Disable Integrated Factory Brake Controller on 2015 GMC Sierra 3500 To Install RedArc Tow Pro Elite  

Question:

Expert Reply:

You're not the first person to have issues with their factory integrated brake controller, and I know a lot of customers choose the RedArc Tow Pro Elite # RED44FR as a replacement for this- so you've made a good choice. When referring to the differences in some of the answers, I can understand how some of that may be confusing. Some of the answers are newer than others, so information comes to light as we have experience with these vehicles that may change some of the processes we recommend using; the other thing to consider is that each expert may have their own way to accomplish the same thing. I don't know specifically which questions and answers you're referring to, so I'm just speaking from a general perspective but that is the most general way to explain why some answers may be different. We do make an effort to make sure that our answers are accurate and are updating them frequently to reflect new information as we see it become available.

With that being said, while we don't have precise information, such as an installation video on your specific 2015 GMC 3500HD and the RedArc Tow Pro Elite, installing a brake controller is a fairly straightforward process and I am confident that I can provide you with enough information to make you comfortable with handling it yourself-and hopefully clear up any questions along the way.

We can start with the plug and play harness- the main reason for this is the ease of installation; soldering wires under the dashboard of a car is difficult and time consuming (using butt connectors would be the preferred method). If you wanted to avoid the # 3016 harness, you could cut off the plug and wire everything in manually, but you would still want to run the new brake control wire as recommended (more on that next). If you decide to hard-wire, you'll want some heat shrink butt connectors # DW05745-5 to make your wire connections. The reason that you would want to run that wire from the plug in wiring adapter # 3016 is that you're bypassing the factory brake controller connection and creating a new brake controller wire; it is essentially taking the factory brake controller out of the equation and eliminating the wire that was controlling it and replacing it with a clean wire- this will also keep any dashboard messages from coming up. This wire is routed through the firewall and into the engine bay so that you have the ability to send the wire under the vehicle and then route it through to areas that it can be shielded from heat and moving parts.

To summarize everything together, you're going to want to disconnect the factory brake controller plug from the vehicle harness and install the # 3016 plug. You'll go about 4" behind the vehicle harness and cut the blue wire- this is where you'll splice in the new brake controller wire and run it through the firewall, and under the vehicle to the 7 way plug on the back of your vehicle. You'll want to pull out the wire at the 7 o'clock position (looking at the back of the connector) and replace that wire with the new wire that you've just run. Once you've completed that portion, you'll want to go back to the vehicle and finish installing your new RedArc Tow Pro Elite. You can plug the # 3016 into your Tow Pro Elite control module and then mount that anywhere in your vehicle (the ideal location is behind the dashboard or somewhere out of the way, but not exposed to the elements).

If you need additional wiring for this installation, you can get 10 gauge wire by the foot with # 10-1-1 in the event that you don't already have wire to run for the blue brake control wire. I have also attached the installation instructions for the RedArc Tow Pro Elite brake controller to this answer. Overall, you're really just cutting a wire behind the vehicle's brake controller plug and running a new wire back to your 7 way connector- this is going to be the most time consuming part of the job.

expert reply by: Erik B

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