Mounting Bracket for 7-Way

Video Transcript for Trailer Brake Controller Installation - 2000 Chevy Silverado Part 1

On this 2000 C/K Series Pickup we are going to install brake controller part number 39523 from Tekonsha. This is their Powertrac brake controller. This factory tow package also applies to Chevrolet and GMC trucks as far back as I believe the early 90s. I do not know down to 88 or not. It was new bought when this body style came out. We are going to begin our install work from the rear of the vehicle and work our way forward. The tow package on this body style is all stored right here behind the bumper and this channel underneath the bed of the pickup truck. All you have got to do is cut this down and pull it out. There is a harness that you pull out and it is designed to be spliced onto. For the towing package from a brake controller and a hot lead it is actually ran inside the frame and it does not come that far back. That is located on the frame on the driver side. 00:48

Normally this harness is pushed up against the frame here and you really can not see it. You will never know where to look. You will never find it. It is a lot easier to take down the spare tire but since this has already been pulled out for a previous install we will just leave it alone and you can see that the wires we need to use have already been exposed. Just move the hot lead going to the battery and this is the break lead and they both go up to the front of the vehicle. When we get to the front of the vehicle we will show you where they are terminated at. 01:15

For now we will start with the rear of the vehicle and make our hook ups here. This is what you will get when you pull all of the wire harnesses out. You get the blue and the orange wire for the brake controller and the hot lead. Variably they are just a hair too short to work with because eventually you will have to replace the connector and you will be too short of wire so you might as well add a length of about a foot to it and that way you will have enough room for future access. All wires need splicing tubing in this harness here for the turn signals and the running lights and the brake lights and they do provide a nice ground wire too. So we will get this ready to install. We will just cut this little plastic away and strip the wires and we will be installing a 7-pole connector. Once you get the plastic off and the tape you are going to have a little assembly like this. Basically all the wires are just kind of terminated into one area just to keep it from corroding. But we will need to use four of the five running lights, the ground wire, the right turn, and the left turn, and the light green is actually your reverse light wire. That is optional. You can use it or not. It depends on if your trailer has it. We will go ahead and install it and show you where it goes in the 7-pole anyway. 02:20

Just to go over color codes really fast. Yellow is going to be left turn, green is going to be the right turn, this will be your ground wire, brown is going to be your running light circuit and the light green will be your reverse light lead. Now that you have your wires here we will just add some extensions to them really fast. Since we do not have any orange wire we used the black wire. The black is a common color for a 12 volt power supply too so that is why we used that. I am just going to re-thread these wires through the frame. We will leave these alone for now and then we will go ahead and install our 7-pole bracket and 7-pole. For our bracket we are just going to mount it directly to the bottom of the bumper. These year vehicles have a nice flat edge to install a bracket to. We are just going to put it right there and drill straight to it. Next what we are going to do is disassemble our 7-pole, run our wires inside, and make the connections. By the way we are using part number 18138. I got these two screws hopefully the insides will come out and what we will do is thread our wire through the back side out the front and then make our connections. Sometimes it helps to put on a little lubricant to get the seal on there. You do not need to shove it all the way up that far but we just need working room for now. On the wire ends we will put some little ring terminals on there to make it a little bit easier to attach to the screws inside. 04:26

The light green wire we are not going to use a ring terminal on because that actually goes in the center here so we do not need one. Okay to start our reverse lead and that goes into the center of the 7-pole. That is just for the reverse lights. I will show you the different wiring codes. What goes to what because on 7-poles it is not color for color hardly at all. We will start with the easy ones, the ones that do match up. We are going to run blue to blue. Blue will be your brake lead and that goes to blue on the brakes on your 7-pole. Next we will go to black and then convert it from orange to black that is your hot lead and so black on the 7-pole will always be for the hot lead. That is our constant 12 volts. We will do our ground wire and white on the 7-pole is ground also. We will do that one next. Now we will go to the ones that kind of change colors and functions. To me the easiest way to remember is to do the exact opposite of the color you are working with. Brown is running lights on the circuit for running lights on the trailer and on the truck however it is going to be green for the 7-pole function. Basically it is going to be green to brown and brown to green and yellow to red. Green lug will go to brown wire. Then we will go to our brown lug and that will be right turn for the 7-pole but it will be green on our truck and also it will be green typically on the utility trailer. Lastly we will do our left turn which will go to the red lug on our 7-pole. Just pull all of the wires back through. Then reinstall the screws to hold it in place. Double check to make sure the screws are in place. Then run some electric tape around it to seal up the rest. Now that we have got everything sealed up we will go ahead and just install it in our bracket. Just use the four screws to hold it in place. We will run our excess wire back up behind here and zip tie it and keep it secured.