Replacement Brake Control Plug-In Harness for Tekonsha and Draw-Tite Brake Controller 12" Long

Video Transcript for Trailer Brake Controller Installation - 2005 Ford Freestar

Today on this 2005 Ford Freestar we are going to install part number 39510, the Voyager brake controller. We are also going to use the ETBC7 kit to install this. And we are going to need an extra bracket and that is going to be part number 18140. The first thing we need to do is go ahead and install the bracket for the 7-pole. And what is going to happen is we are going to install it on the bottom of the hitch, just like this. And then we will go ahead and clamp it in position. We are going to use the clamp that holds everything in place. Then we will take the bracket that comes with the ETBC7 kit and we will just go ahead and bolt it on. What we are going to do is actually just wind this up in electric tape and leave our leads out that we need. We will leave our 4-pole sticking out and we are going to need our brake wire which is going to be blue and our black wire for 12 volt power supply. And then we will just wrap up our purple and white wire. Our white wire is going to go directly to the frame for ground. And then the purple wire is going to be for reverse lights, if it is ever needed. And to our black and blue wire we are going to install a gray cable which has the black and white wires inside of it. What we are going to do is just peel away the gray sheath and stripe our wires back and make our connections. And we are going to go black to black and white to blue. Cover those up with some electric tape. Next we will go ahead and install the loom along the wires like this. 1:36

Alright, now we are going to take our 7-pole and the cable and we will go ahead and install it to the bracket. Next we will go ahead and plug the two 4-poles together. And we will apply some dielectric grease to them and then we will go ahead and zip-tie them shut. Next we will go ahead and take our gray cable and go ahead and run it up to the front of the vehicle. There are a variety of ways you can do this. Just make sure you stay away from anything that is moving or anything that gets hot. Before we get our wires routed to the front, take a few minutes and go ahead and zip-tie them. Keep them out of the way. And once you have that task done, go ahead and take the white wire with the ring terminal. Go ahead and run that to the body and ground it. Once you have the wire pulled up, go ahead and route it the way you want it. You have to route it to the spot where you can add your circuit breakers and then on to the positive filled post on the battery. You might have to loop it around a little bit and see what you need and then cut off the excess right there. Now let us go ahead and find a spot for our circuit breakers. It looks like right here is about our best spot. You want to stay as close to the battery as possible. We will be using two of the three circuit breakers. We will be installing the 40 amp circuit breaker first. And that will go for the 12 volt power supply out back to the 7-pole. And now the other circuit breaker will either be a 20 amp or a 30 amp. That depends on the type of brake controller you are using and what it requires. In this case, we will be using the 20 amp and the 40 amp circuit breakers. 3:20

Now the next thing we need to do is pull back the sheaths of the two wires that are inside here. We are going to pull it back as far as possible because the black wire is going to go to the circuit breaker and the white wire is going to go back inside the vehicle, eventually to the break controller. Once you have the wires separated, go ahead and run them back the way you want them. And then we will go ahead and connect up to our circuit breakers. Now we are going to run our output to the 7-pole to the silver post on the circuit breaker. And then the copper side post will go to the battery. So all we are going to do is just cut the wire and add two ring terminals and then extend up to the battery. Alright, we will take our other half. Just measure up to where it will connect to the battery and put a ring terminal on there as well. Now the other end going to the battery, we will actually leave loose and make that one of our last connections. The next thing we will deal with is the white wire that will be ran inside the vehicle. Now what we are going to do is find a place to run it in. And there is a grommet right here that it looks like we can use. We will go ahead and just use a pocket knife or a screw driver and just make a slit into our grommet. Now what we are going to do next is use a typical piece of wire and we are going to push it up through here and use that to pull the brake wire back through the fire wall. 4:51

We are just going to take our pull wire and just wrap it around our wire. Ok, let us go ahead and pull it back on through. Ok, let us go ahead and get our brake controller ready to install. You might want to find a place where you can install it. Now you can install it up here or on the bottom. It is really a personal preference. It might be a good idea to start off on the bottom and if it works out great. If not, you can always move it up later. Alright for our brake controller itself we will have to pre-drill out the holes. Now since our brake controller comes with a universal port, we are going to need an adapter for it that is going to get hardwired in. And that is going to be part number 20127. And then we can go ahead and start hardwiring the first wire. The blue wire is going to be the output from our brake controller and that is going to go to the white wire that we ran inside. Right now we will go ahead and connect our blue output wire to the white wire we ran inside which goes back to blue on the 7-pole connector. We are going to take our light tester and then we will go ahead and test the cold side of the brake switch. If you look at the brake pedal, follow it up until you see the switch which is located right here. We have two wires and we will go ahead and test which one does what. Now you want the wire that only turns on when you hit the foot brake. So it looks like on this vehicle red with the green stripe. From our brake controller, the red wire is going to be the cold side of the brake switch. Alright, now we have two more wires to go. The black wire is going to go to the 12 volt power supply direct from the battery. This white wire is going to go to ground. Remember the excess wire we cut off earlier? We are going to use that to cover the distance between the two. 6:42

We do not have much wire left over. We will have to be careful with what we have. We will go ahead and stripe it, the sheath, off. And just use our butt connectors for these two connections. Ok, we have all of our connections made. Let us go ahead and take a few seconds and wrap the wires up just enough to keep them organized. Push our wire back in. We will go ahead and run our wire out to the battery and the circuit breakers. And again, we will go ahead and pull back the sheath to split the wires up. We will route our white wire over to the negative side of the battery. And the black wire, we will run that straight to the circuit breaker and install our ring terminal. We have our ring terminals installed. Let us go ahead and install it to the circuit breakers. Again the output will go to the silver post and the input from the battery will go to the copper post. We will go ahead and work on our white wire. Cut it to length and install a ring terminal for it too. Now we can go ahead and start making our connections to the battery. We will start off with the negative where everything will be safe to work on. We will go ahead and apply the ground wire to it loosely. And now the positive side. And we will have two connections going to the battery, one for the 12 volt power supply going out back and one with the 12 volt power supply going to the brake controller. All that remains is to go ahead and try out the brake controller on your trailer. That will finish it for our install of the following parts: 39510 from Tekonsha the Voyager brake controller, the ETBC7 kit, the Tow Ready bracket 18140 and the universal adapter cable part number 20127.