Video Transcript for Hopkins 4-Pole Flat Plug-In Simple Vehicle Wiring Installation - 2013 Honda Odyssey

Hi there, Honda owners. Today on your 2013 Honda Odyssey we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to install Hopkins 4 Pole Flat Trailer Connector Vehicle Wiring Harness. It is designed to stay inside the vehicle when not in use, just down here in your compartment area. But when you are ready to use it, it will drape down over the back here, just make sure that you're avoiding the striker here at the middle, and when you shut your liftgate, it'll pinch it between the leather stripping, which won't cause any damage to it 'cause it'll hold it in place and allow you to be able to plug in your wiring. This is kind of the best case scenarios, keeping it inside the vehicle because it'll protect it from rust and corrosion when not in use. A lot of harnesses are routed to the outside and when they hang down here onto the bottom, even though they have a dust cap or something to protect 'em from rust and corrosion, it does still occur.

So if you can keep it in the vehicle it's gonna last significantly longer. Now, if you wanted the option to route it outside, you could do that yourself. You'd have to locate the grommet that's in the back here, or drill your own hole and you could route it out. And you could also buy brackets here at etrailer for mounting up a four pole. But again, I would recommend leaving this inside so that way you protect it and get the most use outta your connector before having to service it.

This is gonna provide all of our necessary lighting functions which includes our left turn signal, right turn signal, tail lamps and brake lamps, keeping us DOT compliant in all states. So the main purpose of this is so we got our trailer hooked up, all the lighting functions work back there, so when we use our lights here on our vehicle if our trailer has to be obstructing the lights here on the vehicle, the lights on the trailer are gonna mimic all these functionalities so that way people behind us will know our intentions when going down the road, keeping us nice and safe. This is a custom fit harness. So it simply just plugs into our vehicle, comes with all components you're gonna need to get it installed, which is self-tapping screw for the ground as well as the fuses necessary to make everything work the way it needs to. And this is a quick and easy installation.

This is something you can probably do in about 20 minutes to a half an hour, right in your garage. So if you wanna follow on with us, we'll show you how to get it done. We'll begin our installation here at the back of the vehicle with our liftgate open. We're gonna remove the threshold here at the back and we're gonna pop this panel out just a little bit. Our module's gonna install in the fuse compartment here but we do need to route some wiring behind this to be able to complete all this.

So the first thing we want to do is the cargo hooks here in the back, we wanna remove the one on the driver's side and both of the ones that are on each side of the interior panel. They both removed the same way. Just simply unscrew 'em. Got one down here we're gonna unscrew. And there's one here on the other side, on this lower panel we're gonna unscrew as well. Once we get these unscrewed we can remove this threshold panel. All right, all those are removed. So our threshold panel here we're gonna pull up and out a little bit. We gotta pull outward a little bit to clear the screws where we had removed the cargo hooks and then just up to pop it out of there. We'll then just take this panel and set it aside. This panel now should be able to be pulled outward. So we're just gonna grab it here at the bottom, get our fingers behind it, and just pop it out a little bit there. Kind of work our way down along the top edge here a little bit just to make it come out a little bit further and that's probably good enough. We just gotta have access to it and we should be able to access it there. You'll know you can access it if you can push that panel out from the inside just like we did there. So you can remove that fuse cover. This is our module. And this connector here will plug into the fuse panel. Now you may already have a connector that's plugged into the fuse panel. If you do, you'll want to disconnect that connector first and plug it into this connector that has just the single wire going to it so that way this one can go into the panel. We don't have one there. This is the slot right here where we're gonna plug it in but we gotta feed it behind this paneling. So we're just gonna pull it out a little bit, slide our wiring towards the fuse box. And there we go. Once you get your wires pulled in there you can go ahead and plug it in. And again, it plugs in right there. So we're just taking the connector end and just popping it right in there. It only fits one way so you can't install it incorrectly. And then the other connector, if you don't have anything to plug it into, we can just kind of hide it. We're just gonna stick it down kind of underneath the fuse panel right there. Now we also have a ground wire here that we need to hook up and you can just kind of run that in with a self tap issue into the metal. But if we have an option to use an existing bolt, I prefer to do so. And it kind of looks like there's a ground that we can attach to right here on the fuse box. So I think we're gonna try, potentially, attaching it there. It looks like the bolt's gonna probably be a little bit too big to do that. So probably not gonna be able to put it there. But if you see any kind of ground that you can use those are usually your best way to go so just pick one of those. So all the bolts there are just a little bit too big to fit through our ring terminal. So we're just gonna run it into the metal panel. We'll take the self-tapping screw that comes included with our kit and eight millimeter socket here. We're gonna bring it up to the metal that's located right over here. Try to find a decent spot for our gun to fit in there. Maybe we'll go a little bit lower 'cause the gun fits a little more easily and just run it into the paneling. Just make sure it's tight enough to where the ring terminal doesn't rotate on there. That all looks good. So now we're just gonna route the module and wiring back towards the center here and we'll use some of the cable ties, that comes included in your kit here, to secure the module behind the panel to keep it from rattling around. So you can go ahead and push your paneling back in, our wiring's gonna come out of the corner just right here at the bottom. It's designed to live inside the vehicle on this one here to protect it from rust and corrosion. So we can now reinstall our rear threshold here, snap that back into place, reinstall the cargo anchors that we had removed. And then we need to head back to our fuse box. You get some fuses included with your kit here. So let's just pull those out of there. You'll have a total of three fuses, you'll have two 7 1/2 amp and one 10 amp. And they're actually labeled here on the back of the cover to let you know where each one's gonna go. So we're gonna go ahead and insert 'em. If we look at our paneling, the 10 amp fuse is for the B+ trailer and it goes in that location up there, right there. So we're gonna grab our 10 amp fuse here and slide it up in the location where it indicated it goes. We also need to install the trailer back and trailer hazard 7.5 amp fuses in spots 10 and 11 there like it shows. All right. Now that we've got those installed, can simply reinstall the cover for your compartment. So now that we've got everything installed, we plugged in our tester here. You can plug into your trailer and test it out but I highly recommend using the tester like this because if you have any faults in your trailer, it could give you bad readings and you might think that your wiring's not working properly but it's actually a fault on the trailer. So this helps us guarantee the vehicle's side's working properly. We wanna make sure we have our left turn signal, right turn signal, tail lamps and brake lamps. With all of our signals working properly on our tester, we know our vehicle's ready to roll. So at this point we can just hook up our trailer and hit the road. And that completes our installation of Hopkins 4 Pole Flat Trailer Connector Vehicle Wiring Harness on our 2013 Honda Odyssey..