Safety chains are hot?

[Live in Balance]

First tow of the season. One safety chain got hot.
What’s going on? Is my rusty ball causing a bad ground or something?

 

[briangcc]

Did it drag on the ground while towing??

 

[Sprig]

Very bizarre post. Never heard of anyone complaining about a single safety chain getting hot. Don’t know what a rusty hitch or a ground problem would have to do with a warm safety chain. There ain’t no electricity going to the chains and if there was and they were heating up you’d blow a fuse in a second. If this is for real you either have a chain dragging and heating from friction or the chain is on the side the sun is shining.
First post, me thinks this is a troll. We‘ll see if there is a second post with more information.

 

[jhande]

First tow of the season. One safety chain got hot.
What’s going on? Is my rusty ball causing a bad ground or something?

Good one!

 

[topgun3690]

Joined over seven years ago....it says....

 

[Sprig]

1 post in 7 years. Could be a record.

 

[Scott Danforth]

does the safety chain sit in front of the muffler?

 

[Live in Balance]

Very bizarre post. Never heard of anyone complaining about a single safety chain getting hot. Don’t know what a rusty hitch or a ground problem would have to do with a warm safety chain. There ain’t no electricity going to the chains and if there was and they were heating up you’d blow a fuse in a second. If this is for real you either have a chain dragging and heating from friction or the chain is on the side the sun is shining.
First post, me thinks this is a troll. We‘ll see if there is a second post with more information.

Thank you for helping me puzzle this out.
1st: the safety chains are actually steel cables hard mounted to the trailer.
2. They do not touch the ground.
3. I have a lot of boat experiences, but my best mechanical work is on restoring antique English cars.
4. I’ve had situations there where a ground strap is corroded and a circuit took its place through something like a heater control cable. The result is very hot and a fire hazard.
5: after a 30 minute tow, one safety cable was hot to touch. I worry that the trailer lights have a problem that could be a fire hazard.
I wonder if the trailer needs to ground though the hitch ball, and if that makes a “dirty”connection , it could cause the ground to seek a different path
I guess that no one here has experienced anything like this.

 

[Sprig]

This makes no sense to me. The vehicle drive train and body are grounded. When you hook the trailer to the hitch the trailer becomes grounded too. A rusty hitch may cause a poor ground to the trailer or cause the trailer not to be grounded at all. . If that’s the case your trailer lights should not work. I don’t see how current could be running through the chains. and if there were current through the chains heating them up you would be popping fuses.

 

[jimmbo]

Fuses pop when they are asked to carry more current than designed for. If the Safety Cables were indeed completing the circuit, they are large enough to carry more current than the Trailer would ever use. If the Hooks or whatever attaches the Cables to the Hitch, can flop around, they could get warm, but still wouldn't blow the Fuse,

 

[fatlenny]

I have owned a few trailers with wire harnesses that do not use a ground, while I have owned many more that do. In the cases that I have seen no ground, expecting the hitch to do the grounding, It usually is a poor ground situation causing lights to not work correctly or at least consistently. Any trailer I have owned like this, I have added a ground wire attached to the trailer frame.

You seem to have an interesting situation, try this

1. With your lights on, and wire harness connected, Trailer not connected to your vehicle anywhere other than through the wire harness, check if all trailer lights are working properly. If not move on to step 2, If they work, you got me stumped right here.
2. Do you have a ground wire on the harness? If no, add one. If yes, you may have had a bad connection at the trailer or other point in the wire harness. remove the wire from connection point at the trailer, clean connection end and confirm you have a good ground connection from the end of this wire back to your bumper or some other ground point on your vehicle. If this is good, clean the contact point on the trailer and reattach the grounding wire to the trailer and test again.

 

[tpenfield]

My new trailer has a wiring issue ( bad ground connection) and the only way to get the lights to work is to connect the safety chains. So, yes the chains can be the ground circuit if the wiring harness is not providing a ground.

A quick test may be to see if the lights (and anything else electrical) work without the safety chains connected.

 

[jhande]

First let me say that grounding the trailers electrical system is an old and poor way of doing so. Running actual ground wires is a better and safer way to do it. Think of losing the ground contact through the ball (rusty) while driving at night. Guess what happens to all your trailer lights? Yep, off!!!

Okay on average an actual trailer ground wire is 14 gauge (could be 12 or 16). I'm sure the safety cable/chain is much bigger than that. If not there's no safety involved LOL. There's no way the cable can be getting hot because it's acting like a ground, not enough current/amps. If it was shorted to a non-fussed positive connection/terminal then possibly. But you would end up with the positive wire catching fire.

I would first look for another heat source. Is the exhaust blowing on it? Does it have excess friction from something, constant rubbing on frame or road?
Try hooking the trailer wire harness to the vehicle, do not hookup to ball. Attach safety cables/chains as usual. Test with driving lights on for awhile, does the cable get hot? Try with signal or brake lights, does the cable get hot? If it doesn't obviously the heat is not electrically caused.

Personally I would recommend 2 things.
1.) Run an actual ground wire from each light and hookup to the trailer plug. Make sure the tow vehicles plug has the ground wire at least attached to a clean contact on the frame or a proper ground wire.
2.) Replace the safety cables with actual chains. The cables are made of multiple thin strains of wire which can rust, fray, wear and break over time. Also they might not be legal on the road in all places.