Trailer Brake Controller Installation - 2007 Chrysler 300

Installation of a Brake Controller for a Trailer on a 2007 Chrysler 300

Today we are going to be installing Prodigy part number 90185 on a 2007 Chrysler 300. We are also going to be using the brake control wiring kit, part number ETBC7. What we are going to do is go ahead and locate a good position to mount the brake controller. We are inside the cab here, directly below the steering wheel. A good mounting location for the brake controller is typically right to the right of the steering wheel so it is within hands reach of making your adjustments. But before we go ahead and mount it I want to go ahead and locate the brake wire underneath the steering column, right above the brake pedal. This is a wire that we are going to need to tap into which is going to activate the brake controller for us. It is actually located on the brake switch and we are going to look for the wire that actually gets hot when we depress the brake pedal. There is a carpeting piece underneath here that is covering up all the wiring that is above the brake pedal. So the first thing I am going to do is to go ahead and remove that. There are two push pins: one here, and one here, that I need to remove. OK, now that we have got the carpeted piece up and out of the way, we have gone ahead and located the brake switch, which is that white box right there at the top of the brake pedal. If you follow behind that, you will locate the wiring harness that is feeding the brake switch. I went ahead and tested them and I found that the green wire with the white stripe is the wire that we are looking for that is the cold side of the brake switch - the wire that we are looking to tap into with the red wire on the brake controller. So we are going to go ahead and do that now, and then I think we will go ahead and mount the brake controller.

I am going to start by mounting the mounting bracket itself. This is a pretty flat surface here, all the way up to this area, where it starts to curve a little bit. We need the brake controller to mount on a flat plane in the direct line with the braking of vehicle, which basically means we do not want the brake controller turned this way or this way. I am just going to take a 1/16 drill bit here and drill a pilot hole. And you always want to check behind the are where you are going to be drilling to make sure there are no wires or any moving parts that you are going to hit with the drill bit. And I am just going to take that and screw it into the pilot hole that I drilled. And then I am going to go ahead and drill my second pilot hole. You want to make sure you leave yourself enough room to be able to get the Phillips-headed screw that is going to go into the side of the brake controller into position here, as well as a screwdriver to tighten it up. And then we can go ahead and attach our Prodigy. And we are going to need to route three wires from the brake controller: the hot wire, which is black the white wire, which is ground and the brake lead, which is the blue wire. Those three are going to need to be routed to the rear of the vehicle to hook to both the battery and to the 7-pole. I am going to go ahead and take the double-bonded wire from the ETBC7 and connect the black and white wires in them to the black and white wires on the brake controller. Those two wires are going to run all the way back and connect directly to the battery. I am also going to take and extend the blue wire from the brake controller and run it all the way back to the plug at the rear.

OK, to make our connections, I am just going to use the yellow butt connectors that are provided, again, in the ETBC7 brake control kit. You can see, after I made my connections I went ahead and just taped them up. We are just going to feed the wire back, and I am going to go ahead and pull up the kick plate here. What you can do is - there are just compression-type clips in here - so if you just pull up and kind of rock it back and forth you can get them to release. We want to do that both for the kick plate here on the drivers side and the back seat floorboard as well. And the middle threshold piece is going to be a little harder to do you might actually have to fish it underneath there. And the rear one, I think I am going to pull it back just enough where, again, I can get the wire through. We are actually going to feed it through into the trunk area. OK, I have got the wires fed through here and I have got it actually already through the middle channel as well I just pulled it up and under. I just want to make sure we avoid any possible pinch points, namely the three connection areas for the kick plate. I taped the two sets of wires together, and I think if we actually tuck it behind this channel here it is going to work just fine. All right, now that I have kind of determined it, I want to make sure I put the screw in first before I put my kick plate back on. You see I have got the wires fed through. We are going to do the same thing here as we did in the front seat, as far as just pulling it up tight underneath the channel. We are going to fold down the back seat, and I am just going to pull back the carpeting. It is just Velcrod on here. For me to get the wire routed through, I am just going to take an electrical snake here and kind of feed that through and use that to pull the wire through for me. And with that pulled through, I am just going to tape the two together. And then we can go ahead and continue feeding that through underneath the side carpeting. All right, and with the wire fed through we can go ahead and reconnect the back seat kick plate. OK, now we can work our way into the trunk.

OK, we are inside the trunk area now, and you can see we have got our wire here that we pulled through. We want to go ahead and definitely hide this wire, again, behind the carpeting. And again here, our blue wire is going to go ahead and continue its run through the grommet, so I am going to set that off to the side for the time being. Again, we need the double-bonded wire to get over here to the battery. And actually on the positive side of that line the black wire is going to need a circuit breaker as well. For the Prodigy, it is going to require the 30-amp circuit breaker that, again, is provided in the ETBC7. So we are going to need to mount that somewhere. And it looks like we have got a pretty flat surface here on the back side of the spare tire well that is going to work as a good location for the circuit breaker to mount. Also, with the ETBC7, if you are going to be hooking up the hot lead from the 7-way at the rear, it also will need to come up to the battery as well. And we would need to hook a circuit breaker to it as well - which, it requires a 40-amp breaker. So, if you are going to be doing that - which, in this instance, we will be - you are going to need a second breaker. And I am probably just going to mount it right below it: one here and one here. OK, I am getting ready to mount the circuit breaker, and I want you to note that each post does have a designated position. The silver post is the auxiliary feed, which basically would be the hot lead coming from the brake controller and the copper color is the post that actually goes directly to the battery. We are going to take our double-bonded wire straight down and strip the jacketing back, because again, it is only the black wire that needs to be mounted onto the circuit breaker. And we are just going to make our connections here to the circuit breaker. And again, this is the side that was going up to the brake controller, so it is on the silver post. The terminal is going directly to the battery to connect right there. And I just want to do the same thing here as I did for the connections to the circuit breaker - which, I stripped back a little bit of the wiring. We are going to add the larger ring terminals that are provided in the installation kit, and just crimp those onto each individual wire. Since we are going to need to go ahead and make our connection to the positive side, we might as well go ahead and make our run from the hot lead from the plug over here to the battery itself, so we can do it all at one time. What I am going to do is take a little bit of the excess wire that we had from earlier and I am going to strip back the jacketing on it and just pull out the black wire. I am going to go ahead and connect it to the battery side of the circuit breaker - the 40-amp one that we mounted below - and go ahead and run it over to the battery and connect it at the same time with the wires on the brake controller. And then, again, we need to go ahead - and I am going to take the rest of my double-bonded wire and I am going to go ahead and just pull out the black wire again on that, connect it to the silver side, and merge it with the blue wire in the 4-pole. And all those wires are going to need to go through this grommet, down to where we are going to mount our 7-pole plug. We are going to ahead and slice an opening in it so we can route our wires. We are going to be very careful not to cut through the existing wires that are going through there, like so.

OK, we are going to go ahead - as you can see, we are underneath the vehicle. We have got our three sets of wires here. I am going to actually route it behind the bumper over to just right of center here, where we actually are going to attach our mounting bracket. I am going to use this existing stud that is coming down off the trunk as one of the attaching points. And then we will just drill a hole and use our hardware from the installation kit to provide the other attaching point. Or, if you want, you can just go ahead and set it off to the side and drill both holes. And with my holes drilled, I am just going to come back into the trunk and my hardware down and through. All right, now we can go back down and attach it. All right, next I am going to go ahead and put the 7-pole on. OK, next we can go ahead and connect our 4-pole to the 4-pole on the back side of the adapter. I am going to go ahead and wrap that a few times with some electrical tape just to make sure that the connection is secure, because it will be outside. And then we are going to go ahead and connect our brake control lead to the blue wire here on the back of the adapter, and then we will take the black wire and connect it to our hot lead. As you can see, I added the loom that is provided in the installation kit as well. And then we want to go ahead and take the ground wire and secure it to the frame of the vehicle. I am actually going to take it and mount it directly to the frame right above the exhaust. And the only wire left here is this purple wire. This wire is designated for the reverse-light lead on a trailer. If your particular trailer does not have a reverse function, then you do not need to hook this wire up. I am just going to go ahead and feed the excess wire into our loom here. OK, with the 7-pole attached and all the wires secured, we can go back into the trunk area and make our connections to the battery, and our installation will pretty well be completed. And back inside the trunk, let us go ahead and remove the stud from the positive terminal here. And we will go ahead and connect both the black wires. And then we will come over to the negative terminal, and we are going to use the auxiliary post here and go ahead and connect the white wire. And go ahead and make sure you put all your components back together and your spare tire back in the spare tire well. And lastly, we just need to go back up to the Prodigy and plug it in. And you can see, we have instantly got an NC flashing here that stands for No Connection. And what that means is that your brake controller is not sensing that you are hooked to a trailer - which we currently are not. That is going to flash for a few seconds here, and you are just going to go to a standard two dots. You see, once we actually plug into a trailer, the brake controller instantly turns on with a C, telling you that you are now connected. And then now when you hit your brakes you will be getting your digital readout. And then that will conclude the installation of Prodigy part number 90185, along with the wiring installation kit ETBC7, on a 2007 Chrysler 300.