2015 Micro Minnie 1706fb Exterior lights issue

[Duercos]

I just picked up my 2015 Winnebago micro minnie 1706fb after a week-long rental, and none of my exterior lights work. Not the porch light, marker lights or brake/turn signals. There is power coming from my car's side 7 pins. The electric brakes work, and so are all the electronics inside.
I tried looking at the fuses inside the breaker box, and all look good.
Please help.

[Ray,IN]

What is common to all those lights? The ground side of the 12V wiring system. FWIW, over 80% of all 12VDC system problems is a poor/missing ground.

[Duercos]

Originally Posted by Ray,IN

What is common to all those lights? The ground side of the 12V wiring system. FWIW, over 80% of all 12VDC system problems is a poor/missing ground.

I tried to look for any lose connections, but not sure where they all are. Do exterior lights have a separate ground wire?

[Morich]

This is a time when a meter is almost "reguired" to do a good job of finding/fixing the problems as you need to verify not only that the power is comming from the 7 pin but also the ground is getting where it needs to be.
You mention the 7pin is okay but does that mean you verified the power was working on each seperate pin which then feeds it to the trailer plug? Did you also check that the ground pin in the 7-pin was good ground?
Unless somethng is very different, I would expect the porch light to work off the trailer battery, not like the rest???
I would go to the 7-pin, verify that each of the functions is operating to the pin in the connector as well as the ground being good there, then move toward the trailer to the next connection in one of the functions like the brake lights or turn signals and work each one as seperate trouble as each does have a different wire to follow.

I might first want to check the ground connection is good at the connector and then at the trailer as it IS one wire which would kill several different functions.
Clearance lights, turn signals, and brake lights do all need ground and if that ground wire is broken/loose, possibly right at the trailer front, all those stop.

[Morich]

As a guide, this is the "standard" way the 7-pin should be wired.

[Duercos]

Originally Posted by Morich

This is a time when a meter is almost "reguired" to do a good job of finding/fixing the problems as you need to verify not only that the power is comming from the 7 pin but also the ground is getting where it needs to be.
You mention the 7pin is okay but does that mean you verified the power was working on each seperate pin which then feeds it to the trailer plug? Did you also check that the ground pin in the 7-pin was good ground?
Unless somethng is very different, I would expect the porch light to work off the trailer battery, not like the rest???
I would go to the 7-pin, verify that each of the functions is operating to the pin in the connector as well as the ground being good there, then move toward the trailer to the next connection in one of the functions like the brake lights or turn signals and work each one as seperate trouble as each does have a different wire to follow.

I might first want to check the ground connection is good at the connector and then at the trailer as it IS one wire which would kill several different functions.
Clearance lights, turn signals, and brake lights do all need ground and if that ground wire is broken/loose, possibly right at the trailer front, all those stop.

I checked the car’s 7 pin plug with a volt meter and all the pins work fine. Now, how can I check the trailer side 7 pin?
I also find it strange, since the porch light has it's own switch and works off the battery, what happened to all the outdoor lights. A fuse? Separate ground?

[Fred 2106DS]

Check out this post by Todd (Tinglet). He posted a very nice wiring diagram for the external 12V wiring on Micro Minnies. I would also recommend reading the rest of the posts in that thread. There's more good information about the 12V system in that thread.

[Morich]

Originally Posted by Duercos

I checked the car’s 7 pin plug with a volt meter and all the pins work fine. Now, how can I check the trailer side 7 pin?
I also find it strange, since the porch light has it's own switch and works off the battery, what happened to all the outdoor lights. A fuse? Separate ground?

Does this mean you have a teher which seperates from the trailer as well as the tow vehicle? To check the connection between the tether and any 7 pin on the trailer, one needs to either get to the back side of the trailer connection or chase the wiring to where it first appears on/in the trailer.
But a word on what I've found? Tethers are moveed, bend, abused pretty heavy and as such they are one place where we can get lots of trouble.
What kind of shape is it in? Bent, folded and tape all over can hide a lot of defects, so when I'm checking the power and ground good at the tow 7 pin, if I find them good, I then plug in the tether and check the trailer end where that power I put in at one ends actually comes out the other before I plug to the trailer!
Depending on what and how the connectors are put on that tether, it may be as simple as one of the small screws has backed off and a wire come loose.

Good reason for checking the tether carefully is that it takes lots of abuse but it is also really easy to check, compared to searching out where the trailer wiring goes!

since you have several different items that work off the tow battery, I would seriously look at the ground wire from that tow car to the trailer.
With the meter set on resistance/ohms scale and the trailer NOT hitched to the vehicale, if you put one probe on some clean metal of the car and the other on the trailer frame, etc. there shoud be very little resistance from car to trailer when a good ground through the tether connects them together.

Very little may be a vague term! When touching the probes together and setting the meter correctly we should get little resistance like under 10 ohms, then when we move the probes to the two frames, there will be some added resistance like 10 20 ohms! Some added resistance due to extra distance but certainly a good solid path between the two if the teher ground connections are good!
If you get a reading like up in the thousands or no reading at all, check the connections for loose or broken wires!
If you do this test while the trailer is hitched to the tow, it may misle4ad you as there is often a connection for ground through the metal of the hitch but it is not a good connection and tends to flicker, go out, and do weird things as you tow and the hitch bounces around.
Good when setting still but funky when moving and the hitch bounces!

Then there is a basic point on the porch light. There are two different sets of wiring on the trailer. One is the group that is used while towing. they are just lights extended from the tow car to the trailer. Stop, turn, side lights?
But then there is the second group which we use after we are at the site and disconnect from the tow car. Porch lights are usually in that second group and use the trailer onboard battery.
so that means there is a second, unrelated problem to chase on the trailer only, not involving the tow car! Bulb burned out in the light can be a frequent one!