The trailer connector fell off my truck and the plug on the wiring harness got full of dirt and ice. It's -20 C out so I just cut it off with a bolt cutter and brought it inside to sort things out.

I can't find anywhere that sells the metal clips that go inside the factory plug. All I could find was kits with crimp connector kits that look like they might work but I'd rather be sure before I buy one. Has anyone done this?

I was able to remove the metal clips and the orange rubber thingeys by prying them open with a couple of needle nosed pliers but the clips got pretty bent out of shape and one of them is starting to tear. I could tin coat the wires and solder them back up I'm sure it would hold but I'm more worried I won't be able to release the clips from the plug afterwards.

 

The crimp kits -- comonly called pigtails -- should work OK if you buy one from a reasonably relilable source. Usually the pins are designed to come out of the connectors by pressing some little tab. Quite often there are release tools to do that. Also,pins are sometimes supposed to float a bit in the connectors so that they line up when you connect them up.

A good crimp is a very reliable connection and is actually stronger than the wire that it's crimping. A pull test should have the wire breaking before the connection.

Don't know your level of expertise with crimping, but if you have a good crimper and use the right sizes for everything it should be fine. Generally you want to strip them so that the copper comes out slightly from the end when the insulation reaches the end of the first step.

Not trying to talk down to you here, just telling you what I know about this stuff. Was involved with some crimped wire harness production for a while and learned a little about things. We had ratchet and machine style crimpers -- which are more reliable, but good hand crimpers work pretty well.

hj

 

Yeah I bought a crimp connector and some clips that fit on the pins of the trailer plug but the pins didn't line up so good putting it back together so I crimped the pins to some lengths of wire and stuck them right to the back of the jobber plug and wrapped it in lots of tape. I'll order the new wiring harness and do it right when the weather is nice. Glad I got the crimp tool though I got the spendier ratchet one but the connections are tight.