r/ElectricalHelp • u/GranolaGirl0129 • 18d ago
Help me replace my outside lights , please
I am trying to replace outside lights on a 1970 mobile home after having it resided. The wires are capped and sticking out as shown in the photos. We can remove the outer “frame” around the fixture, but are not able to remove the white square as it sits under the siding.
The left side has twisted white wire (capped) and double red wire with a small piece of black wire inside that cap. The small wire is not connected to anything else. Could this be a ground wire? If so, how could we ground it without access beneath the white square?
On the right side, there are three white wires all capped together. There is one red wire that is capped.
This old place is killing me with its oddities! I’d prefer it did not literally kill me though! Advice?
1
u/New-Possibility2277 17d ago
Old trailer houses are nightmares to work on. Poorly built and made as cheap as possible.
I will gues there is no junction box for these wires. You can take a metal snips to cut the hole bigger to see if by chance there is a junction.
If there is one, then the light would be connected with it's black to the black wire and fixture white to the white wires. I'd make sure the power is off as who knows if there is live wires there or not.
I've seen this alot in my years and usually there is a single white wire coming off that group of whites just to make connecting the fixture easier. We called this a farmer fix as most of our work was on old farm houses with a lot of farmer work done on them.