Every other trailer I pull...

[dhirocz]

...has a bunch of issues. Half of the time, it's a bad ground.

I already verified the ground coming from my truck has good continuity...someone slathered grease over all of the connections on the trailer to the point that it is bridging the positive to ground all over, and causes all the lights to blink when you turn on the running lights. It's overcoming the ground when the headlights are on.

So I put on my thinking cap and ran a temporary ground from my chassis to the fifth wheel. Voila, no more issue.

I don't see many trucks at all with a ground strap on a fifth wheel, but I've heard of it. It's not supposed to be the primary ground...but the trailer body is supposed to be grounded. My thinking here is grounding the fifth wheel to provide a better ground might help me avoid some of these issues with the trailers my company has, due to how they maintain them, and keep me from loosing time, money and ultimately keep me from being at the mercy of the dot man.

I also noticed my flasher, that was acting up earlier, now acts fine. I'm curious if there is something I'm not considering here that might be damaged by running the extra ground. Thoughts?