires a higher voltage than the blinker is actually putting out.

 

Surely someone on this site has a piggybacker trailer with LED tail lights that can let me know how they made their's work.

[sarges46]

Hey John

 

Try giving them a call. They are or at least where very very helpful with me when I brought mine over and the VIN didnt work out.

 

They are great to deal with from anything I've heard.

[MidnightSpook]

I got fed up and bought a set of bulb type lights to see if it was just the LED causing the problem. Turns out that I may have a bad converter. I can see the bulb light with the turn indicator on but it is very dim. When I apply the brake with the indicator on, the bulb lights and flashes the way it should. This leads me to think the converter is causing a significant voltage drop through the turn indicator circuit.

Ive sent Hopkins an email asking for their opinion. Once I have it figured out I will post sometbing on wiring a venture for a trailer that will definatly work.

[sarges46]

Sorry I didnt think of that....I too had a bad converter on my old 1st gen when I wired up a trailer to it. After much head scratching and tips from here I bought a new one and was on my way.

[MidnightSpook]

I got fed up and bought a set of bulb type lights to see if it was just the LED causing the problem. Turns out that I may have a bad converter. I can see the bulb light with the turn indicator on but it is very dim. When I apply the brake with the indicator on, the bulb lights and flashes the way it should. This leads me to think the converter is causing a significant voltage drop through the turn indicator circuit.

Ive sent Hopkins an email asking for their opinion. Once I have it figured out I will post sometbing on wiring a venture for a trailer that will definatly work.

 

Hopkins 46255 Power Taillight Converter

 

this is what was needed. I tried two different Hopkins (non powered) converters and it just didn't work. With the powered unit everything worked fine.

I highly recommend this unit and you can pick one up for less than 20 dollars on amazon. I spent a little over 100 dollars trying to figure this out so save yourself some time and money and buy what you need the first time.

[Cougar]

I just changed out my older tail lights on my piggy to LED's and they work fine.

I also had (2) bad converters when I first started this way back when.

[OutKast]

I have piggybacker XL (factory led lights) and a non-powered convertor. everything works fine.

 

It was interesting that the trailer had LED turn/tail/stop lights, but the side markers had standard bulbs. I changed out the side markers for LEDs.

[MidnightSpook]

I have piggybacker XL (factory led lights) and a non-powered convertor. everything works fine.

 

It was interesting that the trailer had LED turn/tail/stop lights, but the side markers had standard bulbs. I changed out the side markers for LEDs.

 

Im glad you posted that. I had a piggybacked for my first 05term RSV and know I bad the non-powered cnverter on it. Maybe I just purchased two faulty converters. In any case you can't go wrong with the powered converter.