4-Way Connector Needed to Replace 4-Way on Trailer with 6 Wires

Question:

My 4 wire connector has six wires coming out on the trailer side. Green Yellow Green Brown White and White The first green wire is broken right at the connector so the connector needs to be replaced however I cant seem to find anything other than a standard 4 wire connector and the 5 wire wishbone connector. Any ideas?

asked by: Lance

Expert Reply:

Since you have six wires it sounds to me like you have a double ground and a left and a right side tail light wire. If this is the case you could use a wishbone harness like the 20 ft. Wishbone 4-Way Trailer Wiring Harness with 30" Ground Wire, # A20WB, as a replacement because it has the separate left and right side tail light wires.

I recommend using a spare car battery to assist with testing the trailer wires for function. You will just need to ground the negative terminal of the battery to the trailer frame and then apply power to each wire separately,excluding the white wires, checking for function. If you have all functions, left turn, right turn, and running lights on both sides of the trailer, that extra wire is a double ground.

expert reply by: Leah S

Cory B.

5/10/2020

I have a 4-flat connector for my boat trailer that I need to replace. But I noticed today it has 6 wires leading into the terminal rather than 4. I'm looking through several auto parts sites, including etrailer and others, but only seen 4-flats having 4 wires. Holding the 4-flat, viewing wires from left-to-right (covered ground terminal on the left), my wires are: - white with yellow stripe - black - white with green stripe - yellow - brown - green I can provide an image but I don't seen an upload link here. Thank you!

Chris R.

5/12/2020

Most likely you have an extra ground wire along with a running lights wire for each side of the trailer (typically this is a single wire that gets split further down the trailer). As for which color carries each function on your trailer though, I really can't say. You'll need to actually test these - either by applying 12V power to each of them directly to see what light/function they activate or hooking up to your tow vehicle and testing them for power while you activate each function in the truck. You'll then just need to combine the "extra" wires to the correct circuit/pin on the new 4-Way.