Hopkins Endurance Easy-Pull Y-Harness with 4-Pole Flat Trailer Connector - Trailer End - 20'

Video Transcript for Hopkins Endurance Easy-Pull Y-Harness Review

Randy: Hey guys, it's Randy here at etrailer.com. Today we're taking a look at a Y-Harness from Hopkins. This is their Endurance Easy-Pull. As you can see quite a bit different than what a standard four pole flat is going to be, gives us a spot to actually be able to put our finger in there. It gives us a lot more purchase when we go to pull this out of our vehicle. I really like it, it saves a lot of that twisting back and forth that you get, most of the time or after a while anyway, that's going to damage one of your three signal lines that come in, or it can cause you to break your ground stud off inside there.

This is kind of what a more traditional, this is a five flat, but with a four flat is going to look like, of course, without these and just getting a hold of it and getting it pulled out, most of the time you wind up pulling by the wires, which just causes damage to the plug.So by using this, we're really going to take care of that problem. We're not going to have to worry so much about the damage that's caused there or trying to get it separated and twisting and causing damage to our wires. I'm also going to have a cap that's going to come over and protect that when not in use. We've added on this wire loom here, we'll show you that during the installation, we can get a really nice clean look to it. And it is a Y-Harness, the thing I like about it, though, the wires aren't separated.

Sometimes with these Y-harnesses, you have four wires and you need to run two of them down each side of the trailer. We still need to run two of those down each side of the trailer, but they're bonded together.So we're just pulling essentially one wire on the way back, I liked that. And then of course, we're going to have our ground that comes off this, we'll attach it over to the side. This is 20 foot long, so I think ideally, you're going to be looking at those 14 to 16 foot long trailers. I think 20 foot trailers, you're stretching it a little bit.

I would say on an 18 or a 20 foot trailer, you need to look for something 25 or 30 foot long. It's not that it's not long enough to reach from one end of your trailer to the other. It's just that a lot of times you're going to route those different ways. So in this one, we go back, we go over and then back again. Well, that's taken up four feet, two foot, three foot on each side.So just want to make sure you have plenty, but overall for smaller utility trailers, like what we're going to be working on here, this is an ideal solution.

I like the Hopkins Endurance line, they seem to be a little bit more robust, a little bit stronger. And the wiring is even going to be labeled left, turn, right turn, tail lights, if you get color blind situation, they've got those labeled on there too. So you won't have to fool with trying to figure out exactly which one's which. Now to begin our installation of course we want to get the old wiring just completely stripped off of our trailer. This is going to give us a complete replacement so we don't have to worry about any of the old stuff. Here's one thing to keep in mind though, when you do this, some trailers like this one, for instance, the wiring runs through the hollow tongue here.So if we just strip all that wiring out, it'll be out of our way, but we can use this to assist us. So what we'll do is take the end of our wiring harness here. We're going to attach it to that. So then when we pull that old wiring through, it's going to pull it through for us. Our new wiring will be coming right in behind it. Now, generally on these Y-Harnesses, this is what it's going to look like. You'll have two wires coming off and then you're going to have a ground wire coming off. Now, what I like to do in this situation is to tape this up and put some wire loom around it. One thing you do want to be sure is that you have enough link here.You don't want to run into a situation where you get connected, but then you can't connect to your truck because you've got this too short. So check the towing vehicle, check your trailer, see what kind of relation you'll need. And if it's going to be used on multiple vehicles, don't be afraid to leave this a little bit longer. You can see as I loom that up, I let my white wire come out. It's got the ring terminal on it, this is going to provide our ground to the rest of our trailer. So I give it a little bit of slack there I don't want it to be pulled tight up against that sharp edge. And I'm just going to use a self-tapping screw and we'll secure it in right there.Now, as I route these back anywhere else that I have sharp edges, like right here, it's going to come down and across, I'm going to use wire loom there. I don't want this to wind up rubbing and making contact. That's what starts blowing fuses and causing us issues with our lights. So take good care as you route these, you need to make sure that the yellow is going towards the driver's side of the trailer. And our green is going to go towards the passenger side of the trailer. So here again, guys, we have a wire coming around that sharp edge. That's where I'm going to use that wire loom. So hopefully the tips and tricks are enough to help you get through your trailer and avoid any of the problems that generally occur, or the simple mistakes that we've seen made quite a bit that you don't really have to if you do it the right way, we'll just pick up back at the lights now.I mean, we're just going to continue to run it back every trailer is going to be a little bit different, but just avoid those few little things and they should last just about as long as you have the trailer. Now, generally on the back of your lights, you're going to have two wires that come off of it. The yellow one here on the driver's side, anyway, this is going to be for our turn and brake signal.So that needs to go to the side that has the wires strike the yellow stripe, rather on our harness. The brown one's going to go to our solid color wire this one's going to be for running lights. So we're going to strip both sides back now. Keep in mind, you could trim this off and trim this off and make it a nice little short one. But I like storing extra wire right up in this area. I don't think we have any issues in case we ever need to change a light. We have a short somewhere we've got extra wire there, so that's why I'm going to do it that way. So just add a heat shrink under the end of each one of these.Now we'll use our heat source and shrink them down. And we'll bring in a zip tie just to kind of bundle it up. Now to test it and make sure everything's working, you can either use a trailer tester or just hook it up to your vehicle. Where you want to turn on your running lights, make sure they're working good on both sides. Then we can try our left turn signal, our right turn signal, and our brakes. Looks like everything here is working as it should..