Recommendation for Adding Trailer Battery and Charge Line From Vehicle to 4-Way Trailer Connection

Question:

I have an enclosed trailer snowmobile, no brakes, Blizzard. It has a 4 prong connection to truck. I want to add a battery to the trailer so that I can run lights when it is disconnected. Two questions: 1: Which wire do I have to tap into from the 4 way to get a trickle charge to the battery when Im towing?. Should I just ground the battery to the aluminum trailer? is 10 guage wire sufficient for the ground and the tap into the 4 way? 2: I see a solar battery boxes out there. Any experience with this actually keeping the battery with some juice?

asked by: Ron

Expert Reply:

For your enclosed snowmobile trailer with 4 way wiring, you will need to upgrade your connection to run a battery charge. I recommend you splice your connections and use the Hopkins Endurance 5-Way Flat Trailer Wiring Kit - Vehicle and Trailer Ends - Ergonomic Design # HM47890. That 5th pin will be your battery charge line.

You will want to run # 10-1-1 wire from your vehicle battery to a 40 amp circuit breaker # 9510 and then run that to your vehicle side 5-way. Then on the trailer side of the 5-way, you will run that # 10-1-1 to the positive battery terminal. You will run a 10 gauge wire from your negative battery terminal to the frame of your trailer. This will provide a 2-4 amp charge when driving to maintain the charge of your trailer battery, but it won't charge it from a drained state very quickly.

The solar battery boxes like the TorkLift PowerArmor Solar Locking Battery Box # TLA7708RS work very well to charge and maintain your trailer battery and comes with a 25 year warranty on the solar panel. You can also add a solar panel to any battery box you desire using kit # TLA7713 as well as regulator # TLA7715 to prevent overcharging.