T-One Vehicle Wiring Harness with 4 Pole Trailer Connector

Video Transcript for Trailer Wiring Harness Installation - 2003 Ford Escape

Today we are going to install part number 118343 from Tow Ready, and we are going to install this T-1 connector on a 2003 Ford Escape. First we will show you where the tail light connections are going to be. The connections are actually going to be physically on the back side of the tail light itself, and you are going to have to make connections on both sides of the vehicle. And what happens is that the wire harness is going to below a tail light, underneath the bumper, and out to the center of the hitch. So let us go ahead and get started.

We will open the back hatch and we will take off these two screws here. Then we can take off the tail light. Just be careful that you do not break those tabs, because they do break kind of easily. The T-1 is going to connect to two points on the passengers side. It is going to use this connection here for the running lights and the brake signal. And then there is this gray connector here that is going to pick up the right-turn signal. And to make it a little easier to work with, go ahead and take off these connections and just disconnect the light completely. Just be careful on these tabs because they break kind of easy. Pull them up just a little bit and then work them back. Now, what is going to happen next is we are going to take our T-wire harness and run everything straight down and out the bottom: the 4-pole, the little converter box, and the yellow wire that we run over to the drivers side. We will just all that down inside. In a few minutes, we will go ahead and pull it out the bottom.

Now we will make our wire connections to our wire harness on the vehicle. The first one off is we will make our connection with the green wire. That is going to be our turn signal circuit for the right turn. So we will go ahead and plug that into the appropriate socket. We will just snap it into place, and then this will go back into the tail light. And the next one we are going to hook up is going to be the one with the red and the brown. And the red is going to be our stoplight wire, and the brown is going to be for the running light wire. We will put that back onto the matching connector on the harness. So, when all is said and done, you should have three empty ins - one, two, three - two off the T-connector, and the factory one for the reverse light, and our leftover ground wire, which we are going to attach directly to the sheet metal behind the tail light. All right, we can go ahead and make our connections now, back to the tail light. All right, remember that the green wire is going to go to our turn light signals, so that is going to be that connection there. Then our last one: the red and brown will go to this connection here, which is the running light and the brake signal. And then we can go ahead and reinstall the tail light.

We have got our wire harness hanging out below the bumper here. Let us go ahead and pull it around - or pull it out - and we will just run it across, behind the bumper fascia to our hitch. Just run it across for now. We will take up all the slack later. Then we will take our yellow wire, which is going to the left-turn signal, and we are going to run that all the way across, too, to the other side. Back to our converter box, where you can barely see, there is a flat piece of sheet metal right here where we can actually attach it to. So we will clean that off a little bit and then adhere the converter box to it. All right, next we are going to use a simple piece of wire, or string - whatever you want - and we are just going to run the wire down, out the bottom, and hook up and just wrap it around one of the leads and then we are just going to pull it back up through. And then again, we will make our connection for the left-turn signal, which is the gray connector right here.

And at this point, we have got plenty of extra wire here, so we can take up our slack and just zip-tie it to the harness. All right, we will hook them up again - the reverse light circuit, turn signal circuit, and the running and brake light circuit. And let us go ahead and reinstall the tail light. All right, now we can go back down to the bottom and take up our slack there. And this can be adjusted to whatever suits your trailer needs. You may need just a little bit, like we have here, or you may need a lot more. You might want to double-check that and just take your extras and just put it to the back side of the fascia support here. Then we will just take some extra zip-ties and just attach wherever we need it to keep the wires out of harms way. What you want to do next is go ahead and test the harness with a light tester, independent of the trailer, just to make sure your vehicle is working OK. And you can try out your trailer. All right, and there you have it for part number 118343 from Tow Ready.