You are right - the trailer has been modified, and Lord knows how or why.
On the back end of your tow vehicle, near the hitch, there should be a 7-way electrical connector - a socket. An example is shown in the first picture below. If you open up the little door (second picture) you see the 7 contacts. (Ignore the camera flare at the 7-o'clock position.) This is where you insert the matching plug on the trailer's cable. These connectors carry power to 7 different destinations in the trailer, and the TM needs all 7 of them. The picture mentioned in post #3 above shows the names of the 7 destinations.
So the first question is, does your tow vehicle have this 7-way connector? Post a photo of your hitch area if you need to. By the way, this connector is often called a Bargman connector, because Bargman is the most common manufacturer. But there are other manufacturers of the same thing. Second question - the TM originally had a big fat flexible black cable, which contained the 7 wires that are needed. I can see in the photo that there are now two cables, but are these simply grafted onto the black cable? Is the black cable still there?
Most travel trailers, including the TM, use this same 7-pin connector. But there are other kinds of trailers, and they may not need all 7 power lines, so they have smaller connectors. In the Amazon picture, I think that the front half of the big black plastic assembly (the half toward the camera) is a plug-in adapter, which makes contact with the 7 connections in the Bargman, and brings some (but not all) of them out in one of the other forms. This adapter plugs into the existing Bargman connector, which is in the back half of the photo.
One purpose of the adapter is to bring 4 of the 7 Bargman wires out to a 4-pin socket. A 4-pin socket is used for things like boat trailers and lightweight utility trailers, where all you need is lights. Brake lights, turn signals, parking lights, and body-mounted running lights. Nothing else.
The adapter also makes connection with 6 of the 7 Bargman wires, and brings them out to a 6-pin socket. This is a less common connector, and I think it is sometimes used for lightweight travel trailers. It usually brings out the same 4 connections for basic lights, and also for electric brakes and a battery charge line. Neither the 4-pin nor the 6-pin connector brings out the wire for the TM's backup lights. Has the kluge been rewired to include this 7th function? And if so, was one of the others removed? There is no way to know. But given that the rewiring was clearly done by an amateur, it is possible that the line that powers the brakes is missing, and that could be a disaster.
So what can you do? You could buy the Hopkins adapter from Amazon, plug it into your tow vehicle, and hope for the best. That makes me uncomfortable. Your best bet is to take the trailer to an RV technician and have him re-install a proper 7-pin plug on the trailer, to match the 7-pin socket that (I hope) is already on your tow vehicle.
Bill
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