Trailer Brake Controller Installation - 2010 Toyota Highlander

Installation of a Trailer Brake Controller on a 2010 Toyota Highlander

Today on this 2010 Toyota Highlander we are going to be installing Prodigy brake controller, part number 90185. We are going to start our install inside the cab of the vehicle. We are going to first mount the Prodigy brake controller into place and then we will start the wiring process after that. The first thing that I want to note is that the Prodigy comes with two different mounting brackets here. The more traditional smaller bracket does take screws that are holding it in so it is more of a permanent fixture. And the less permanent pocket option is a little bit bulkier but it allows you to move the Prodigy easily, either if you want to store it or want to use it between different vehicles. Instead of having mounting screws, it uses these clips on the sides to hold it in place. So to move it from one vehicle to another, all you need to do is unplug the harness out of the back of the Prodigy. For this installation, we are going to use the more traditional bracket to save a little bit of room because this is a tight vehicle. There is not a whole lot of working room. 0:51

What we want to do is mount the Prodigy in an area where it can be easily accessed by the driver but we also want to keep it out of the way so it does not interfere with driving. We would normally mount it on the right side of the steering column, but since we do not seem to have enough space there and since it is sloped quite a bit, I am actually going to mount it over here on the left hand side just below the accessory holding box here. What we have to do is make sure that we mount it in a straight line with the braking of the vehicle. In fact, it cannot be tilted side to side. Now that we have found a spot to mount it in, we can go ahead and mount it into place. We are just going to be using a couple of self-tapping screws to mount it into position. There is hardware provided with the Prodigy to do this. Mount the Prodigy to the bracket using the provided screws. Next we are going to take the wiring harness that is provided with the Prodigy brake controller and this is what we are going to need to wire into the vehicle to make the Prodigy work. We have our four wires: a white wire and a black wire, which are the positive and negative feeds for the brake controller. These are going to both go directly to the battery of the vehicle. The blue wire is the outgoing power source that is going back to the plug at the rear of the vehicle. And that is what is actually going to attach to the trailer. And we have the red wire here and this is going to be our activating switch. We are going to need to hook this in to the cold side of our brake switch on the vehicle. And, essentially, we are going to hook it in to the wire that gets active when we press our brake pedal. 2:36

We will take a long piece of 12 gage blue wire here and that, again, is going to extend from the brake controller all of the way back to our plug at the rear. And then what I have here is some double bonded wire. So we are going to hook those to the black and white wires on our brake control plug and take them through the firewall to the battery. So right now I am going to go ahead and make my connections to my harness here. And we will just take that, again, and connect it to the blue wire on our Prodigy harness. I am going to take and strip back some of the jacketing here on the double bonded wire. And, again, strip back some jacketing and connect to the Prodigy harness. With those connections made, we just want to go ahead and tape them up. Next we are going to take the red wire here. We are going to connect it to the wire on the brake switch. And, since it is a tight fit under here, it is kind of hard to see but if you follow the brake pedal up you will locate the brake switch. And, if you follow the wires down a little bit, you should be able to access them. And the wire that we are looking for, from the brake switch, is a darker blue wire with some grey stripes on it. To connect the wires together, we are going to be using a quick splice here. 4:08

Next we need to go ahead and get our wires from inside of the cab out underneath the hood. Typically to do this, we would try to find an existing grommet or a knockout plug somewhere in the firewall that we could either cut or push out and run our wire through. After thoroughly looking through underneath the vehicle, I did not access such a grommet. So, what I have done is gone ahead and drilled a 1/2 inch hole, through the firewall, where we are going to route our wires through. With the wires routed through, we are not yet going to plug in the port into the back of the Prodigy brake controller just yet. We want to leave that for the final step once we get all of the wires hooked up. We are going to go ahead now and activate the positive ground for the brake controller. What we need in line to the black wire is a 30 amp circuit breaker for this particular brake controller. On the back edge, we are going to go ahead and mount it right in this area. Do that with a couple of self-tapping screws. Next I am going to go ahead and strip back the jacketing on my double bonded wire here to expose the black and white wires inside. With the wires exposed, we are going to take the black wire. And the circuit breaker actually has labeled ends to it. One end will go directly to the battery. The other end goes to the auxiliary, which in this case will be the brake controller. We want to hook to that side. I am going to do that via a ring terminal. And then I am just going to take an extra piece of black wire here, mount it to the terminal here and the take that directly to the battery. And next we are going to add a couple of larger ring terminals to the ends of the black and white wires that are going to go directly to the battery. 5:51

Next we will go ahead and remove the terminal nuts from the battery itself. I am going to start over here on the negative side. Make sure you tighten up the nuts on the circuit breaker as well. With those leads hooked up, we next want to take the blue wire. And we are actually going to take it below the vehicle, route it all of the way back to our plug where we will make our connection to our 7-pole. Alright now that we have our wire routed all of the way back to the plug, this particular vehicle actually has an existing 7-pole that has already been mounted previously. So what we are looking for here on the back of it is the blue wire. That is the one we are going to be wiring directly in to our blue wire from the brake controller. And, just like all of the other connections, we want to make sure we tape those up. If you have any loose wires, you want to tie those up as well. Once you have accomplished this, we will go back up inside the vehicle to the brake controller and go ahead and plug it in and test it out. OK, now we are back inside the cab and our final step here is to go ahead and plug the port in to the back of the Prodigy. And when we do so, you will see we have a flashing NC which indicates no connection, telling us that we do not have a trailer yet connected to our vehicle. You can see now, once we go ahead and plug our trailer in to the vehicle, we now have a C indicated on our brake controller. Again, that is indicating that we have a connection made to our trailer. And with that that will conclude the installation of Prodigy brake controller, part number 90185, on a 2010 Toyota Highlander.