12 Ideas to Upgrade Your Utility Trailer

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Installed LED lights

Taillights get bounced around, dunked in the lake and soaked with road salt. So it’s no surprise that bulb filaments break and sockets corrode, causing a lot of lighting malfunctions. Sealed LED trailer lights are a brilliant solution.

This pair of submersible LED trailer lights, which come with a wiring harness and a license plate bracket, fit right into the existing mounting holes. Before you remove your old lights, write down the wiring scheme. Then swap in the new lights and follow our wiring photos for making watertight connections.

Wiring the lights

When you install your new lights, don’t use the cheap crimp connectors to splice the wires. The crimp connectors will cause you plenty of aggravation when they start corroding a few years from now. Do the job right the first time—solder all electrical connections and seal each one with a piece of small-diameter heat-shrinkable tubing.

Then seal the bundle of wires with a section of larger-diameter shrinkable tubing. Coat the ends of the larger tubes with liquid electrical tape to complete the watertight seal. Heat-shrinkable tubing assortments and liquid electrical tape are available at most auto parts stores.

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Adjustable Ball Mount

If you own several trailers with different tongue heights or towing ball sizes, you know how hard it is to find a replacement for a rusted/seized ball or ball mount that will fit them all. This is where an adjustable ball mount comes in handy. To install a new one, just remove the old ball mount and slide this one into its place.

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