T-One Vehicle Wiring Harness with 4-Pole Flat Trailer Connector

Video Transcript for Trailer Wiring Harness Installation - 2012 Ford Transit Connect

Today on our 2012 Ford Transit Connect, we're gonna be taking a look at the Tekonsha T-One Vehicle Wiring Harness, part number 118585. It's gonna have a 4-pole flat trailer end connector. It does come with a dust cover and it is gonna stay on the outside of the vehicle at all times. So, it's gonna be ready whenever we need our wiring. To begin our installation, we're gonna need to open up our rear doors so that we can gain access to remove the taillights. To remove our taillights, we have two plastic rotating clips.

Now, these may be pretty tight so we just take a pair of slip joint pliers or anything to grab them. We're gonna loosen them up and then remove them by hand the rest of the way. And once those are removed, if we look inside of here, we're gonna have a 10 millimeter nut, so you're gonna need a 10 millimeter deep well socket and we're gonna remove those bolts. With those bolts removed, we can come to the outside of our taillight and we're just gonna grab out taillight and we're gonna pull straight back. So, we're gonna unplug our vehicle's wire and harness from our taillight. There's a tab right here.

If you push on this tab, it'll release the taillight, and we're gonna do the same thing on the other side. And we're gonna set these aside so they don't get damaged or lost. Next, I want to bring your attention to our wiring harness. You might have noticed that there's some connectors between the wires, but not on the yellow end. Well, for now, we're gonna disconnect our red and green ends and we're gonna set the connectors aside and we're disconnecting our 4-pole end with the green, yellow, white, and brown wires.

We're gonna set this aside for installation later. If we come over to our driver's side, we're gonna be taking the yellow, brown, and white connector, and we're gonna be plugging it in the vehicle's end. We want to make sure that locks in and we're gonna move back to the inside now. Right above our hinge, there's gonna be a plug. We're gonna need to remove this plug, so we can gain access to our wires. And I'm simply gonna use a screwdriver and a pair of pliers to grab it.

We're gonna do the same thing on the other side. On the outside, where our taillight was, this hole right here is where we just removed that plug and now we're gonna need to feed through our green and red wires, as well as the 4-pole wires. The green, yellow, white, and brown. And you're gonna want to do this one at a time. Get the connector through and a little bit of the wire so that you'll have enough room to get the following wires through. Once we have enough room, we're gonna pull it through and then we can come back and put our other wires and connectors through. Now, it is gonna be a snug fit but it will work. And we're gonna come to the other side and make sure everything's feeding properly and getting through. Now, there is one more wire that we're gonna need to put through and that's gonna be our black wire. I'm just gonna push that through to the other side. Now, the only remaining wire is gonna be our T connector and our ground. Now, this ground, I'm simply just gonna loosen this bolt right here and use it on the factory existing ground. I'm gonna use an eight millimeter socket to remove this bolt. With the bolt removed, put my ground wire on and then reinstall my bolt. I'm gonna be attaching the supplied black wire. The kit does come with butt connectors, but since this is more towards the outside of the vehicle where it's gonna come in contact with some moisture and maybe dirt, I'm gonna replacing the supplied butt connector with a heat shrink butt connector and you can pick those up on our website using part number DW05745-5. You'll need to strip the end off of this wire, then I can take our butt connector and attach it to this end, and then I can take the other end of the black wire, insert it in the other end and crimp it down. And you can use any heat source to apply the heat shrink on this butt connector, but we're gonna be using a heat gun. You just want to double-check and make sure you're not gonna char or burn the wire or the connector itself. Now that we have our black charge wire connected, I'm go ahead and reconnect our 4-pole end and we're just gonna match up the colored wires going to each other. Now, with all of our wires connected, we're gonna take all of our wires and we're gonna go down right here, just on the outside of this weather stripping. Right behind the bumper right here. So, we're just gonna start feeding all of our wires down and once we get all of them started, we're gonna need to go underneath the vehicle and pull them out. Now, before we run our wire, I'm gonna go ahead and connect our red and green T connector to our passenger side. That way we can feed our wires down through the same hole that we took that plug out and we can meet up with our wires from the other side. Now, we're gonna come back to our driver's side under the vehicle and we're gonna take our red and green wire and we're gonna run it along the edge of the bumper here behind it and come back and connect to our other end of our connector. When you come to the back of the bumper, behind it here, there's a panel that's gonna be like a support. If you go behind it, it is gonna help it rubbing on the exhaust or the hitch or anything else, just to give us that little bit of extra security before we zip tie anything down. The wires come out right above the bottom of the bumper. Now, luckily, our connectors have a male and a female end. So, if we just match the female with the male end and the male with the female end, it'll be on the right connector. So, you can just reach up and connect our connectors and for now we're gonna leave this wire and we'll tidy it up later. Our black wire, we're gonna need to run this up to the vehicle's battery. Give me a few minutes and I'm gonna run it and I'll show you how I get it done. Now, everybody is gonna run it a little bit differently. So, let me show you how I ran my wire. This is where it came out, I went up, zip-tied it to a factory wire here, came across, tied into my factory ABS wire, came down, attached to my emergency brake cable, zip tying it along the way, and I jumped over to the outer edge of the frame. There's a small loop right here, so I zip tied it there as well. Then came back to the center section of the frame and zip tied it here and finally it stops right here and we're gonna go up to the top underneath the hood so we can run this to the battery. Okay, now, we're gonna have our wire coming up to positive end of our battery here. So, I've got some airline tubing that I had lying around and I'm gonna be routing this down and coming out so we can attach our wire and pull it back through. Now, you can use anything if you don't have airline tube. Basically, anything that's gonna hold it's shape so that when you push it down through it can get all the way through to the bottom. So, here's where our airline tube came out. I'm gonna take the end of our wire. I'm gonna insert it into my airline tube. Just gonna use a little bit of tape to secure it. We can go ahead and pull our wire up. Then we can disconnect our airline tube. Next, we're gonna need to attach our fuse holder to the end of our wire. So, we're gonna take our wire and we're gonna strip the end of the wire off. We're gonna take another one of our heat shrink butt connectors and crimp it on to the end of our black wire. Now, we can take our fuse holder. We're gonna cut the wire so we have a nice end on each side and we're gonna strip one end of the wire, and we're gonna attach it to the other end of our butt connector. Now, on the other end of our fuse holder, we're gonna strip that end of the wire as well and we're gonna be putting on the ring terminal that is supplied with the kit. Now, we're gonna take our ring terminal and we're gonna move the positive side posts for our battery terminal and we're gonna attach it there and I'm gonna be using a 10 millimeter socket to remove the nut. Then we're just gonna remove the nut, put our terminal on, and then reinstall the nut. We do have all this excess wire, so I'm just gonna tidy it up and zip tie it right here. That way if any repairs are needed, we'll have that extra wire. Now, if we come back to our taillight here where our module box is, I'm gonna take the provided double-sided tape. Take one side off, put it on the box. I'm gonna take the other side and I'm gonna put this box as far down in the taillight channel as I can and then push it firmly into place so it'll hold against the body of the vehicle. Plug them in and then we're gonna reassemble our taillight. After we have inaudible 00:12:06, we can come back and put our black rotating caps on and we'll go ahead and do the same thing on the other side. Now all we have left to do is tidy up our wires and run our 4-pole to the center where the hitch is and we can tie up any excess wires. Just gonna route our wire. I'm gonna take my dust cover. I can leave my 4-pole right here and I'm just gonna tie up this wire back here with a couple of zip ties. I'm just gonna coil up the excess wire, zip tie a bundle together, and then I can come back up to the bumper support channel and actually just tuck it up behind there. We still have access and we can pull any access if we need it. Now, with everything done, we can go ahead and put our fuse in and we can test our lights. And if you don't have a tester, you can pick one up on website using part number I26. Now, if I can have the running lights, please Okay. Can I have the brakes, please Brakes are working. Can I get a left turn signal Right turn signal Brakes and the turn signal The other turn signal All right. There we have it. We know all of our lights are working. And that'll finish up the look of the Tekonsha T-One Vehicle Wiring Harness, part number 118585 on our 2012 Ford Transit Connect.