Base Plate Wiring Harness Installation - 2011 Ford Escape

Installation of a Base Plate Wiring Harness on a 2011 Ford Escape

Today on our 2011 Ford Escape, we're going to install the Tail Light Diode Kit, part number 38955. First of my install, we had a small bracket here to the base plate so that we can catch our four-pole connector. Next, we need to go ahead and run our wiring. When running your wiring, you want to make sure you stay with the moving components such as the suspension or steering, or excessively, such as exhaust. We'll just use a black zip tight to secure our wire for our front bracket. Now, we're going to go to our white wire with the ring terminal.

This will be our ground wire and make attachment directly to the frame. We're going to route our white wire over here to attach with the manufacturer's ground. Go ahead and remove the stud so we can make our connection. With my wires run underneath the vehicle to the rear bumper, I will now go ahead and open up the rear hatch door and remove the two rear tail lights. Each tail light has two fasteners.

Once I removed the fasteners, we'll go ahead and press on the locking tab and remove the connectors so that I can sit the tail light, lens housing aside. That completes the driver's side. I'll repeat the same process on the passenger's side. Now on the driver's side, we can take our yellow and brown wire and pit it up between the bumper cover and the sheet metal. Then I'll take my brown and green wire, complete routing it to the passenger's side and repeat the same process of running it up behind the tail light.

Now, weve got multiple wires run up behind the tail lights. I'm going to go ahead and take a zip tight and secure the new wiring to the manufacturer's wiring. Next, we'll test our tail light for the left turn signal and running light functions. Left turn signal is our gray wire with a brown tracer and running light is the purples wire with a white tracer. Now, I'll go ahead and take my knife, peel back some of this tape so that we can cut it, insert the diodes.

First, I'm going to go ahead and cut my wires that will strip them back and add our connectors. Now, I can also go ahead and cut the excess off my yellow and brown wire and add my connectors to these ends. Once we add our connectors, we can go ahead and install our diodes. Our gray wire was our turn and brake signal so that will connect to our yellow wire. So going into the dial, we'll have our yellow wire that'll go to our tow vehicle, and then the manufacturer's gray wire will both be inputs and the output will be out to the tail light. And our second will connect to our brown wire on the driver's side and then, again, the purple wire. So we have the purple wire and the brown wire going in our tail light/running light circuit. With all my wires installed, I'm going to go ahead and take some black tape, wrap up the wires. We'll reinstall into the back of the tail lights and we can go ahead and reinstall our tail light. We'll repeat this same process on the passenger's side also. So for our running lights on the passenger's side, it's our center pin, which is a purple wire with a white trace which we'll plug in to the diode with the brain wire from the harness. And for our brake and turn signal on the passenger's side, that's a purple wire with a pink tracer, which will plug in to the diode with the green wire from the harness. Now, just as we did on the driver's side, we'll go ahead and cut the tape back, cut the wires, and install our connectors. Once again, we'll tape our connections and then plug them in to the tail light. With our diodes installed and our wires taped up, we'll go ahead and reinstall the connectors into the back of the sockets and reinstall the tail light. That will complete the install of our Diode Kit, part number 38955, on our 2011 Ford Escape.