Scotchlocks can breed if left unchecked!

[GCroyle]

This pic is positive proof that given two Scotchlocks, a quiet out of sight, dark, slightly dirty area that these little buggers can TAKE OVER your trailer wiring! These are obviously not the later model of dare I say "Fixed" Scothlocks that cannot breed.



While checking the rear diff on the '97, one of them even attacked me and tried to make a connection, but I was quicker than it was. Notice the pine straw food that these guys have stored up to get them through the winter, proof that they think and have master plans.



How to erridicate them? 3 requirements: un-insulated butt connectors, solder and heat shrink tubing will keep them at bay.



Ohms law will prevail!

 

[MChrist]

"we are Borg. . resistance is futile. "

 

[MLee]

Take me to your leader!!!!!!!!!

 

[CAPTPHIL]

Gary,
Check out Ancor Marine Wiring. They are not cheap, but I have been using them for 20 yrs. in saltwater marine apps. , on my trucks and boat trailers. Their butt connectors with the shrink built in have more adhesive than reg. shrink. They also save time and later repairs. I have pulled wire from the bilge of boats that had been in there, laying in water for over 10 yrs. Check the West Marine Website.
Good Luck Capt Phil

 

[MChrist]

Those are the ones we use at work. We get them from Terminal Supply.

 

[GCroyle]

CaptPhil,





Interesting suggestion, simple is good.



We got the truck this way over 3 years ago. PO was a landscaper and it has an in bed 6 way for the gooseneck in addition to a 7 way and 6 way at the receiver. Hence the abundance of those critters. I have no idea how much of it actually works.



I grew up using soldering and it still is a top choice in my toolbox for one time connection repair.



May the Force and Ground be with us, at least about 13-14VDC or so.

 

[jelag]

Gary... .

I have an account with Del City - Wiring Products and Professional Electrical Supplies and have used them for 10-12 years. . I buy butt connectors that are non-insulated from them... . they offer both size on size and size on another size..... 12 ga to 16 etc... so you can run (2) 16 gauge wires into one side and one 16 gauge out... . in other words a 3 way connector...

In addition I buy from them a shrink tube that's clear with an adhesive in the center... when you heat it with a heat guy the adhesive melts and the tube shrinks so that you have a great water proof insulation... . you can see through the tube when its cool and if the connection might give me problems you can see it happen.....

Every time I see one of those breeding scotchlocks I cut it out of the circuit and do the repair... I've now done about 70% of my 5er that way and of course everything else I own... .

Here we have trouble with the factory trailer connector on the truck so its been pulled down, and we've installed this tubing on the connections and use a dielectric grease again purchased from Delcity... .

To keep the trailer charged I installed a 50 amp fuse and 8 gauge wire from the battery to the trailer connector and back to the trailer in the trailer harness... . an 8 gauge ground is also needed... . On my 5er... I gained 1 volt at the trailer batteries after this change brought the charge level up on the trailer batteries... .

Hope this helps... . BTW - Haven't made it to the u-tube site to look at the clutch installation your suggested...

 

[GCroyle]

Jim,



I bet you know about keeping connections happy, with all of your professional and personal towing activities and all of that snow and salt on the roads in Spokane. I'm just starting to learn a bit of the charge line importance with my recent TT. The factory hard wired the charge line directly into the hydraulic brake actuator. When I replaced the actuator, the new wiring diagram was different, so yours truly had a disconnected TV to TT charge line. Improvements coming. I checked and on the '05 they ran 2 lighter gage wires and joined them in the 7 way and are fed from a 20A fuse in the distribution center.



Jim, the Dodge is OK trying to keep 4 batteries charged? Assuming the 5'er has 2. My TT has 2.



10 gage, you can weld with that can't ya!



Is there an additive that you can add to the #2 tank to act as a deterrent or maybe a vaccine against Scotchlock breeding?



Looking forward to your . 02$ on the video.

 

[SMorneau]

Could a guy even get by with that on a new computer runs everything truck?

 

[GCroyle]

Could a guy even get by with that on a new computer runs everything truck?

SMorneau,



I have no clue.



I think our vehicles have gone to levels of computer assist or control that most of us only can imagine. It would be neat if some electronic engineer could give us a comparison of the PC power of a 2011 Ram vs. the NASA space capsule that made it to the moon or maybe even Apollo 11. I had a short ride in an '11 Ford and it even remembers which trailer you are hooked to by name, keeps the settings on the controller etc.



One thing that I think we under appreciate is the importance of good clean connections. EG: I started to clean the never before removed NEG batt cables on my '05, no big deal, baking soda and H2O, bit of battery brush here and there, job done. NOT SO FAST, IMHO DC overtightened the cable clamps and stretched the lead to where it butted against the other side, unable to properly re-tighten. I'll be getting some 1/0 crimp NEG ends and re-do those before it gets any uglier.

 

[SRath]

You didn't buy that truck from Texas, did you Gary?



The past two trucks I have bought from texas have convinced me there are few things as dangerous as a Texan with scotchlocks and black tape.



Throw in an aftermarket car alarm with remote door locks, huge stereo with subwoofer amps, crossovers, and 6 speakers, trailer brake regulator, car phone, scanner, and a sideband cb that can talk to cuba and you had better take a couple of those heart attack aspirins before you even peek under the truck or the dash. :-laf

 

[GCroyle]

Scott,



IIRC it came from the Tarheel State.



But your pic is proof again that they are everywhere and I think we could consider that an infrastructure invasion targeting our "grid" and mine was more of a personal attack. I'll ask my lineman neighbor to scurry down there and be prepared to defend himself and correct this blatant SuperScotchlock invasion.



Anyone else been Scotchlocked?

 

[DennyDay]

3M has just announced that Scotch Locks will be made in China as of Feb 1st. These are made just to cover the Texas Truck Market

 

[GCroyle]

You guys are giving the Lone Star State a LOT of credit. What about the Northern States, they salt the road, not just their fast food by the MEGA TON, eats dreaded Scotchlock staples by noon the next day, fer sure says former Buckeye me.



Even my better 1/2 chuckled at this thread!

 

[jelag]

Guy's... ... I really tried to make this shorter... sorry... but you need the whole story to understand the issues...

3 things started my quest for a better electrical system on my trailer... 1 - was the shore power converter would only charged for 2 or 3 hours and drop to a trickle to protect the batteries... so if we'd be out for a night or two and than plug in, when we left in the morning the batteries really weren't fully charged... . and 2 - on a hot day, say over 90*F the sensor under the batteries under the hood would cut back the charging voltage... thus taking hours to bring the batteries up to a full charge 3 - the voltage drop through the truck harness, trailer harness would mean at least a 1. 5 volt drop from testing at the truck and at the trailer...

So as I drove to customer locations to solve their HD clutch problems I would always let my mind wonder on how to really make the trailer suitable for full time use in retirement... .

When I bought my 5er it had 2 batteries... I looked at the battery holder and it was fright from the factory... . I later made a 12+ and a 12- buss that's installed in the battery box and I started to isolate some of the circuits and move them to the buss...

The buss is a 1 1/2 x 1/2 x 8" long piece of cold roll material with a piece of UHMW to insulate them from the frame of the trailer... I drilled and taped a 3/8" nc hole every 1/2" along the metal to make the buss... . The UHMW, Ultra High Molecular Weight plastic is 3/4" thick and larger than the cold rolled steel so that (1/4) bolts could be recessed in the UHMW and into the steel and the UHMW is bolted to the battery box, thus the 12+ buss is insulated from the battery box...

I ran the 8 gauge wires from the trailer harness to the buss..... and from dell city, as mentioned above I purchased a group of 40 and 50 amp fuses in holders... these run off the buss to various areas... the landing gear, hydraulic pump, 12 fuse panel etc...

I now have (3) 90 ah batteries in the trailer and each has a 10 gauge wire to each side of the buss... by cleaning up the factory mess, I found room for a 3rd battery... . The 130 amp??? alternator on the truck has no problem keeping up with all this... except on a very hot day..... over 90*F as the sensor under the battery cuts back the charging voltage... in fact, this reduced voltage is what started the whole thing...

I than put 4 relays in the battery box... . tail light, left turn, right turn, reverse... . the power from the trailer connector trips the relays and the power comes from the trailer batteries and the 12+ through the 8 gauge wire from the battery... . all of a sudden the lights are now brighter and you can easily see the trailer from a farther distance..... as I had time the past 2 winters I'd pull a clearance light, or tail light and take out the scotchlocs and replace them with butt connectors and the shrink tube mentioned above... BTW - dielectric grease around the battery box connections, and on every bulb to socket connection... and if the light uses a pinched wire connection than that also has the grease on that pinch...

All in all this has proven to be a very suitable fix to various problems... . I later installed a full sine wave inverter to run the wife's heated mattress pad, the flat screen, dvd player etc... . that's another long story... . my son the mechanical engineer, took one look at what I'd done and than brought his 5er up and we did the same to his... thus solving a lot of problems.....

I guess I have 30-40 hours of opening connections, replacing them, opening harness's and running wire, etc. plus the time in the machine shop to drill/tap the steel and UHMW... . but for a guy who wants to hook up and go... I'm there... .

 

[GCroyle]

Jim,



I think I understand what you did, SAFELY super supplied the TT from the TV and used the existing TT batteries to power the TT lights and just used the TV to trigger the relays, WOW lots of solutions.



I'm enjoying this thread a lot, I started it by poking fun at a problem on MY '97 which has not seen a TT in 4-5 years and my son drives it. Scothlocks IMHO have a limited application scope and this was a case of runningamuck with poor quality technique.



In just having fun here on TDR I have picked up a lead on better connection options and a major creative effort to sanitize (and after doing some chasing on my '07 TT 12V system) the wiring and make it plug and go, a major accomplishment. I absolutely have pondered the 12V charge line and Jim, those are some really creative ideas.



This has been fun.



Those buggers added one more circuit tap earlier this evening, still don't know what they tapped into, could be the tag light!

 

[GCroyle]

12V Butchery

Refer back to the 1st picture for the before situation.



I finally got motivated to do something about the Scotchlock (SL) breeding grounds under the back of the '97. The license plate lights weren't working, no big deal, right? WRONG! The fragile sockets were kaput and actually available via Dorman HELPS, I bought two.



The nightmare began.



I looked at the old mess and reached for the cutters, scalpel, hemostat, forceps and a short time later the 3 trailer sockets, yards of crap wires and at least THIRTY ONE SL's were on the ground.



The reconstruction of the stock type 7 blade RV socket has to wait for correct cable.



The rest of the story involved finding what the he-doublehockeystick did the previous malicious flybynight SOB did to all of the wires! They even went up into the tail light harness at the sockets and put in more SL's and boys and girls seems like EVERY place that a SL was it turned into corrosion or even broken wires. The grounds had to be re-established and a slight modification to the supply for the running lights was "grafted" but the running lights now function via the light switch. Having a factory manual was a big help, me and chapter 8W spent some time together, Z13, L7 and L63 reported for duty.



The champion circuit had at least 9 SL's in a few inches of wiring.

 

[EMAC2]

Wow, that's all I can say; Wow!

 

[EMAC2]

That is an incredible amount of SLs for such a short length of wire! I still can't believe that.....