Video of Redarc Tow-Pro Elite Brake Controller w/ Custom Harness - Dash Knob - Off-Road Mode - Up to 3 Axles
Video Transcript for Redarc Tow-Pro Elite Trailer Brake Controller Installation - 2011 Ford Van
Hello neighbors. It's Brad here at etrailer. And today we're taking a look and installing the REDARC Tow-Pro Elite on a 2011 Ford E350 van. So this is what our brake controller looks like when it's installed and what's really nice is, it's pretty. it's really small. It's one of the smallest on the market, it's super easy to use.
And honestly just doesn't take up a lot of space, a lot of other brake controllers you have sitting down here and you knock your knees against it, and it's just kind of clunky and hard to get to. Well, the great thing is when this is in drive, you can actually put your hand on the stalk and it's at a good spot. And really that just gains the ability to do that by having this knob being nice and small. So really you can kind customize it however you want. Whereas some of your other typical brake controllers, you don't really have that luxury because of their size.
Operation of the REDARC is equally as easy. If not more easy than other brake controllers. In fact, you can see how much gain you have. And as I actually turn the knob, you're gonna see the colors are gonna change when applied. So as I hold this down on, I can see at zero it's blue, it goes to a light purple and then as it gets more intense, so we'll go up to red, you can see that's a nice bright red.
So you can see the intensity when you do the manual override or even hitting your brakes. Now other typical brake controllers or some of the higher end brake controllers, you can actually set for a bunch of different memory modes and just different things for different trailers and that's great. It really is, if you are planning on doing a bunch of trailers but what this one lacks in that memory mode and what not, makes up for it in the simplicity and space savings. It's also extremely easy to install and speaking of install, let's take a look at that now. Now to get our brake controller installed, we need to first check and see if the van has a Factory 7 Pole.
Unfortunately ours does not and the customer actually had a 4 Pole already ran. So in order for us to get this brake controller working, we're gonna need to pick up a few extra parts. First one being this Hopkins 4-7-4 Pole adapter and that's gonna have our wires here. You'll be able to tie into your 4 Pole as well as your 7. And it's gonna have your 4 Pole connection, which will go to the factory 4 pole. We're also gonna have a blue wire, a black wire, a purple wire, and a white ground wire. In order to get this attached to our hitch, we actually picked up an extra long bracket here and that's gonna allow you to attach this on, have clearance for your plug, and it's gonna be nice and secure. Now in order to get our power run, as well as to our brake controller, we're gonna have to run a little bit of extra wire here and also tie into some circuit breakers. So we're using the etrailer brake controller wiring kit. So that's gonna allow us to run this and make our connections all the way to the front of the vehicle. Now you are gonna need to pick up a 4 Pole. So if you don't have one, we actually have this available here at etrailer and that's gonna plug into the factory plug here. Now you can see that this is gonna be slightly different than our other 4 Pole, because these are gonna actually attach. So I put a little bit of dielectric grease here just to make a better solid connection and if you need to pick some of that up, we actually have some here at etrailer. Once this is connected, I'm gonna just run a zip tie kind of through these to kind of keep these permanently attached. That way they don't back out over time. Now with the etrailer brake controller wiring kit, you're gonna get a long run of sheath wire here. And I just opened the little end there, allowing us to get access to our white and black. And so I'm gonna go ahead and strip these back. And these are gonna be tying in to our black and blue wires. So we're gonna keep black with black and our blue's gonna go to the white. So let's go. Those set up here. It's nice. They already put the butt connectors on here for you. So we'll just simply crimp these down. Okay. So just give it a quick tug, just to make sure you have solid connections there. So that's gonna leave us with two more wires here. We have our purple and this is gonna be a reverse lockout. So if you're towing a boat, this is something you may wanna wire up. We're not gonna be using it here, so I'm gonna just cut this back, so we don't have all this extra wire. Then I'm gonna just simply bend it back a little bit and then just run some electrical tape around this connection here. So this is gonna be for your surge breaks. So again, if you are using this, you're gonna need to wire that up. But again, for this application, we will not be. So now all we have left is gonna be our white wire and this is gonna be simply a ground. And looking under here, it does look like there's gonna be a factory ground for us to tie into. And I believe it's gonna be a 10 millimeter. So now you can see your ring terminal has a side that's gonna sit a little bit more flush on the frame, so we're gonna be using that. Just make sure you put back all your factory ground wires that you had on there. And then you can go ahead and tighten this back up. Now all that's left is to button up our residual wire from our 4 Pole and just kind of make everything tidy. So I'm gonna go ahead and zip tie this up, and then I'm gonna show you the route that I used, our actual brake controller wiring and how we got it up to where we need to start time into. So I got everything kind of bundled up and zip tied, so it's not gonna move over time. It's gonna stay nice and safe and zip tied up. So you can follow our wire that I ran here. And really, I just tried to stay along the frame rail following a lot of the existing wire loom and that's just gonna kind of protect those wires. And it's not gonna be in contact with anything that's hot or moving. So you can see, I just kind of went along the frame rail here, zip tying it up occasionally to the existing wire loom. And then we made our way, a little bit past this heat shield and that brings us to where the engine bay is. And if you look up you can see, there's gonna be some light there. We're gonna be pulling our wire through there. Now to get our wires pulled up here to tie into the battery, I'm using a little bit of spare airline tube. Now if you don't have anything like this at home, you can use probably a long stick or something you can kind of get a straight shot down there. Basically just feed that in there, tape your wires on it and then you're just gonna simply use this to fish them up. So the main thing here is the exhaust manifolds are gonna be or the exhaust headers are down there. So you're gonna wanna make sure that you are not making contact with those, cause it could burn the wire over time. So just make sure you have a nice, easy route. And I tried to follow along some of the factory plumbing again, just so I can zip tie it up and make sure that it's a safe connection. There you go. So we'll just simply pull this up, pull all of our slack through. So with our wires pulled up, we're gonna need to run to a circuit breaker to the battery with our black wire. And that's gonna give us power from the battery to the actual 7 Pole. Now we're also gonna need to tie into power to power up our brake controller. So we'll be routing another wire from that positive to a circuit breaker on the other side and we'll be running that through the firewall with the white wire. So I'm gonna do that right now. Get my circuit breakers mounted up and all my connections made and I'll show you how I did it. So I've my circuit breakers mounted up and just for hood clearance purposes, I've bent the tab and used myself Tapper to get those mounted up. Now there's gonna be three different circuit breakers that come in the kit and it is important, which ones you use. So this one's gonna be our 40 amp. And what this is gonna do is from our copper post here, that's gonna run to our battery positive here. So we're gonna make a little jumper there. And then our black wire here is going to go to the auxiliary and these are actually marked on it. In fact, I have one here. It's hard to see here, but here's copper, it says BAT, the other one's gonna be auxiliary. So what this is gonna do is allow the power to actually go back to our 7 way. Now we also will have a 30 amp circuit breaker, and this is based off the instruction manuals. There's also a 20 amp, that's included in the kit. And the way you can tell, it'll say 20a, 30a or 40a. So make sure you're using the proper ones and this one's gonna be pretty easy too. We're gonna have a jumper that goes to the positive, and then we're actually gonna route a wire in, to the interior with our white wire, that's going to actually go to the brake controller, allowing that to have power. So I'm gonna make these quick connections here and it's gonna be done pretty easily with the ring terminals that are included in the kit. Now, it does come with three circuit breakers. We will not be using the 20 amp in this instance, reason being is this is supplied because some brake controllers actually require a 20 amp rather that 30. So we can actually set this one aside as we won't need it. So since we have our wire ran to our circuit breaker here, I'm gonna just go ahead and I'm gonna cut this. Now we're gonna hold onto our extra wire, we'll be using that for our jumpers, so set that close by. We can go ahead and strip this. And then in the kit, you're gonna see the ring terminal supplied, so go ahead and we can cramp this on. And this is gonna be going to that silver auxiliary. So I'm gonna just put this on here. We can tighten this one up And now we'll make our jumper wire with a ring terminal and our extra wire long enough to go to our positive terminal. And we're gonna be putting the larger ring terminal that way we can actually attach to this. So I've gone ahead and made two jumpers. of the larger ring terminal on one side and the smaller one on the other. So again, I'm not gonna be hooking up to our positive terminal quite yet but at least I can get this in place. And then I'm gonna also go ahead and put my jumper on our 30 amp here. So that just leaves us with our one auxiliary post off of our 30 amp. So what we need to do is create a wire, that's going to have a ring terminal here and run back so we can feed it through the actual firewall. Now with the kit, it does seem like we're gonna be a little bit short on wire. So you may need to pick some up and if you need to, we actually sell it here at etrailer. Otherwise the other options would really be to maybe route this electric on the passenger side here, and you might be able to salvage enough wire to make it work. But unfortunately we did not. So we will have to get some extra wire. The other silver terminals here. We have. I put our extended black wire or our additional black wire. And along with the one that we ran over, we're just gonna follow along the actual looms and made our way over here. Now it's gonna be hard to see, but there is a grommet directly behind there. So what we're gonna do is, I'm gonna kind of get a hole poked in there and run fish wire through there and feeding it from that will actually allow us to really pull these wires through, to get them into the engine bay. So you should have your white wire and that extra black wire. Now to gain better access to the grommet, I actually removed the coolant reservoir, then it's just three 8 millimeter screws. So pretty easy to take that out and you'll have a lot more room to work with. And then I just simply used a long screwdriver to find a part that didn't have any wire bundle and I just kind of poked a hole through there and then you can feed your wires through. You can use a fish wire technique to make it a little bit easier, but once you have that wire poking through the firewall, you're gonna wanna pull out that slack. Now with our wires ran in, we can start actually making the connection into the harness that will go into the module, which will then go to our brake controller and just kind of breaking these down for you. You're gonna have the black wire here and this is gonna be the positive supply wire. So this is actually gonna give power to the module and the brake controller. And that's just gonna tie in to our black wire here and that's the one that goes to the positive. Now you also have our white wire here, which technically we extended from our blue wire and that's what we have here, which is gonna be going to that 7 way and also making that communication between that and the brake controller. So our white will go to blue. We also have a white wire and this is just gonna be a ground, so we can put a ring terminal and just find a ground that's factory or we can just self-tap that in. And then our red wire is gonna be attaching to the cold side of the brake light. So meaning it's going to tie into the wire on the brake light switch. And that way, when you ply those brakes, it's gonna send the signal as well. So I'm gonna go ahead and kind of get this all set up and then I'll kind of show you how I did it. Now to make this a lot easier, I actually removed this panel and it just has some clips along here. So if you kind of work your way and pop it open, that should allow you to drop it. Now be careful, your ODB2 port is actually connected to it, so you don't wanna pull it too far and damage those wires. But here I've gone ahead. I've actually used a ground that I found here for my white wire. My black wire is attached to my black wire there. My blue wire is going to my white and then the red one goes to the cold side of the brake switch, which I've actually gone ahead and unplugged it from the switch. So to find that it's pretty easy, you just follow your hands up. You're gonna see a little toggle button, that's on the brake pedal and this clips at the very top. So pushing this out, it's gonna make it a lot easier to try to get to these wires. So you're gonna take that red wire and splice in with the violet and white. Now I used a quick connect. I think this is a little bit easier, working with these wires. You can also cut and split those back and then actually use a butt connector to attach them all. If you need any of these, we actually have these as well as butt connectors here at etrailer. So now that I have this all spliced in, I can actually plug this back in. And you'll see the blue, the gray, that switch actually just plugs into the top. It's just, you don't have a ton of wire to work with. So popping this out, it's gonna make it a lot easier to be able to splice into that. And then we'll just plug this back in the top. So now really our next step is figuring out where we're gonna actually mount the REDARC controller. I think I'm gonna mount mine, kind of here on the side, that way the driver can access it really quickly. It's gonna be outta the way. And really you don't have to worry, to trouble much about this reaching into a space because you have another cable here, that's gonna attach to it that goes to our module. So before we put this back up, we're gonna wanna make sure we get that mounted up and that way we can make all these connections and we can zip tie this all up, make it nice and clean. So I'm gonna find my spot and I'm gonna start drilling a hole to get this to fit. I've decided to kind mount it right here. That way it faces the driver and it should be out of the way of anything. It's gonna look really clean, I think. So the way that you can do this, there's a template in the instruction manual. Really, you're just wanting to get a one inch diameter hole. So if you have a whole saw, that's a one inch, that's a great way to do it. Or you can use a step bit and just make sure that you only go down to the one inch mark. Either way, I'm gonna start my pilot hole. You do wanna make sure that there's nothing behind there. So before you drill, just make sure you either pull the panel back or you kind of reach up, make sure there that there's nothing behind it. Once you've drilled that out, you might wanna go back with a file, just to get some of that flashing out. That's gonna allow that trailer break holder here to actually sit in there, nice and clean, but it might actually gain you a little more clearance than you think. So you're gonna want to test fit that, make sure you like it. Then before we actually pop this into place, what we're gonna do is take our switch and take your cable here that you have. This is gonna connect into here pretty easy. So let's just snap that in and then we can feed the other end down. So now with our wire fed down there, we take this here and it's only gonna go in one way. So just make sure that you have it aligned properly. It should kind of sit in there. So you can see here, this one's not aligning properly. So just flip it around and that way you have the proper orientation. So you may have to pull your wire a little bit, that you fed down to kind of get some of that slack taken out of it. But we should be able to kind of pop this in place, but to make it a little bit easier. You're gonna have this little cap here. So I'm just gonna screw this in for now, just to kind of hold it in place and that way it doesn't back out on us as you can tell like that. Once that's threaded on just a little bit, that should hold it in place and then this should pop in. Now, if you need to, you might have to go back and take a little bit more out, but that's no problem. I'm gonna just take my file and work the edges out a little bit more, so this pops into place. I've taken our plastic hex here. That's just gonna tighten this down. You also wanna put your sticker in place, and this is gonna kind of show you where you're actually applying the pressure. What, how hard you are. So on the knob, what I do is I try to make it to where you can see it pretty clearly from the driver's position. And then just turn this all the way to the back counterclockwise here. And then you're just gonna align that zero with that. So that way, when you apply it, you'll be able to see exactly where you're at. So once you have this all put together, you tighten that down. Just a 12 millimeter socket will bring that plastic nut to tighten it. And then just simply, clip this in. And with the wire fed in, this should just pop into place here. We have this fed down, we have our module and we're just gonna make these connections here real quick. So this should snap in here. And then, we're going to slide this one in here. And then, I'm gonna button all this up, get this zip tied and probably mount it somewhere on this actual metal frame here, just with some zip ties, just to clean it up and we're gonna get our panel back on. So now the last thing we need to do before testing out our brake controller is hook up our jumper cable that we made to our positive terminal. So I'm go ahead with a 10 millimeter here, loosen this up. Okay, now we can feed our terminals on here. Right now, we're gonna tighten this back up. We're gonna go ahead and test this. Now we have a test box for our 7 Pole. You can actually hook it up to your trailer. So now we're going to run through our light sequence, starting with our running lights. Next we'll do our left turn signal, our right turn signal and then we're gonna use our brakes. We can also check that our 12 volt outlet is working here, we're getting our power. So next, we actually need to calibrate the unit by actually going around and driving it and hitting the brakes. And that way it can kind of learn itself. And from there, we'll show you that sequence. And then we'll know that our brake controller's working. Now, we're using a 4 Pole tester. And if you wanna pick one of these up, they're great because it tests the wiring specific to the vehicle. You can use your trailer as well, but if your trailer has any wiring issues, it's possible that you get a false negative on the wiring on your vehicle. So let's run through the light sequences and check it out. So starting off, I'm gonna use my running lights. Next, i will do my left turn signal, my right turn signal and then finally my brakes. So now hooked up to the trailer. We're gonna go ahead and get this calibrated and the way we're gonna do that, you're gonna see during this calibration, it's gonna be flashing green and blue. It's gonna be a little hard to see here, but that blinking means that it's actually trying to actively calibrate. And in order to get it calibrated, what we're gonna do is a series of stops with our brakes. So about 15 miles per hour or so, hit the brakes and then continue that until it turns a solid blue. And what it's doing is, it's trying to find its center kind of find it, its home where it's living. And once you kind of put that motion in it, then it can actually home itself a little bit. So we're just gonna continue this process until we see that solid blue. So once you've done your series of braking and that becomes a solid blue light, then you know, that is calibrated and you're ready to use your trailer brakes. And that was a look and install of the REDARC Tow-Pro Elite brake controller on a 2011 Ford E350 van..
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