When I first bought my Scamp in eastern Washington the weekend before Thanksgiving in November of 2010 I couldn't get the left tail
light or marker lights to work. The wiring on the flat four connector was pretty messed up and it seemed like I had a bad ground somewhere in the trailer. Plus, trying to fix a trailer in freezing weather was not my idea of a good time!
I had to drive about 225 miles west on Interstate 90 to get home so I really needed to have good tail lights. I bought a set of temporary tow lights and ran the wires through the trailer. I pulled the screen out of the rear jalousie window and the front window screen was torn at the bottom so I ran the wires through that.
The weather was supposed to be good when I left home but that changed once I picked up my trailer and started home the next day.
The first picture shows where I stopped at the top of Snoqualmie Pass near the Alpental ski area to do a safety check. I wanted to make sure everything was ok on the Scamp before heading down the pass to home.
This was the first time I had ever towed a travel trailer! Good thing I had four-wheel drive! I wouldn't be without one.
Fortunately everyone was going about 25 mph on I-90 when the snow was the worst so it was a pretty good drive.
The second picture shows the front of the Scamp when I got down near Seattle at Issaquah. After a trip like this I knew I could probably tow this little egg just about anywhere!
I found out why I couldn't get the left rear tail
light to work when I was getting ready for my first camp out on Memorial Day weekend.
The third picture shows the factory's idea of connecting the ground wire to the aluminum tail
light reflector in 1977. Near the top center of the picture you can see a washer on a rivet with a wire underneath.
In the fourth picture you can see the rivet going through the ground wire. They had split the wire with a knife and ran the rivet that held the aluminum light reflector to the body through it. Thirty-three years later there was no ground to this light.
You can see by all the mold and mildew there was a lot of condensation in this trailer over the years and there probably was some corrosion at that rivet where it touched the wire. There was no electricity passing through it. I did get a good ground to that light when I ran new wires to all the lights.
The mold and mildew went completely away with one application of Tilex. It looks a lot better now!
I used the original tail lights on only that one trip to the Columbia Gorge on Memorial Day weekend 2011. I was afraid what happened to Carol would happen to me. After seeing the original lights in the daylight and rainy conditions there was no way I would use them again.
I'm very happy with the 7-inch LED tail lights I have now.
Jeff