T-One Wiring Harness

Video Transcript for Trailer Wiring Harness Installation - 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee

Today we are going to be installing wiring harness part number 118349 on a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee. OK, we are inside the rear of the vehicle now, and we are going to go ahead and locate the ports for the wiring harness. The ports can actually be located on the interior side, directly behind the tail light assemblies. Here on the drivers side is actually a door that we can remove and be able to locate the ports inside of there. On the passengers side, we actually are going to have to remove the interior panel and gain access that way. So, the first thing I am going to do is go ahead and remove the spare tire off the holder, so I can get a little more room to do some work here.

OK, with the spare tire removed, we can go ahead and remove the door, and the point that we are looking for is located right here. This is going to be the drivers side plug-in. So what we can do is go ahead and depress the push button here. And with the two ends disconnected, we can go ahead and plug our harness in line. The drivers side plug-in is the plug with the yellow wire in it. As you can see, there is a ground terminal here as well, so we want to find a suitable grounding point inside this chamber to secure the ground to. I am going to go ahead and secure the ground to this metal right here at the back side of the chamber. I am going to use the self-tapping screw that was provided in the installation kit. And again, I am going to go ahead and remove the double-sided tape from the back of the module light, and adhere that to the inside of the compartment here. I am going to go ahead and pull back the paneling here and remove this sphere threshold piece, pull back my paneling on the passengers side and make my connection there. And there are a few more screws here that we need to remove as well. And with the panel pulled back, you can see the connector here on the passengers side. We just want to disconnect that and plug our harness in line. All right, and with our connection made, we just want to go ahead and put everything back together. And I am actually going to pull up the carpeting just a little bit and route it underneath there. That will keep it nice and secure for us. If you have any excess wire, you can go ahead and zip-tie that to the existing wiring harness here, using the zip-ties that are provided in the installation kit.

This time we are going to go ahead and make our connection to our positive power lead with the bundle of wire that is provided in the installation kit. I am just going to strip back a little bit of the jacketing of the wire, it into the butt connector, and crimp that down. To route the wire to the battery, I am going to access the grommet that leads to the back side of the tail light assembly on the outside of the vehicle. I am going to pull that out and feed our wire through there, and that will allow us to get it below the vehicle and up toward the battery. OK, and with the tail light assembly pulled back, we just need to remove the rubber grommet. With the grommet pulled out, I am just going to go ahead and put a little slit into it. That will allow us to feed our wire through there. OK, and then back inside the vehicle we can just go ahead and feed our wire through the opening behind the tail light assembly - just enough to where you leave the connection point inside the compartment here. It might be a good idea to put some electrical tape around that connection as well. And again, you can secure all the loose wires together with some of the zip-ties that are provided in the installation kit there. At that point, we are pretty much done with the inside of the vehicle. We can go back out to the tail light assembly now and show you how to route the wire up to the battery.

With the wire pulled through, there is an opening between the bumper and the body of the vehicle. We can go ahead and just feed our wire down through there, and then we can re our grommet. And again, we just want to feed the wire through the little slit that we put in the rubber grommet, like so, and pull the extra lead all the way down. And then we can put our tail light back on. Now we are going to go underneath the vehicle and route our wire to the front. And you definitely want to make sure you secure any loose points of the wire to the vehicle with the cable ties that are provided. It is always a good idea to try to route along existing wiring that is on the vehicle. And then once you get to the end of the framework, you want to go ahead and feed the wire up through the engine compartment. We are up inside the engine compartment now with our lead pulled all the way up. We need to get over here to the passengers side, where the battery is located, to make our connection. So what I am going to do is, I am going to go ahead and use some of the cable ties and cable-tie the wire against the back firewall, and cable-tie it to the lines that are running back there, and route it directly to the battery. And now that we have got the wire fully routed over here to the battery, you want to go ahead and cut off any excess wire that you may have. What we are going to do is take the fuse holder that was provided in the installation kit, and we are going to go ahead and and cut that in half add the ring terminal that was also provided in the installation kit to one end of the fuse holder. And then go ahead and remove the nut from the positive side of the battery here. We just want to add the ring terminal to the battery and we are going to go ahead and make our connection from the black wire to the fuse holder. We are going to use the butt connector, again, that is provided in the installation kit, tape up our connection, and go ahead and the 10-amp fuse that is provided in the installation kit. And then secure any extra, loose wires that you may have, and your installation will be complete. And this will conclude the installation of wiring harness part number 118349 on a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee.