I am reprinting several posts by Steve on another Forum. I hope that is OK Steve. I then contacted Jim Hart (Owner) Hitch-Web.Com for his comments (see below):

[Reese 74204 lighting converter failed! ]

My lighting converter failed today. I only knew because I have one of
those receiver covers that lights up with the brake light. I came out
to the car this morning and it was on.

Probing with my meter confirms all three lines are now hot all the
time. I pulled the fuse, and sent an email to Reese for info on their
warranty. Wish me luck!

FYI, I just got off the phone with the tech support at Cequent (aka
Reese and Draw-Tite).

They say to be sure to get a converter with "Circuit Protection"
included. The Reese 74204 and the equivalent Draw-Tite (as
reccommended by Hitch-web.com) do NOT have this. The Draw-Tite part
you want is 18176, or Reese part number 85265.

Needless to say they aren't going to honor any warranty even though
this thing failed after three weeks.


I just received a reply back from Jim Hart at Hitch-Web.Com
concerning the problems with the Reese Lighting Converter:

"The unit we recommend is a tried and true unit which functions with
little or no failures !!!

The newer versions with "double Circuit Protection" have had a less
than sucessful history...

The one we recommend has circuit protection for the vehicle but not
for the black box itself.. so if you were to short out the one we
recommend it would 1st pop the fuse in the feed line and if you
continued to change the fuse and short it out the black box would
eventually quit..

The new ones with double circuit protection are supposed to be able
to be shorted out and not destroy the black box... guess what.? No
such deal and the failure rate under normal use is more than we want
to get involved with, especially shipping all over the country..

So for now we are sticking with the old tried and true that we know
works..we shipped over 500 of the 74204 in the last year and no
returns or complaints.. Maybe after the new units have been around
for a year or so we might change our tune.

Tell your Yahoo friend that he needs to double check everything he
plugs into the connector for direct shorts to ground... sometimes
with trailers the shorts are intermittent... (hard to find the
chaffed wire syndrome)
,
The units don't normally fail without being shorted.

If one of my customers had a problem within a few weeks like that we
would replace the unit without question and advise him to check for
shorts and next one would be on him !!

Meantime: Hitch choices are going to be changing. Most of the
manufacturers have jumped on board and made changes to allow the
hitches to be used on the Hybrids..

I am doing some work with Ford trying to establish which hitch they
want to recommend.. I guess they are not using their own because
when it gets hit in the backend it pushes the battery into the front
seat with the driver.. I think they are looking to recommend
a "break away model" to cover their butts??

Jim"

 

No problem. I think I'm going to try to take the failed 74204 unit back to the local store I purchased from and see if they will exchange it for a new one on their merchandise return policy. This clearly had to be an infant failure...no way I wired it wrong or it never would have worked at all!

 

FYI the local dealer replaced the unit, no questions asked.

The replacement is so far working fine (of course the first one did too). More news if it develops.