Roadmaster Universal Diode Wiring Kit Installation - 2022 Chevrolet Colorado
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How to Install the Roadmaster Universal Diode Wiring Kit on a 2022 Chevrolet Colorado
Hey everybody, Ryan here at eTrailer. Today on our 2022 Chevy Colorado, we're gonna be showing you how to install the Road master diode wiring kit. But before we do that, why don't we check it out and make sure this will be the right setup for you. So, before we get too carried away talking about the diodes and how they work and everything else, I figured it'd be useful just to take a minute and refresh yourselves and kind of touch base on the main components that we're gonna need to flat-tow our Colorado down the road in the first place. There's gonna be a total of five main parts that you're gonna need. The first one is going to be the base plate and that's gonna provide us with a solid and reliable attachment point.
That way we can hook our tow-bar up to it. And the tow-bar is gonna be the second component. That's gonna be the physical link that actually connects the front of your vehicle to the back of your motor home. The third main component is going to be safety cables and these are just there in the event of an unlikely disconnect. They're gonna keep everything paired together.
The fourth main component is going to be tow-bar wiring. And what this is gonna do is transfer the lighting functions from the back of your motor home to the back of your Chevy, keeping you safe and legal. And last but not least, the fifth main part will be a supplemental breaking system. And what this is gonna do is apply the brakes in your Colorado whenever you hit the brakes in your RV, helping to bring you to a more predictable and complete stop. There are a couple more parts that aren't absolutely necessary, but I definitely like to recommend just to give you a good experience, overall.
And one of them is what's called a battery charge line. And what that's gonna do is essentially maintain or trickle charge your truck's battery whenever you're flat-towing it behind your motor home, that way, you know, it won't be drained from the braking system. A lot of times, the supplemental braking systems are gonna use your truck's battery power. So what happens over time, you know, that keep using power and power and power and you just run outta juice. And so that's where that charge line is gonna come into play.
It's gonna keep your battery full. That way, when you get to where you're going you'll hit the key and everything will start up. And the other thing that I suggest for the Colorado is what's called the automatic battery disconnect. And I always recommend this for these trucks because with these, whenever you flat-tow them you have to disconnect the battery. And so that really leaves you a couple of choices. One of them being to pop the hood undo the battery whenever you're flat-towing it. Hook it back up whenever you're ready to start your truck. And I mean, is it doable Sure. It'd probably get annoying over time. And that's where something like this would come into play. All right. So, instead of having to deal with all that you simply just push the button, it disconnects the battery. Whenever you're ready to start the truck, push it again. Power comes on and you're ready to roll. And this is a perfect example on how the diode wiring is gonna work. So, we have the left turn signal going on our motor home and it's sending that signal back here to our Colorado's tail light. So it mimics it. And not only is it gonna work for left turn, but also the right turn and your brake lights and your tail lights. So, you'll have all your bases covered as far as that goes. And honestly, you know, this is probably the best option in terms of getting, you know, tow-bar wiring. And I say that because once this is installed it's gonna look completely factory. It's super easy to hook up. You literally just plug it in. Which, will show you that in a minute. And you're not even gonna really know it's there. You know what I mean And they're just, they're reliable. They flat out work. We've had a lot of good luck with them. As opposed to some of the other types. Magnetic lighting, for example. Will it work Sure. But does it make the most sense I don't think so. It's you have to set them up every single time that you want to use them. They stick to the body of your vehicle. And I would assume this is steel. Some trucks are aluminum now so you can't even use them to begin with. Even if even say, if the Colorado did have a steel bed, which it might, probably does. But you still have to run your wires all the way up to the front, plug them in, do that every time you want a flat-tow. Then take all that stuff off whenever you're ready to drive your truck around. And then store it. You got a big old box of wires and lights and stuff. And you know how storage is when you're over the road trying to flat-tow and everything else. So, you know, when it comes down to it, diode wiring kit, it just flat out works and and makes the most sense, at least to me. So, here at the front, whenever you are ready to hook up and flat-tow, you're just gonna have your cable here that you plug into the connector in the front of your truck and then to the back of your motor home. And that's it. You don't have to turn anything on or mess around with it or anything like that. Which brings me to my next point. There's several different kits available and pretty much all of them, the only difference is, they're gonna have different types of cables. And so I just want to go over that to make sure you get the right one. For example, the kit that we're using here today is what I like to call the bare bones kit. You kind of just get the wiring and the diodes and a couple of connectors and things like that. And that's for those of you that have purchased a tow-bar that comes with the cable and the connector. Perfect example, our Road master Nighthawk here today, comes with those components so why buy them again Right You can just get the bare bones kit. You already have the parts from your tow-bar. You'll be good to go. But for those of you that have a tow bar that doesn't come included with these components, you're gonna need a full kit, right So, all the other ones are gonna come with the wiring, the diodes, the buck connectors, and and small ins and outs and really just a different type of cable. So, probably by far, one of the most popular ones is the kit that has this coiled cable, seven to six. I guess that probably the most popular. That's gonna be for those of you that have tow-bars that do not have a channel on the side of it. So like this one, you can see our wiring kind of runs through the tow-bar. If your tow-bar doesn't have that, this is what you want. There's also the kit identical. This is just a seven to four way round. You know, honestly, you might as well just get the six. It's kind of the same thing. But at least with the six way one that I just showed you, it'll give you an opportunity to have a couple of open connectors if you ever need to use them. For those of you that have a tow-bar with channels in it, you can either get the straight one which it'll allow you to run through there. Or one that's like on this, this is the hybrid. So it's partly coiled here and then straight this one's really long. So if you happen to have high, low adapter, or, you know a lot of distance in between, you know this would be a good option for those of you that have those channels on the tow-bar. And then you have this one. This is probably the least popular. This is just a four way flat to four way flat. You know, if that's what your motor home has, you have an older motor home or something like that, this is always an option. But like I said, probably the, the least popular out of the bunch, but it is still available. So, hopefully that kind of clears things up for you and gets you going in the right direction in terms of what kit is gonna be best for your particular situation. So, when it comes down to it, a kit you really can't go wrong with . you know, I've done a lot of these on tons of different vehicles and and always had pretty good luck with them. It's very rare that we see one come back with an issue. And usually if you do see that it's something that a connector just worked loose or something very simple. So, if you're looking for something that's easy to use easy to figure out, you know, definitely a choice worth considering As far as getting this installed, really not too bad, everything's pretty straightforward. It does take some time just having to route all the wires and stuff. But as long as you stay focused, really shouldn't run in too many issues. If you'd like to see how that's done though, feel free to follow along. We'll go ahead, pull into the garage and put it on together now. To begin our installation, we're gonna be here at the front of our truck and we're gonna get our wiring hooked up. Obviously, I have the front fascia removed and that's because I'm doing this at the same time that we're doing our base plate. That's what I suggest doing, gives you a little more room to work, but it can be done with the fascia and stuff in place. But with that said we need to take our wiring, and you're gonna run, you know, one end of it through your bracket or wherever you're plan on mountain this up. And I wanna mention, whether you're doing your diode wiring or your charge line, if you did get a charge line, probably makes sense to do all this at once, right Because a lot of the wiring gets ran to the same spots and so on. So, with that said, we'll go ahead and do our diodes first. And what you're gonna want to do is carefully cut in between the wires. You need to separate them back. And you wanna strip back the insulation a little bit, and give these wires a good twist as well. So, I'll do that same thing for the remaining wires here. I can grab our wiring and you're gonna slide the rubber dust cover over the ends of it. And then we can grab our connector plug and get these hooked up. So, the terminals here, how they're gonna work is you simply just back out the set screw little ways and then you'll slide the wire in and tighten this down. So, we're gonna be using four of them for our diode wiring. TM which is taillight for the brown wire will go there. GD is ground, so the white wire will go there. LT is left turn, so the yellow wire will go to it. And RT is right turn, so the green wire will go into it. So, we'll go ahead, grab the appropriate wire, place an end of the terminal and using a screwdriver will simply just snug this down. Then repeat that same process to get the rest of our wired installed. Here's what the diode wiring is gonna look like whenever you have it all hooked up. And since I'm doing the charge line as well I'll go ahead and get that hooked up next. With our wiring hooked up we can then take our dust cover, slide that over. You can apply some dielectric grease and some sealer and stuff in here to help keep the terminals protected. But I usually wait till the very end to do all that. That way, if you have to get back in here it's not a huge mess. But we'll slide the dust cover over and push it into our bracket. And I'm just going to secure it. Got some self-tapping screws here. We can get our wiring routed up into the engine compartment now. So it just comes out of our plug over through here and essentially just right up, kind of behind our headlight where it goes into the engine compartment. Here's where our wiring comes up and what I've done is taken our white wire, you can actually split it. So, if you go to the other end, you can peel this apart. And I'm gonna go to about here somewhere in this area and I'm gonna actually cut this wire. You wanna hold on to the other portion that was on the other side of our wiring there 'cause we will be using it here in a little while. We're gonna strip that insulation back. Gonna twist and then we can crimp on a ring terminal. It's gonna be crimped on. This is gonna be a ground. And it turns out right here in this area we have good, flat, clean sheet metal. And so I'm gonna take the self tapping screw that they give you, put it through our ring terminal and secure this to the body of our vehicle. With that ground hooked up we can now continue to route our wiring. So, I just ran it along the side here, where it drops down along the firewall and to the underside of our vehicle. So, underneath the vehicle, our wiring . it's gonna drop down right here along our . I believe there are factory brake lines . and then I just continue to route it towards the back of our truck. So, I just went through here and essentially along the side of our frame. There's a big bundle of factory wires. So I use some zip ties along the way to secure it. When you're doing this do your best to avoid any hot or moving parts. But this truck's pretty easy, pretty wide open there. I just continued to route it along. And then in here it kind of tucks off into the inside and starts to run along the inside portion of our frame. Well, it's kind of run up through here. It's kinda hard to see for, for the moment. But up here is where it comes out and goes up and over our shock absorber there and along the side of our spare tire. And then, right here, what I've done . I pulled the green wire off of our yellow and brown and then that white wire that we have left over from our ground, I taped that to the end of our yellow and brown. This will eventually run up into the taillight pocket there on our driver's side. Then the other length of our other end of our white wire as well as the green wire, I ran to the passenger side. So, and I just ran it along the back side of our bumper there. Up through here where the wires end. And now we can kind of just let this hang for now. We'll go up top, get our taillights out and get all the wires pulled up in place. Now to get the taillights removed. If you drop down the tailgate on the side here we're gonna have two T-15 torch them screws. I'm gonna pull these out. You should be able to grab the taillight, Kind of work it. Pull straight back on it. And then we'll disconnect our wiring. So here we just have a clip. You can pop that off. And then the bulbs are just quarter turns. You turn them loose and get them removed. So, I'll set our taillight off to the side and then do the same thing to get the other one removed. So, I went ahead, grabbed our wiring, pulled it up into the taillight pocket here. And then I stripped back the ends of the insulation. So yellow one crimp on a blue spade terminal and then the white and brown wire . What you're gonna do is twist the bear ends together try to get them tight so they don't wanna come apart on you. And with those, you're gonna take a yellow connector there put it over both ends of the wire and crimp it down. And then we can get ready to tie into our factory wiring. So, this is the ball that will be at the top. That's the one we're gonna be working with. And I tested the wires. I just used a test light to figure out what signals do what. So, orange wire is our taillight signal. This here, gray wire, that's gonna be for a stop and turn. And so I'll cut those in half, about in the middle there. All four ends, you're gonna strip back the insulation. Give those wires there a twist. And all four ends are gonna receive one of the blue terminals. So, go ahead and repeat that process to get the rest of them done. So, we got all these crimped on. That's what it looks like. We take our diodes and these, I just stuck them together. There's some sticky tape on the back. And the side that has a single terminal, the outside, we're gonna plug those in closest to our light bulb. All like that. Then, obviously, just color for color. So, gray wire will go to there. Orange to orange. And as far as our new trailer or our new wiring goes . since the factory orange wires are our taillight signal, we're gonna take the brown and white wire, plug that into that diode. And with the gray wire being for our stop and turn, we can take the yellow and plug it into that diode. With those diodes hooked up, I just zip tied them to our factory harness here and get all the bulbs plugged back in. And once that is done, you can simply just reinstall our tail light the opposite way that we removed it. Over here on the passenger side, I essentially did the same exact thing. Even the color of the factory wires are identical. So, what I did, the new white wire, that being the taillight signal, we plug that into the diode with the factory orange. And the new green wire, with that being our stop and turn, that plugged into the diode that has the factory gray wires. So, essentially identical on how we hook this up. But now that this is done, we'll get our light put back in and then we can test everything. Test our wiring, I simply just plugged into a test box. Chances are pretty good you're not gonna have one of these, so you can use your motor home, but keep in mind, if your motor home has issues with it's seven way connector, then that's gonna translate back to this. So, something to think about, but with that said, we'll try our taillights. My left turn signal. Our right turn signal and our brake lights. And that'll finish up our look at and our insulation of the Road master diode wiring kit on our 2022 Chevrolet Colorado..
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