How to Wire a Trailer

Video Transcript

"In this step we're going to talk about the proper procedure for installing our new wiring package. Now we have left and right side wiring, you're going to want to make sure you get those correct, and if you have any questions refer to the directions in your wiring package. We have a ground wire, ground wires going to always be white on this particular system. This wire is going to ground right up here to the front of the A frame on your utility trailer. We're going to go ahead and get the wiring procedure going, as you see we have more than enough wire to do this. The manufacturer supply you with about three times the amount necessary on purpose, so you're not going to have to use all of this. You're going to want to string it along the frame of your trailer with just enough tension that it stays up inside the C cup of your trailer. All the excess you're going to go ahead and trim off. Alright what we're going to do is lay out our wiring, in correspondence to our schematic. I've got a picture of it here, as you can see I am on the passenger side of the vehicle, or the right hand side. We're going to look for our right hand wires, as you can see it's labeled green. The green is going to be mated with another wire. And on this particular harness, the other wires are both brown. So really all you need to pay attention to is which ones the green one. As you can see I have my green and brown section here, and we're going to take and run this all the way by the channel, all the way back through to the very back of the trailer. From there we're going to cut off the excess. Go ahead then and take and slip this through one of the factory loops on the trailer. Now from there it only has one loop, I'm going to want to take and use the supplied wiring clips from here on out. There you go. You're going to want to make sure that you leave yourself enough wiring extra, so that you can attach your ground wire and have some play in this. Being that your vehicles side harness may not have a large pig tail on it. It's always no trouble to take and loop extra wiring together and put a zip tie, but you want to have more than enough instead of not enough. This is a wire retaining clip, as you can see on the bottom portion of the retaining clip it has some teeth sticking out. That's going to indicate the side that attaches to the steel portion of your utility trailer frame. On this side of the clip there are no teeth, that's going to be the part that supports your wiring. They just slide on to the frame in this direction, just like so. We're going to take and run our along the bottom portion. You may have to use a small hammer if you have tender hands like me to tap it in place. Once they're on they are difficult to remove. So make sure you have them spaced appropriately so you can get all your wires ran they need to go. Once you have the wiring clip installed, you can take your trailer wire and slip it into the loop. Just like so. We're going to continue running these clips along the frame in strategically spaced locations, so the wiring is supported all the way back to our lamp assemblies. Okay, what we've done here is laid the wire out like we said, and we've ran it through a hole on the trailer, and then split it right and left. This is the left hand wire, as you can see we're using the retainer supplied in the package here, and you're going to want to use those sparingly because they don't supply you a whole bunch of them. It's to keep the manufacturing cost down, so if you feel that you need additional support, a wire tie will work just fine. Now we've drilled a hole in the cross member here and run the wire through that. It's a good idea to perform that procedure, will take a little bit of extra time, but will save you a failure in the long run. If you run it underneath the piece of frame here it may get caught on something and tear off or develop a large what they call a snow booger on it and it may damage your wiring. We've continued in this procedure, drilling holes and mounting our clips all the way down the trailer frame. As you can see we have our wiring running along to another of the package supplied retaining clips. I punched another hole in the cross member here, and continued running it along, and as you can see I've got a clip there, drilled a hole in that one there. And as you can see the wiring takes a sharp right hand turn, right outside to where the lamp is going to be mounted. That is the proper service procedure for rerouting your new trailer hitch wiring."