Recently I purchased a ’03 Dakota with a 4.7 V8 and factory towing package. Does Dodge offer an accessory that switches off the power supply from the battery (when the truck is not running) to the 7-pin factory harness at the rear of the truck? Otherwise when my camping trailer is hitched up and the truck is not running the refrigerator on the camper will discharge my truck’s battery.

There are solenoids that I can purchase from RV dealers that will isolate my camping trailer’s electrical system from the truck when it is not running. Although, the owner manual has led me to believe that Dodge offers the necessary parts.

 

Beats me. I just unplug the trailer when I park for more than 30 minutes or so.

Wait, I know if you leave the lights on for 10 minutes with the ignition off it'll shut them down, maybe the trailer is hooked up through the anti-dead-battery-thingy from the factory? Have you tested that?

 

No, I did not test it with the lights on. I did plug an accessory light into the harness using an adapter and over 45 minutes later the circuit was still hot. Before my test I called Dodge and they assured me that when the truck is off “power will not go back to the trailer unless the lights are on.” They also stated the battery will not be drained. I will call them and ask what is going on.

 

I have the same truck and tow with it. I do not bother to disconnect if I am just stopping overnight. Any longer I do because the truck does not have an isolator and will pull the truck battery down.

Biggest problem with my truck is the mirrors. Not very good for towing and unable to find adaptors that work well on the Dakota. Other than that I love the truck. Bought it new and have around 35K on the clock. I switched to Castrol Syntech at about 20K.

 

Do you have the 5x7 or 7x9 mirrors? Granted I only ever tow cars on a flatbed, but I'm pretty happy with the 7x9's on mnie. I bought mnie at about 42k and now I'm up to 56k less than a year later, love it. Today I'm installing headers. I switched to synthetic at about 45k.

 

I have the smaller mirrors which work fine for a car trailer but do not work so well for my 18' travel trailer.

 

Ah, maybe you could go to a wrecking yard and pull some of the 7x9's to swap on?