Adding Interior and Exterior Work Lights to Livestock Trailer

Question:

I have a CandM 16 ft bumper pull aluminum livestock trailer. It has LED running lights and tail lights. It has the round plug for the lights and brakes. It has no interior lights. My question is how can I wire interior lights and some work lights for the outside?And what parts or lights do you recommend? I would like to install a switch on the exterior of the trailer to turn them on, and i dont have a problem with leaving my head lights on for them to work. Thank you and God bless

asked by: CHANNING A

Helpful Expert Reply:

Considering how you'll likely be using this, if you don't already have an auxilliary battery on your trailer, you'll need to add one. You'll want a 12v battery, which can be sourced from a number of different places, but I recommend something that can at least handle around 50 amp hours. This eliminates the chance that you run your vehicle battery down and get stranded somewhere, in addition to straining that battery and creating the need for replacing it much sooner than you normally would need to.

For your interior lights I recommend using a few of the Surface Mount LED Dome Lights # 277-000114 since they have a built in switch on them- you can use the switch on the lights or wire everything onto a single switch as you mentioned in your question. These are 11" long x 4" wide and 3 or 4 of them in your 16 foot long trailer should do a good job at lighting up the interior sufficiently.

For the exterior lights I recommend going with the Buyers Products 5" Articulating Round Flood Light # 3371492125 since they will provide you with an option that can be mounted inside the trailer and give you the ability to move the stream of the light around as needed. Mounting them inside the trailer and at the rear, allows you to use them to provide additional light inside and allows you to redirect them outside when needed; this also keeps them out of the elements and won't create something that might get knocked off in tight spaces.

To allow you to turn the lights on and off you'll want to use a switch like the Pollak Heavy Duty Toggle Switch # PK34212. You can wire all the lights to a single switch, or use two of these and wire your interior and exterior lights to separate switches.

To complete all of this you'll need to get some wiring and electrical connectors. To start, you'll want to use 12 gauge jacketed wires (has both positive and negative wire) # 12-2-1 wire and ring terminals # DW05705-1 to run power from the battery. You can use the Deka Heat Shrink Butt Connectors # DW05745-10 to make your connections from the lights to the wires. The # 12-2-1 wiring is sold by the foot, so you'll need to do a little guess work to determine exactly how much you'll need for all of these.

You may want to consider adding a battery box to keep your 2nd battery out of the elements, if you don't already have one; I've linked our selection of battery boxes to this answer so that you can choose the appropriate sized one once you've decided on which battery you're going to use.