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This trailer connector provides multiple towing options for your vehicle without a factory tow package. It includes 7-way, RV-style and 4-way flat sockets, and it connects to your truck's bare factory wiring.
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Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
How's it going Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2020 Chevrolet Colorado, we're going to be taking a look at and showing you how to install the Hopkins multi-tow 7 and 4-way trailer connector. What I really like about this setup is the fact that it's going to use a factory mounting location, so it's going to look really clean. And the fact that it's not only going to give us a 7-Way connector, but if you flip open the door on the bottom, it's also going to provide us with a four-pole flat connector. That's especially nice if you happen to tow different types of trailers with different types of connectors, you're not going to have to deal with getting a adaptor plug or anything like that. You're going to have both common styles right here in one plug.
Now, compared to some of the other options available for your Colorado, In my opinion, this is going to be the best choice. That's for a few different reasons. Since the plug just goes right here, it's going to maintain that clean factory look, it's going to utilize your factory wiring and just tie into that. So you know, it's going to work. It's not going to be hard at all to get installed.Speaking of which, let's go ahead and do that together now.
To begin our installation, we're going to be working here at the back of the truck. Now I'm just going to temporarily remove our spare tire, you don't have to do this, but it does give you quite a bit more room to work underneath. Now moving underneath the truck on the driver's side, we're going to need to locate our factory wiring harness. And this is what it's going to look like right here. This going to be ends of wires that have some coverings on them, it is going to be attached to the frame with a plastic push-pin style fastener.
We're just going to pop that off and that'll give us some more room to work. We'll take a trim panel tool or a Flathead screwdriver and pry underneath it just like that. Now we have a little more play, will be easier to work on. Now on the ends here, it's going to be some tape covering them up, let's go ahead and peel that back to expose more of the wire. So with our wires exposed, what we're going to do is snip off this protective coating here.
We're going to strip the insulation off to expose the bare wire underneath.What we are we going to do is grab a butt connector and put it on the end. And we're going to do this one at a time, and that's because one of these wires is auxiliary power and it's hot. And as opposed to doing this to all these wires right now, we'd have to worry about them touching and potentially shorting something out. But doing it this way, we're not going to have to worry about it. Now, the kit does come included with some butt connectors. However, I'm going to use heat shrink style butt connectors, and these will just do a better job at helping prevent any corrosion on our wiring connection here. If you'd rather use these, you can find them here at etrailer. It's a lady's work, slide one end over the wire, crimp it down.Now your kit's going to have both yellow butt connectors as well as blue ones. The blue ones will be used for the thinner gauge wire, the yellow ones will be used for a thicker gauge wire. We also have the blue heat shrinks here at etrailer too. I'll just repeat that same process for the rest of our wires here. So with all of our butt connectors attached to our factory wiring, we can grab our new harness and get that ready to be hooked up. But before we do that, I just want to go over what color wire on the new harness will go to the factory wire. So we'll start with this red one here from our harness that will get paired up with the orange wire on our factory wire, the blue wire from our harness, that'll get paired up to the blue wire on our factory wiring. If we grab the purple wire on our harness, that's going to get paired up with the gray wire on our harness. If we grab the green wire, that's going to get paired up with the green wire from our factory harness. The yellow wire, that's going to get paired up with the yellow wire on our factory harness. The brown wire, that's going to go to the brown wire on our factory harness.And we're going to have one more here. The white wire, that's actually going to be a ground. You're going to have a couple different options, and when we go to hook this one up, could either use this ring terminal here and ground it down somewhere on the truck's chassis, or what you can do, and what we're going to do is actually cut that ring terminal off and connect it to our factory wire. So the one this is going to go to will be this black wire. With that being said, what I'm going to do is cut this off and strip back all the insulation on our new harness wires, that way we can plug them in to the other end of the butt connectors. With our new harness all stripped back, we can get them connected. And these will work the same as these ends of the butt connectors and just feed one end of the wire into it and crimp it down.Now once it's crimped, what I like to do is gently pull on each end of the wire to make sure it's fully secured. And you're just going to repeat that same process to get the rest of the wires hooked up. And this is what your wiring is going to look like once it is all hooked up. Now, since I use these heat shrink butt connectors, I'm going to take a heat gun to seal everything off. With all of our heat shrink sealed up. What I'm going to do now is just take some electrical tape and cover everything just for a little extra protection. With everything cleaned up here, we can now focus our attention on to the plug. Now this is the factory plug in the back of the bumper, and it's actually just a dummy plug, so we're going to need to take that out. There's going to be a clip like this on each side here. And what you're going to do is just squeeze those together and push back. And you're able to pull that plug out. We can set it to the side.Now, our new plug, we're actually going to put this in from the outside of the bumper. So the way this works is it simply just goes into that opening, push it all the way back. This clips will inaudible 00:07:50, that way it's secure. Now we can plug our connector here into our plug. Before we do that though, it's a good idea to take some of the included dielectric grease, just really coat those terminals. That'll help prevent any corrosion or anything like that. Give that a good coating and then joining the two together. So I went ahead and pushed our plastic fastener back into the frame to help secure our wiring. And with that being said, now we can test it to make sure it's functioning properly. I went ahead and plugged a tester into the 7-Way. Now, if you don't have a tester like this, you could always just use your trailer. We can go ahead and run through all the functions to make sure it's all working.First thing we're going to do is check our power output back here. As you can see, our voltage gauge jumped up to about 12 volts, so we know that's functioning. If we use our left turn signal, check our right turn signal, our running lights and our brake lights. You can also check your backup lights, and if you have a brake controller, you could hit that to make sure that your brake signal's making it back to the 7-Way plug.However, on our truck, you don't have a brake controller, so there's no need to test that one. But since the plug has both a 7-Way as well as a 4-way, we'll go ahead and make sure both of them are working. Our left turn, our right turn, our running lights and our brake lights. Now that we verified everything is working properly, if you lowered your spare tire, at this point you can go ahead and get that reinstalled. And that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the Hopkins multi-tow 7 and 4-way trailer connector on our 2020 Chevrolet, Colorado..
Average Customer Rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars (136 Customer Reviews)
This trailer connector provides multiple towing options for your vehicle without a factory tow package. It includes 7-way, RV-style and 4-way flat sockets, and it connects to your truck's bare factory wiring.I would like to thank the folks at Etrailer for all your help and a great product. The video on the website made my installation a breeze. I will use the video on installing the trailer light hook up as well. Attached is a couple of pictures of the Curt Trailer Hitch Receiver - Custom Fit - Class III - 2" Thanks again
Wired a 7/4 way to 2017 Colorado... quick AND easy!!! The colored wiring diagram was accurate..... The only problem I had was eventually figuring out the Pollak 12-741EV tester you sold me had to be plugged in with the test light indicators facing downwards. A hand held mirror placed under the plugged in 7 way tester did the trick, and BTW the 7/4 connector only installs one way: 7 pole round on top and 4 pole flat on the bottom.
Great quality and timely delivery. The important part is to be sure you have the correct wiring diagram for your vehicle. I personally solder my connections. Otherwise double check you crimps and you might want to use shrink wrap as well. On a side note. I just need to remember to unplug my connector before putting the trailer in the water loading and unloading the boat! Hopefully I'll get some waterproof LED lights for the Holidays! LOL!
Tee - 10/05/2020This worked great for our Chevy Colorado. It looks like a factory install. Very easy to install as well, great instructions. I also highly recommend watching the video by Brian before you get started. Shipping was fast too. I would definitely order from etrailer.com in the future.
Fast shipping. The Hopkins wiring harness was easy to install and it looks and fits like an OEM part.
OUTSTANDING customer service! Literally from the time the order is placed every part of the order is tracked and updated like I’ve never seen before. Plus the instructional videos are the best I’ve ever come across. Will definitely be my only source moving forward!
Happy with the wiring harness. Instructions on which wire matched the truck were easy to follow.
This wiring harness allows you to make use of the factory prewiring and trailer plug socket that is already in your bumper. Once installed the result is very clean and doesn't look like an aftermarket part - it looks like the engineers at GM intended it to be there! I had no trouble matching the wiring colors in the instructions and all trailer lamps worked as expected. The installation video on this site was helpful. I chose to splice the ground to the factory-supplied ground wire as suggested in that video (rather than drill and tap a hole for a ring terminal). I do wish GM gave us just a little more slack on those wires, but there's enough. Wrap the loom and splices carefully in tape and you should be all set to tow. One thing though - I did replace the supplied butt splices with heat shrink splices. A bad connection in your trailer wiring is at the minimum aggravating, and those splices are in an area where they're exposed to the weather. Electrician's tape will not, in my experience at least, make a permanent weather tight seal. So overall a great product, and would be near perfect with the substitution of heat shrink splices.
Perfect fit ,the trailer light blank popped out easy on my 2017 Colorado and the wiring harness and hookup for trailer lights just popped in.So easy . Great quality item,have never been disappointed when I’ve ordered from etrailer.Thanks!!
installed with no issues at all. The instructions were clear and accurate, and I installed the connector myself in about 20 minutes!
Would of been nice to have shrink tubes to cover connections. Easy to install exactly as specified.
Super fast shipping - the videos on how to install are awesome. Didn't even look at the instructions just followed steps in video.
Should be an easy hook up. Factory wires were where e-trailer showed on the video and should not be a problem to install. Good delivery time.
This product is good quality and functions as advertised. I installed this on a 2019 Durango MOPAR receiver hitch. After considerable research, I ordered this and it fit perfectly in the MOPAR hitch opening for the wiring connector.
Good, quality product, materials are better than OEM materials,,,, survived a Michigan winter and still shows no sign of deterioration.
Mikey T - 10/28/2020Just what was listed and works very well. Easy instructions. Easy to install.
Michael - 08/26/2020Easy to install, wire harness good quality. Four star because the plug wiggles a little bit in the bumper even after adjusting the metal tabs myself.
Highly recommended. The instructions were clearly written, the quality was excellent. One year later with no problems, and it is an exact duplicate of the original equipment. etrailer.com was great to work with on my 2018 Colorado!
Wayne E - 05/10/2020I never understand why the truck AND the wiring harness aren't designed to wire with better fittings. These wire crimp things are ridiculous and unreliable. Wiring harness does work fine but under the covers it's a mess.
Works excellent. Great purchase; however, you will want to review the wiring diagram online or view YouTube videos to determine the best installation.
Instructions are straight forward & very understandable. Perfect & exact fit for truck.
Very pleased with this product, fits in the factory location and looks nice. One piece of advice for the DIY'er is get the truck up as high as possible so you can sit up straight under the truck. I was installing a trailer hitch as well so I removed the spare tire and cross bar that the tire sits against in the raised position. Opened up plenty of room to work on the wiring harness. Turned out very well and tested it with my utility trailer and the lights worked flawlessly.
Install was relatively straightforward. Taking out the false cover from the bumper took a little more effort than I thought, but the new cover popped right in. Making sure to have the right tools would make this install much simpler. I did not have a crimper for the butt connectors. Tried it first with standard pliers, ended up using vise grips to solve the problem. Other than that, crimping wires underneath your truck is a bit of a hassle, but definitely doable. All parts worked as expected and all pieces connected easily. Now for the hitch install...
Worked perfectly. The wiring harness connected just like the [installation] videos. I’ve had it for over a year with absolutely no problems. Great fit for my 2018 Chevy Colorado.
It was easy to install, and has worked flawlessly over the past year. Will purchase any other trailer wiring needs I encounter from these guys.
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