Video Transcript for How to Set Up Your Tekonsha T-One Vehicle Wiring Harness - 2024 BMW X3

Hi everyone, Bruce here at Etrailer. Today we're gonna take a look at and install the Tekonsha T connector wiring harness with four pole wiring on our 2024 BMW X3. You may be wondering why you would want a four pole wiring or trailer wiring. And the reason is if you're getting a hitch, you may want to haul a small utility trailer, and that way you're covered, you've got your signals on the back of your utility trailer. Now this also can be used if you've got a cargo carrier that has lighting on it. This will work for that as well.

I really recommend that if you are getting a trailer hitch receiver, go ahead and do the wiring at the same time. This particular vehicle, we already had the taillights out to go ahead and put the hitch in, so you might as well go ahead and do the wiring along with it. That just does open up more options for you. Now as far as that being said, as far as the installation goes, it is fairly simple. It is a plug and play.

There is no cutting into factory wiring. Now if you don't want to try this at home, check out our dealer locator on etrailer.com. But if you do want to try it on your own, stick around. I'll show you how. To begin our installation, we do need to remove the tail lights.

Now we're gonna be working on the driver's side. Just remember, whatever we do to the driver's side, we're gonna do to the passenger side as well. So let's go ahead and get started. I need to grab a trim tool, and we've got a little plastic rivet here that we do need to remove. Now with our trim panel tool, we're just gonna reach up under here.

Now if you don't have a trim panel tool, you can use a screwdriver, or we do carry these at Etrailer. Just gotta get up underneath her. And then we're just gonna pry it off. Go ahead and set that aside. Now that you've got that out, just go ahead and grab this piece, pull it straight out, and you can go ahead and set that aside. We're gonna grab a 10 millimeter, and we've got two 10 millimeter nuts here that we do need to remove. So there is a panel right here that we do need to remove because there is a 10 millimeter bolt holding the light in. So just lift up on it and pull straight out. Go ahead and set that aside. And if we look up in here, you'll see a 10 millimeter bolt right here. That's the one we need to remove. We're taking a little magnet here, it's gonna make it easier to get that out so I don't drop it. I may need to loosen it up a little more. And go ahead and set it aside. Once you do have those nuts off and then that bolt on the inside, we can just grab our tail light and pull out. Now be careful because it is gonna be plugged in and we do need to remove the plug. So there's a little button here that we need to push, push that and go ahead and unplug the light and we can set our light aside. Now that you do have your tail lights out, we do need to go ahead and take the back cover out of the hatch back, and it's gonna be a T40 Torx. You're gonna have one on the driver's side, and then you're gonna have one on the passenger side. Go ahead and remove those. And set that aside and do the other side. Once you do have those Torx bolts out, we could just go ahead and lift our panel out and set it aside. Now we need to go ahead and get this inner piece out. So we've got a little pop pin here, just a screwdriver, and you're gonna turn it, it should pop right up. Now we've got a push pin, we'll get that push pin out and pull that out, and we're gonna do the same thing to the other side. Now that you've got those out, we can go ahead and take this whole piece and just set it up here. That's gonna give us access to our battery. Now we're gonna take our yellow and brown, which is gonna go to our left tail light, and our green will go to our right tail light. So working with our left tail light now, I just ran a little air line that I had laying around as a fish tape here, so we're gonna need to get our wiring back behind this panel. So I'm just gonna take our plugs and tape one of them to our fish line and pull it through. So here's our plug that originally plugged into our tail light. This is our wiring harness, the big plug, we're just gonna plug into the tail light and the other end will now go into our tail light. And we'll just pop it back through the hole, like so. Now on our right tail light, this is our plug for it, we're gonna pull that back through like we did on the left side. And again, we're gonna take the big end, and it's gonna plug into the factory plug. And then we'll send this back through the hole and plug our tail light in. Once you do have the wiring ran, we can go ahead and plug our lights back in and reinstall our lights. So let's do that now. And all we're gonna do is just plug these guys back in, make sure they're good and tight, and we can slide our light back in. And go ahead and grab the nuts. Tighten those up. And don't forget the one that goes in on the interior on the inside. And you're gonna do that same thing on the other side. Now we can go ahead and make our connections for our lights. So what we need to do here is we've got a fuse holder and make sure there's no fuse in it, which we don't. So we've got one butt connector put on here already, and then we will take our eyelet, and we'll go here and go ahead and crimp that down. Our other end, we're gonna take our black wire, and it's gonna go to our other side of our butt connector. Give that a crimp. Now these are heat shrink butt connectors, so we do need to heat that up real quick to get a nice good seal, even though it is on the interior of the vehicle. Now we're gonna go ahead and lift this red cover up here, and that's gonna give us access to a terminal that's not being used, and that is a 13 millimeter. We'll go ahead and take that nut off of there. Once you got that on there, all we need to do is go ahead and tighten that down. Replace our cover. And all we gotta do is go ahead and put our fuse in. Make sure you get that down in there, close the cap of it, and we can clean up our wiring and go ahead and test our wiring and make sure our tail lights and everything are working. Once you have everything put back in place and you went ahead and test your wiring, this does complete our installation of our T connector vehicle wiring harness with four pole wiring on our 2024 BMW X3. I'm Bruce, thanks for watching.