Hopkins Plug-In Simple Wiring Harness for Factory Tow Package - 4-Pole Flat Trailer Connector

Video Transcript for Hopkins Plug-In Simple Wiring Harness Installation - 2020 Honda Pilot

Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today, on our 2020 Honda Pilot, we're gonna be showing you how to install the Hopkins Plug-In Simple Wiring Harness. But before we do that, why don't we check it out and make sure that this is gonna work for you. So when it comes to these Honda Pilots, you know, they're really capable SUV's. People use them to do a lot of different things. I actually had an older model Pilot and I did a lot with it, used accessories, and towed with it and things like that.

And, if you're someone who's going to plan on pulling a trailer, you're going to need some wiring, a way to illuminate the lights on that trailer. That way people around you know what's going on and you'll be safe and legal. And to accomplish that, you can use the kit, like we have here today. Uhm, ours, we actually have stored on the inside. So this is one way you can mount it.

You can also run it to the outside if you want, but in our case, whenever we're ready to use it, we're going to open up this, pop this off and grab our wiring out. And it's kind of nice that it's stored inside, out of the elements, uhm, out of the way, you know, you're not gonna have to look at it when you're not using it. And all you're gonna do, is drape it over like this and close the hatch. Anywhere is fine, other than the actual latch area. And it might seem kind of odd closing this on the wiring, but nothing wrong with it.

Uhm, it's designed to do that more or less. So you're not going to damage anything or whatever the case may be. But you know, having this back here, is gonna allow you to take your trailer line, plug into it and get everything powered up. So this kit is going to have the four-way flat type connector, a really common size for a lot of these smaller, maybe medium size trailers. You'll get your running lights, your turn signals and your brake lights.

Uhm, and if you're someone, that is going to want to route this outside and maybe monitor it up down here, you can do that. Uhm, I would suggest getting a no-drill bracket and a four-way flat connector bracket, which we saw here, on etrailer, that we can actually mount it up. And I'll show you a grommet that you can use to run it outside during the "Install" video. So if you're interested in that, check that out. With that said, though, uhm, you know, the kits in it, you know, one of the big turnoffs for me is that they don't give you a fuse that you need to put in under the hood to kind of activate your harness tow package. So you will have to source that separately. A couple of the other kits available, both the Curt and the Inertial give you that, so, you know, that's, that's just kind of one of the things, and with that said, if you're looking to maybe tow some bigger or larger trailers that have the round, the seven-way type connector, there's wiring that we offer, kind of the same yield, as this for plugs and everything, but it gives you that round seven-way connector itself. If that's the type of trailer that you have, that's definitely the type of wiring kit that you're gonna need. Other than that, though, a pretty straight forward kit, you know that it's gonna work and power up your trailer lights. As far as the installation goes, really not too bad. There's a couple of panels you got to pop off back here, more or less, this just plugs in and you have to ground out one wire, so pretty straight forward. I feel like just about anyone should be able to do it. So uhm, if that's something you're trying to figure out how to do, stick around. If not, I hope to see you around. To begin our installation, we're gonna be here at the back of our Honda, and we're going to be working inside. So we'll open up our hatch. Now we're gonna have a couple of panels that we need to take out. First one, being your forward covering here, just lift this up and out of the way. And then we're going to be primarily on the driver's side here. So we're going to have two panels: this one, and this one. To get these out, you can take a flat-head screwdriver, just kind of work in behind it, pop that out, and then this one here, and just grab that, and send him off to the side. So I went ahead and pulled our connector plug down, and I did this, because it'd be pretty much impossible to see on camera, but this is usually just right up here, about a finger's worth up, and you can reach up there and feel it. And there's usually a piece of tape around it. You can try to remove that tape out of the way, or just kind of carefully pull hard on this to expose that connector plug. We can grab our wiring end, as well as the ground wire here, that's this white one with the ring terminal on it. We're going to feed this under this opening and up there, here, like so, and this connector end just simply just got to line right up, and click into place. Now we need to hook up our ground, and so what we got to do, we're going to have a flat side screwdriver right here, and go ahead and remove it. And here's a screw. So what you need to do is take that screw, put it through the ring terminal there on our white wire, and we're simply just gonna get it reinstalled. So, I went ahead and secured our module box. I pulled our spare jack out of this opening just so we could see better, work a little bit easier, but, I secured it using a zip tie. There's some factory wiring and tubing that kind of runs down through there, and I just zip tied it to that. So now, if we move under our hood, and you pop the hood if you're on the driver's side, we're gonna have this fuse box, remove this cover, push those tabs in, and this slot right here, we need to put a fuse in it. So this kit's not going to come with the fuse. This is a 30 amp "Jcase" fuse, it's what they call it. So you'll have to get this separately. Unfortunately, I looked in all the other fuse boxes on the car, to see if there happened to be a spare that we could just steal, but there was not one. So this is kind of what we have to deal with. But we'll put that in place and we can close that up. And what we're going to do is test our wiring before we kind of route it and get it all cleaned up and everything. By that way we can verify it works. To test our wiring, I'm using a small tester, which I recommend doing, as opposed to just hooking up to your trailer. Uhm, that way, if your trailer has any issues, you're able to bypass them using a tester like this. With that said, we'll try our left turn signal, our right turn signal, our brakes and our running lights. So I started putting some of our stuff back together, the opposite way that we removed it. And you have a couple of choices here. You can either leave your wiring inside of the storage compartment inside of your vehicle and pull it out whenever you're towing or whatever it is you're doing, and whenever you need it, or if you'd rather it be routed outside next to your hitch, you can do that too. Right in here, there's a rubber grommet. You can pull that out, cut a slit in it and then just feed your wire through it and run it outside, that way. So that's, an option for you as well. In our case, we're just gonna leave this stored inside though. So I'll just kind of bundle it up, put it in there and put our panels back together. And that'll finish up our look at, and our installation of the Hopkins Plug-In Simple Wiring Harness on our 2020 Honda Pilot..