Trailer Brake Controller Installation - 2006 Ford Ranger
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How to Install a Brake Controller for a Trailer on a 2006 Ford Ranger
We show you here how to hardwire your vehicle with an electric brake controller. We are using the popular Tekonsha Prodigy and using our Brake Controller 7 and 4 Way Installation Kit, ETBC7, to set this 2006 Ford Ranger up to tow a trailer with electric brakes. Even though the truck is not pre wired to accept a brake controller it can be done allowing you to safely tow campers, utility trailers, horse or livestock trailers and more.
For the installation of this brake controller we are also going to be using our brake control installation kit, code number ETBC7 which comes with your basic 7 pole connector, the bracket to mount it, 25 feet of double bonded wire, and all the connectors needed as well. We are going to start here in the rear and go ahead and mount our electrical plug. We want to find a suitable grounding point for the mounting bracket itself. Most of the time you can mount it directly to the hitch, on this particular one there is not a substantial enough mounting area for the bracket so we are going to go ahead mount it directly to the bumper. For the seven and four pole adapter, if you do not have one pre-existing, you need to mount a four pole on the vehicle. This particular one has a factory four pole on it, so we are going to plug it directly into there. I went ahead and plugged in our four pole adapter here into the four pole on the Ford. On this particular model, you can kind of see this comes with a jacketing around it. With most four poles that is OK, but the Ford has a jacketing around its four pole as well.
This means the two will not merge together so I had to shave the jacketing off of our connector here to make it work. Now we want to go ahead and ground this ground wire here, so we have to find a suitable grounding point somewhere on the frame of the vehicle. We are also going to connect our double bonded wire that came with our ETBC7 to the two leads on our adapter. We are going to connect the white to the blue which is the outgoing brake lead, this one is going to go directly to the brake controller, the blue wire off the brake controller, excuse me. The black we are going to connect to the black, and that is actually a hot lead which is going to connect directly to the positive side of the battery. We made all of our connections here on the adapter, now we are going to route the double bonded wire up the drivers side frame rail to up under the hood. We went ahead and we routed the double bonded wire down the driver side frame rail and now we are up under the hood where we pull the wire through. At this point the white wire that is inside this double bonded wire needs to go inside the cab and hook directly to the blue wire on the brake controller that we are going to mount here in a minute. The black wire that is inside here we need to mount to a circuit breaker and then have that lead of the circuit breaker go directly to the positive side of the battery. So, the first thing to do is to go back to the parts from the ETBC7, here is the circuit breaker that we are going to need to run our lines from the black wire in this double bonded wire. We need to find a spot to mount this here on the cab. I am going to go ahead and remove this utility box, two screws right here need to be taken off. We can pull this out of the way which will give us access to the metal behind here where I can mount the circuit breaker to. So I am going to go ahead and do that now. We are also going to need to mount a circuit breaker for the brake controller itself which is the 30 amp breaker. I am going to mount it side by side with this other one while I have this area opened up.
As you can see I went ahead and mounted the two circuit breakers I was referring to. This spot here, like I said, is actually behind the bracket that holds the fuse block, so you do need to make sure and mark your holes and double check your spacing so that the circuit breakers do not hit the bracket of the fuse block after you install it. At this point I am going to go ahead and mount the black wire that comes back from the plug to my 40 amp circuit breaker, then I am going to route the hot and the ground from my brake controller up to my 30 amp breaker that is right here as well. Now we will go inside the cab so I can show you how to route the wires.
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