Trailer Brake Controller Installation - 2009 Honda Odyssey
Customers compare ETBC7 to these similar products
Products Featured in this Video
How to Install a Brake Controller for a Trailer on a 2009 Honda Odyssey
Today we are going to install part number 90185 from Tekonsha, the Prodigy Brake Controller, and we will also use T-1 Connector part number 118438. And also we are going to use part number ETBC7 as the install kit for our 7-pole going up to our battery and the brake controller, on a 2009 Honda Odyssey. Our first step involved is we are actually going to install the T-connector first. Normally it installs behind this panel here, gets run underneath this threshold, and usually gets stored in the jack storage compartment. Since we are installing a brake controller and it is going to be using a 7-pole connector on top of it, so what is going to happen is we need to run our wire harness from the inside out. First off, we are going to take off this threshold here. We have to take off these anchor points. There are plastic pins throughout the bottom here, so what you need to do is pull this out gently until they pop out, like so. And once you have them all loose, just a gentle pull, pushing up on it, will pop the pins that are in here. The next step we are going to is we are going to go ahead and remove this panel. We will pull it out just a little bit so we can get access to the plug. The port is located on this assembly right here. It is on the top right-hand corner, and it is usually the only one that is open. And there is a separate ground right here which we attach to the factory ground right here. Next what we will do is we will secure our module here. And we will just put it back here - anywhere where it is convenient back behind the panel here. The next thing we want to do is go ahead and run our wire along the factory harness here, and then it will go straight down. And we have made a dimple right here where we are going to mark our - and drill a hole right here. So we are going to drill out a 1/2-inch hole. We drilled a 1/2-inch hole and installed a little simple, rubber grommet. Now what we are going to do is we are going to cut our wire up here and then we are going to feed it from the outside in. And we will make our reconnection up here. That way, at least we have some connections that are not outside all the time. We will go ahead and tape up our connections now, secure them up. And for now we are going to leave our access just like this. We will just put it underneath there - hide it underneath our carpet. And at this point we can go ahead and start putting the interior back together.
All right, this is the fuse panel on the passengers side of the vehicle, and you just pull this off, this little lid. And it is going to be number 5, counting over. Next we are going to install our bracket for our 7-pole. And we are actually going to use part number 18136 from Tow Ready. And this clamps into place like so. And we can actually cut off our excess, too. Or you can actually just fold it back out of the way, too, so you do not have any sharp edges. All right, next we are going to install our bracket. Normally, it actually attaches like this, which is kind of nice and neat. But the 7-pole itself actually sticks away from it about another 1/2 inch or so. So actually what we are going to do is we are going to take the bracket and flip it around this way. Then there is a little bit less chance of tripping over it. OK, next what we are going to do is just run some tape around the wires here just to help make it look nice, and a little easier to put the wire cover on at a later time - a little loom. Our white wire is going to go to ground, so that is going to get run through the body of the vehicle. And the purple wire is for the reverse light if we had to hook it up we would just simply run a wire to the reverse light. However, in this application we do not need to do that. Next we are going to hook up our wires that will go out to the front of the vehicle. This white wire is going to hook up to the blue wire, which in turn is going to get reconnected to the blue wire up front to the brake controller. And then the black wire is going to be our 12-volt power supply for the outlet on the 7-pole, and that is going to be black to black. We will go ahead and make those connections.
All right, we will put our 4-poles together. Let us go ahead and throw some dielectric grease in there. We can just bundle this behind the hitch and then zip-tie it to the back side of the hitch. For the ground, we will ground to the body next to the hitch. And we can start running our wires up front. All right, now we can start threading the wire up front. We will come around the trunk pan here and go behind this body mount here and on top of the frame of the suspension mount - the part that does not move, we want to stay above that. Let us follow the lead of this line right here and try to snake it over this plastic shield right here, run it up and toward the engine compartment, taking care we do not hit anything that is moving. Stay as close to the firewall as possible and you should be OK. OK, we have pulled up our wire and we came around our brake booster here and zip-tied to this main harness coming across here. And we just snaked our wire from behind the intake box here, and we will just come around and come up to our battery. And we will just leave it like that, just for now. And now I want to start looking at where to install our circuit breakers. There are only two good places, really, to install them. The 40-amp circuit breaker we probably will end up installing right here, where we have easy access for the drill. And then our 20-amp circuit breaker probably will mount right here. We will probably put it at an angle so we can get our drill inside here, because there is not much room between the battery and the air box here.
We have our circuit breakers installed. Now we will go ahead and just cut off our length because this black wire we are going to run up to our battery for our 12-volt power supply out back. We are going to have to hook up to this 40-amp circuit breaker here, and we will run it straight to our battery. The copper side is going to go straight to our battery, and the wire is going out back to the accessory side of our circuit breaker. We will go ahead and put our ring terminals on, but we will save connecting to our battery for the very last. When we cut our cable, we found out our leftover cable was a little bit too short, and actually we found out it is easy to use access point to get inside the vehicle to drill. However, we have to go back pretty far, so we ended up getting a 10-foot section of this brake cable here. And we basically are going to use an extension to go back in. So we are actually going to run to the positive side of the battery with the ground - and again, this is for the brake controller itself - through its own circuit breaker. And we backtracked our original wires coming up from the back all the way back down, underneath the drivers seat, on the right-hand side there is a grommet with a cable going through. We made a small slice in that grommet and ran our cable right through. And we came out right behind the center console. But at the same time, our white wire is going to be too short, also, even with our extra. So we went ahead and we are going to get another 10-foot chunk of our blue wire and will put it on here, match it to the blue wire going to the brake controller. Working on our cable that goes to the battery for the brake controller, let us go ahead and split it up. All right, again, we will save our connections for last for the battery. Let us go inside and start making our connections for the brake controller.
Our wires are run from underneath. We cut off the excess that we had, and there is about 1 foot left on the inside, so that will be plenty. So let us go ahead and strip our gray wire. We taped up our cable coming from the adapter for the Prodigy and basically kind of wrapped it up two-thirds of the way and then left the red wire out to go over to the brake light switch. And then we have got our three wires that we are just going to go ahead and hook up. Two are power supply wires going to the battery, and our blue wire going out to the 7-pole connector. Next we have to find out which wire coming off the brake switch here, we need to find the cold side, because it is only going to get hot when we press our pedal. That is the cold side of the brake light switch, so we will connect the red wire in this quick splice to that. All right, now let us take a few minutes to zip-tie our wires. We have just got this little bit left over to plug into our brake controller. Our brake controller is going to mount on the bottom of the dash, about right here. Take care to keep the brake controller where the center axis will be. All right, let us go back under the hood and make our final connections to the battery. Once our connections to the battery are complete, we will go ahead and check the brake controller and make sure it has power going to it. All right, we plug our tester into the wire harness in back, and it looks like we have got a C for connection, so the brake controller is getting power. We have the manual override, that works good too. All right, it looks like the brake controller is operating properly. And that covers it for our install of part number 90185 and part number 118438, and also part number ETBC7, on a 2009 Honda Odyssey.
Info for these parts were:
Video Edited:
Zack K
Video Edited:
Joshua S
Video Edited:
Patrick B
Video Edited:
Chris R
Test Fit:
Nicholas E
Video by:
Kathleen M
Installed by:
Cole B
At etrailer.com we provide the best information available about the products we sell. We take the quality of our information seriously so that you can get the right part the first time. Let us know if anything is missing or if you have any questions.