HELP! How do we hook up the break lights etc for our 1969 camper?

[Valorie Pouzar]

• We recently acquired a 1969 Truck Camper, and we can't figure out how to wire up the brake lights, turn signals etc. who can point us in the right direction for advice on hooking up old campers to old trucks?

• I have many other questions - but actually being able to legally travel to our camping destination is priority!

[Lakota Wolf]

Maybe I can help with a lil comment,, Etrailer.com has the color codes for trailer/camper wiring,, which covers, brake, turn and running.  The overhead campers, from what I have come across, have 2 locations for their pigtail harnes for plugging in for lights on the truck,, They usually put the pigtail either on the right, or the left back corner of the slide in camper. Alot of times, these pigtails get torn up and squished etc, due to the previous owners just sliding the unit in and going on their happy little way. The truck wires you will be working with are Brown,Yellow,Green, White and Black.  Hope this helps a little,, If you have any further questions,, be free to post them and members here will try and help if they can.

[Valorie Pouzar]

Thanks! I'll check into the color code thing... our biggest issue though, is that we cannot find the "pigtail harnes" nothing in back. we have wires to the inside lights, but cannot find the hookup wires for the lights on the outside back of our camper. 

NOTE: some of the what seems like the oblivious hookup, is  Male part - which cannot go into the male part to the thing we are hooking up to. Sorry, I should have someone else explain this if I make no sense.

[Lakota Wolf]

Where your wires are hooked up for interior lights, there should be more wires in that location. Your onboard cabin battery is charged by the vehicles alternator.

[Valorie Pouzar]

Well, we think we found what we needed, but none of the wiring seems to work. There has been some "micky mouse" wiring - someone took a cigarette lighter and taped it to other wires that seem to run to the back. We are now thinking that we need to rewire it all. Can we do that? and how?

[Lakota Wolf]

Rewire is the option you have but can't figure out why they had a cig. Lighter plug, except maybe for just interior or running lights.pull the tail lights loose and check the wiring, make note of the color codes of the wires, make sure there is a GOOD ground and from you mess of wire, apply 12 volts to the same color wire. Worse case scenario is fishing new wire.

[richard nance]

the problem is probably a bad ground.