Video Transcript for 2020 Chrysler Pacifica Curt Spectrum Brake Controller w/ Custom Harness: Complete Installation

Hey everyone, Shane here, with etrailer.com. Today I have a 2020 Chrysler Pacifica. I'm going to walk through how to install the Curt Spectrum Brake Controller with the ETBC7 installation kit. This is gonna be used if we're towing a trailer or something like that, that has brakes on it. This allows us to control the brakes from the trailer. Now there's a couple of different modes.

You have manual mode, which allows you to use a brake controller just to control the brakes on the trailer, where you will not have to apply the brakes on the vehicle. That type of situation, you know, if you have a trailer or something you're going down a gravel hill, you don't want that trailer pushing you and you don't want the vehicle stopping the trailer. So this allows you to apply the brakes on the trailer so the trailer is slowing and stopping the vehicle. So again, your vehicle is not trying to stop both. This is going to be how you set your modes.

Again, with the manual mode, there's a switch on the controller. It doesn't come, it comes preset this way. If you're gonna use manual mode, you're just going to follow the instructions for flipping this switch that's on the actual control unit. This is going to allow you to control the gain settings. Depending on how much weight you have on your trailer, you're simply going to turn it on and you're going to spin it.

And you can see, as it goes around and gets to this side, that light is red. The higher, or the darker that color gets, from green to red, that's more brake pressure that you're getting to the trailer. So if we turn it down to, let's say, about half. When we apply the brakes in the vehicle it's going to send the same amount of pressure to the trailer. Again, the more we go up, the more pressure you're getting back to the trailer, even though you're applying the same pressure on the vehicle.

So again, this is going to be your sensitivity setting that is going to be based on the trailer weight. It'll send more brake pressure to the trailer. If you have a heavier load, you're going to turn it down or decrease it if your trailer is lighter and you don't need as much braking power. Now, as far as the calibration setup on this, we have quite a bit of snow out today, so we're not gonna be able to take it out and calibrate it. So you just want to make sure you follow your instructions, once you get it installed, in order to calibrate correctly. Durable plastic housing; it's going to come with a couple of different ways to mount it. It comes with two-sided, sticky tape if you don't want to drill holes in your dash. if you decide you do want to hard mount it, there is a little plastic plate that comes with it. With the self tapping screws, you mount that, drill your hole in your dash to run your wires. And then you're going to pop this right into place. In order to get this brake controller installed on your vehicle, it will require the ETBC7. Now that we've gone over some of features, let's walk through how to get them both installed. Depending on the hitch you have, if it's Draw-Tite, it's going to have this bracket; you're going to mount the seven-pole plug to that bracket. If it doesn't, you're gonna need no-drill mounting brackets, which you can find here at etrailer. We're gonna mount our plate right to the bracket here on our hitch. You want to make sure you tighten those down. We're gonna take our seven-pole plug, we're gonna to feed the wires through the bracket, like that. tapping on metal And you're gonna have a bolt with a flat washer, lock washer and nut. We're going to put a bolt in each one of the corners. And then on the backside, we'll put the flat washer, lock washer, and then a nut. metal screw being threaded We'll take a Phillips screwdriver and a 3/8th socket and tighten it down. voices in background We're going to take our four-pole plug that's closest to the seven-pole plug; that's gonna go right into our seven-pole bracket. And then the other end, we're gonna have a seven- or a four-pole plug. We're gonna to connect it to the four-pole plug that we previously installed, to go just like this. What I suggest doing, is we're going to take some dielectric grease, we're going to put it on our connections. It's going to help keep it from corroding, if there's any water that gets in there by chance. Get those together. tapping We'll take a zip tie all right, between the floats, like this. sharp mechanical whack in background Then we'll tighten them down. This is gonna to keep the plugs from coming apart. You also can cut your two four-pole plugs off, if you want, and hardwire it. banging sound, from a distance Now, what I'm going to do, is I'm just gonna to take my wire, and I'm gonna zip tie it up like this. If you want, there's a hole, if you have the Draw-Tite bracket, there's a large hole right up in the top. You can actually run this up through here, if you can get it all through there scraping plastic and connect them that way before you connect your two four-pole plugs. You're gonna have one y-wire that has a ring terminal on it. We need to ground that to the frame. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to run it over the top of the hitch, I'm gonna go straight up. There's a panel right there. It might be easier if you use the self-tapper and drill the hole first. drilling noise Then we're gonna have three wires left: yellow, blue, and black. If you're not hooking up reverse lights signal, we're not going to be using this. Blue wire is going to be our brake signal coming from our brake controller. Black wire is gonna be our power. In your kit, you're gonna get a roll of duplex wire like this. You're gonna strip back the coating; it's gonna give you a black wire and a white wire. Black wire is gonna go to black; white is gonna go to the blue wire. sound of electrical pliers cutting through wires Then we'll take our two wires from our duplex, loud drilling sounds and we will attach them accordingly. loud drilling sounds loud drilling Sounds loud drilling sounds Once you get them connected, we'll come back with our heat source, then we'll shrink them up. heat source fan motor sound When you shrink a butt connector, what you wanna do is try and get all the air out from underneath that butt connector where that wire's going in. And what you're looking for is at the very top, there's gonna be some little liquid that comes out of it. You wanna see that. What that is, is that is a glue that's on the inside. It comes out and helps seal the end of the butt connector. fan motor whirring I like to come back, run some electrical tape around each connection, sharp banging noise and then we can bundle everything up together and get it covered. Now I'm gonna take some of the wiring that comes in the kit. talking in the background I'm gonna run it over top of my wires. gloves Rubbing against plastic coating However you think you need to, uh, run your wire loom on to protect the wires, and then we'll come back, we'll throw some electrical tape on there and then we'll wrap our duplex wire or our jacketed wire, up to the front of the vehicle. Doing our duplex wire up to the front, typically you would run it same side as your battery is on. However, we're gonna have to install a couple of circuit breakers, and there's not a whole lot of room on the driver's side where the battery is. So what I did, is I ran my duplex wire, or my jacketed wire, across the back of my hitch and then routed it underneath my heat shield. When we're routing this, we want to make sure we're staying away from anything hot or moving. metal tapping I went over top my rear suspension, went over top these factory lines, followed these factory lines straight down, and then we have a panel. This panel runs from here, all the way up to the front. On the outside, take a 10-millimeter socket, and it has little plastic nuts. You're gonna take them off all on one side, you can pull this down, and you can just tuck your wire up inside. From the top, what I did is took an air line tube and I ran it down right up against the firewall. And then I took my jacketed wire, taped it on the end. Now I can go up top and I can pull this up, and it'll pull it tight up against that firewall. Again, so we're staying away from anything hot or moving. In your kit, you're gonna get three circuit breakers. You need to determine, whatever brake controller you're using is gonna determine what circuit breakers you're using. For the Curt Spectrum, we're gonna be using the 30-amp and the 40-amp. We need to find somewhere in metal to mount these, and the reason I came over to the passenger side is because we have this large bracket right here, or this large a part of the body where we can mount them. I'm gonna mount one here, and then the other one right next to it. sharp bang in background To make it easier on myself, I'm gonna take a 10-millimeter socket, remove the two nuts up here, or the two bolts, and then the one down here. And we're just gonna kind of move this out of the way just a little bit. loud machine noises I'll just take that, and set off to the side like that. Now I was going to mount two of 'em up here; I think I'm just going to mount one and I'll mount the other one right down here. It might be easier if you take your self-tapper, do a hole first, or at least start it. drilling sounds drilling Sounds drilling sounds Then we can take our circuit breaker; go ahead and get one, drilling sounds screw in, and we can come back and get, install the other one. Then we'll do the same thing with the one right down here. drilling sounds banging noises in background Get my wire pulled over. metal bang Then we have some factory hard lines here. I'm gonna zip tie that wire there, anywhere in here, to help keep it from dropping back down. So now what we need to do, is we need to split this jacket to separate our wires. Somewhere back in here, we're going to take our white wire and it's going directly across. Our black wire is going to be connecting to our two circuit breakers. noises as jacket is cut So this is gonna give me extra white wire going that way. I'm gonna strip it back a little bit more here. Now I can take this wire, and just kinda plastic hitting engine throw that way for now. clipping sound Now we're gonna take our black wire, we're gonna go to our 40-amp circuit breaker. Uh, that's gonna to be my top one that I'm mounted here. We're gonna measure it up, where we need it. sound of wire being clipped We're gonna cut it to length, strip back the end. thunk as wire is stripped We're gonna add one of the small ring terminals that comes in the kit. We're going to add it on to the sound of something rubbing on metal silver post on our circuit breaker. We'll take our extra black wire, sound of wire being clipped, then tool being set down we'll strip back one end, we're gonna add on another small ring terminal. faint music playing We're gonna add that on to the copper post. We're gonna wrap this one over to the positive side of our battery. sound Of wires hitting vehicle If you look right here, there's some factory wiring, right against the firewall; I'm just gonna follow that, zip tie it along the way. My battery sits right over in front of my air breather. And where your battery is, there's a sleeve here for your air box; this is just gonna pop out tap and then your battery is located right here. Now the way we ran this, voices in background our black wire, we're not gonna have enough. Typically what we do is, we cut it. We'd go from the battery back over to the 30-amp, and then from the 30-amp, inside the vehicle. We're not gonna have enough, so it is going to require a little bit of extra wire. We'll take our white wire and we'll lay off to the side like that. We're going to leave this black wire hanging here; we're not going to connect 'em to the battery yet. We're gonna get some extra wire, and now we're gonna go from the 30-amp over. Now our extra black wire, our 30-amp circuit breaker, we're going to go from the copper post, we're gonna route it over the same way we did our other ones. And that one is gonna get connected to the battery. To help keep us from getting our wires confused, what I'm going to do, I'm gonna go ahead and cut these to length, I'm gonna add on my two large ring terminals, I'm just not gonna connect them to the battery. That way we don't get 'em confused with the other black wire we have to run inside. tool being set down Well, the two large ring terminals are going to the positive side of the battery: we're just gonna leave them hang for now. The silver post, I'll install a nut, voices in background route this wire across. Go ahead and get our wires zip-tied up, so they're not hanging. sound Of wires tapping against vehicle Next what we need to do is we need to get to a grommet that's right back here on the firewall. With our air box in place, sound Of socket wrench turning it's kind of hard to get to it, so there's a bolt right here in this corner. Go ahead and remove this clamp. sound Of socket wrench turning Let's see if we can't get our box out of the way enough where we can get back in there. We're gonna have a bolt in each corner here on the front side of our lid. loud drill motor noise air box lid being pulled out I'm gonna slide this off. So from here, sound of tools being set on engine it's up to you, um, it seems like we have enough room to get to our grommet there. You can either work with it like this, or if you want to pull your whole box out, right down on the bottom, right there, you remove that and you can pull this large jug out. There's your grommet right back there. It's gonna be right to the right of your brake booster. I'm taking a long, small screwdriver, to see if I can poke a hole in it from here. I may end up having to move the box anyway. squeaking of plastic on plastic Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take this screwdriver out, I'm gonna take a couple of bigger size ones, and I'm gonna make that hole bigger. What we don't want to do, is we don't want to just go jump up to a huge screwdriver to make that hole, 'cause we'd take a chance of pushing the grommet out. squeaking of plastic on plastic So there's gonna be two grommets under the dash. They'll be one lower; you're going to go to the one above it. It's gonna be to the left side of your brake pedal. Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna try and get my white wire, or my black, either one, through both holes to the inside. And then I can take my other wire and tape it to it, and that'll allow me to pull the other one in. Now from the inside, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take an air line tube, and I'm gonna push it through that hole, which will allow me to bring my wires in. And it may be easier if you have someone on the outside that can tell you where you're, if you're close to the outside hole. voices in background So I'm gonna take my air line tube, tape my wires to it, and then we can pull them inside the vehicle. plastic tapping sound You're gonna have a little connector; it's gonna come like this. You want to make sure that this lid is open; we're gonna turn it, face it down. You're gonna have six colored wires. We can start at either end. I'm gonna start from the right end, if we're looking at it. The very end one, we're not gonna use. We're gonna go to the second one in, we're gonna insert the red one. The next one, we're gonna insert the black one. Next, this is gonna be blue. sniffing noise Next will be brown, and green. And then last will be white. And then our very end one, again on each end, is gonna be open. So if you'll notice the ends, they need to come all the way up to the edge of this connector here. Once you get them in where they're going to stay you can close this lid down, and snap it into place. Once we have our black and our white wire ran through the firewall, next we need to find our brake signal for our wire to connect to. Since we can't tap into the brake light switch on the brake pedal, driver's side kick panel, right above it, you're gonna have a plastic block and it has a bunch of different factory wires going into it. What you're gonna do is you're going to follow it all the way to the top, the plug all the way to the right side, which is gonna be the closest one to the firewall. You're gonna find the green wire with a white stripe. Kit's gonna come with a quick splice connector. You're gonna take a piece of wire and you need to attach the quick splice connector onto the green wire with the white stripe and add a length of whatever color wire you're going to use. I'm using red wire because we're going to be using, or tapping into, the red wire on the brake controller itself. Now if we're using an adapter. Adapter doesn't come with your kit; you can find it here at etrailer. On the end, you're gonna have four wires: black, blue, red, and white. We're gonna take the black and blue, and red and white. They should be stripped back. You're gonna get butt connectors in your kit; we're gonna add one on to each end. pliers being set down We're gonna take our black wire that we ran through the firewall, we're gonna cut it down, clipping sound strip back the end. plastic tapping We're gonna add it to the black wire on our adapter plug. clipping sound We're gonna do that same thing, white to blue and red to red. For my white wire, this is gonna be my ground. I need to extend it, so I can ground it somewhere, either behind this panel or up on the firewall to a metal surface. I'm gonna use the extra wire that we cut off; you can use the black or the white, it doesn't really matter. I cut a little hole in the plastic to get to the metal part of the firewall. So my ground wire, tapping on Plastic there's a bunch of plastic here, and I wasn't able to get over into this side, so what I did is I cut a hole in it, removed the backing, so I can get to the metal surface of the firewall. Add in my ring terminal, self-tapper, and grounded my wire right to the body. Now I'm gonna take my control unit connect it into the end of the plug that we just did all of our wiring on. This is gonna have to be mounted to a solid surface. You want to make sure you don't zip tie it to any factory wiring. Think what I'm gonna do, scratching sound I'm gonna mount it right up here on the kick panel. Now there's a couple ways you can do this. It's gonna come with a couple of self-tappers, or it's gonna come with two-sided sticky tape. I am going to use the two-sided sticky tape, just in case customer decides they want to move it to a different location. Now, one thing you gotta keep in mind is where you're gonna be mounting the actual controller itself. I'm gonna be mounting mine, um, it's gonna be closer to the, to the driver's door. So if you are going to be mounting your controller more towards the center of the dash, you might want to test it, make sure that everything's gonna reach, before you would mount this over here. paper ripping off sticky tape I'm gonna make sure that end right there is facing the direction wherever you're gonna be mounting your actual controller itself. Get this up here as high as we can get it, clipping sound take our actual controller, get it plugged into the end. tapping as piece plugged in Next you're gonna mount my controller right here. Now, it's gonna come with two different ways to mount this as well. You've got the two-sided sticky tape, or it has an actual mounting plate that you would drill into the dash. I'm not gonna drill it into the dash just in case the customer wants to move it later. Stick it right on the back, make sure wherever you're gonna be sticking it, if you're using the two-sided tape, that it's clean. I'm just gonna take my wire, I'm gonna tuck it right in back behind this panel right here. Once I get it all the way tucked in, all the way down underneath the dash, and I can kind of clean up everything else and zip tie that to some factory wiring. And we're gonna take a 10-millimeter socket. I'm going to loosen this, this is our positive post, or drump post. metal taps And then connect my two black wires. ratcheting Once we get those off, we'll go ahead and test out our brake controller and then we can start putting everything back together. Now we'll test it out. voices in background We have lights, which means we have power. Now we're gonna test our seven-volt plug, to make sure it's connecting with our brake controller. Left turn, right turn, brakes, running lights, brake controller. That's gonna do it for a look at an installation on the Curt Spectrum brake controller, along with the ETBC7, on 2020 Chrysler Pacifica..