Brake Controller Wiring - What are the Wire Colors?

Custom Fit Brake Controllers

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How to Wire a Brake Controller to the Wire Harness

Today we are going to cover a frequently asked question. It really turns up a lot. And actually it is easier than you think. Basically, if you have a pickup and you got a tow package with it and you got one of these wire harnesses that plug underneath the dash and plugs into your brake controller, you might have five or sometimes even more wires coming off of it. And you notice that your brake controller only uses four. We have got one over here, we will show you, that has just the four wires and what do you do with the extra wires? The short answer is do not worry about it, because the brake controller has all that it needs from these four wires.

To give you an idea of what is going on, most of the time these harnesses are labeled as to what color does what. So this one will say TO TRAILER ELECTRIC BRAKE. That means that this is going out to the trailer itself. So if you look on the your brake controller, it is going to be the blue wire here, so those match up together just like that. The next one is labeled GROUND, so you go to the wire harness on your brake controller and find the one that is labeled GROUND in this case it is going to be white, also. And then the next wire, here, we do not have a label because the label fell off, but this is the 12 volt power supply wire here. A lot of times the brake controllers come with a little handy card that tells you what does what on the OEM harnesses, also. The thicker wire is usually going to be your power supply. So that would go to black, the 12 volt power supply wire on the brake controller.

Then you have the two wires left, the green and the brown. The green is labeled STOP LAMP, so that will go to the stop lamp circuit on your brake controller, which in our case will be red. And then you have the extra wire here, which is labeled ILLUMINATION FEED. Basically, this comes on when you turn on your running lights. So if you have something you need to power on the inside of your vehicle, for running lights you could possibly use this. But for towing purposes, I do not really know really what you could use this for no brake controller ever uses this. So basically all you do is just fold it back out of the way, tape it up so it doesnt short out against anything, and do not worry about it.