12 Volt Outlet Kit, 20 amps

Video Transcript for Roadmaster 12 Volt Outlet Kit Installation - 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited

Hey, everybody. Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, we're gonna be showing you how to install the Roadmaster 12 Volt Outlet Kit but before we do that, why don't we check it out and make sure that this is something you're actually gonna need. So what this 12 Volt Outlet Kit, what it's gonna do is give you a power source, that way you can plug in your braking system, your portable-type braking system. And honestly, a lot of the times we use this kit, that's exactly what it's for. A lot of portable-type braking systems have that end on it that it needs to be plugged into a cigarette-type lighter to get its power.

Not all of 'em have it, but many of 'em do. For example, the one that we have today is the Blue Ox Patriot 3. And the thing is with these Jeeps, there is an outlet in there from the factory but the issue is it's not active whenever you're flat towing. So you could plug it in there all day long and that braking system would never receive power. So this one that we're putting in will always have that power that you need to turn that braking system on.

Here's what that outlet kit is going to look like in your Jeep. And the nice thing about it, especially in our Jeep, we can mount it out of the way where it won't interfere with your driving, or it's not something you're gonna have to look at whenever you're just cruising around. But with that said, it's gonna be nice and close and easily accessible. Whenever you set your braking system in your floorboard, it's gonna be right there and really easy to get plugged in and get your braking system powered up. The 12 Volt Outlet Kit is going to be rated for 20 amps, which is more than enough for those portable-type braking systems, so you're not gonna have to worry about anything there.

And with that said, you just don't have to use this for a braking system. It's kinda just a generic 12 volt outlet so it always gives you another option. If you need to plug something else into there, you can. For example, let's say, one of those tire inflators if you need to air up something or anything like that. It's always an option.

You always have it there and you can use it for other things as well. Just to kinda give you guys an example on how this it's gonna work, I have our braking system in place, the one cord plugged in, and all we have left to do is take our power cord here. So just to show you, I'll plug into our factory outlet and we have nothing, and that's where the issue lies and that's what problem this part is going to fix. So take this and get it plugged in under the dash to our new outlet. With that plugged in, you can now hit power. You can see that the braking system turned on and is functioning like it should. Just to kinda compare this 12 volt outlet to some the other ones, honestly it's a little tricky to. This one's kinda in a league of its own, if you will. Kinda more directed towards that flat tow-type setup. Some of the other ones available are really, really basic. More or less, they're just giving you an outlet kinda. And using one of them, will it work Sure, but that could be a little more difficult to find a spot to mount up and a lot of 'em really don't come with anything other than the outlet. So you'll have to kinda put the kit together almost. With this one, it definitely gets you going in the right direction here on the Jeep. There is a few things that I had to change. I had to extend the wires a little bit, so you can expect to do that. Not by much. I might've had to use another three or four foot of wire in total just to get it to reach over to our battery. And what I did was also change out the original fuse holder. So this one has, comes with a fuse holder and absolutely nothing wrong with it, it's just the older style bus-type fuses. And I changed ours over to a more modern micro-type fuse holder. I didn't do that out of necessity, more or less out of convenience since I already had to kinda cut the wire sticks in them anyway. I figured why not put a more modern-type fuse in there, but when it comes to that, that's entirely up to you. As far as getting this installed, really straightforward. More or less you mount it up. There's a factory grommet that's easy to get to, that way you can run the wires into the engine compartment, and just by extending 'em a little bit, essentially you just hook it right up to the battery. So really shouldn't give you too many issues as long as you have that little bit of extra wire, couple butt connectors, and maybe some larger ring terminals to your a couple of 'em. You can make everything work, but having those extra small things definitely makes the process go a little bit smoother. But with that said, why don't we go ahead, pull into the garage, and put it on together now. To begin our installation, we're gonna be here inside of our Jeep on the driver's side and we're gonna be working kinda underneath the dash, over here towards the kick panel. So if you look here underneath the dash closest to the outside of our vehicle, we're gonna have a piece of metal, a piece of aluminum bracket, there from the factory and that gives us a perfect spot to mount up our outlet. And so what I've done is fed the outlet through the included bracket there, and simply used one of the provided self-tapping screws to secure the outlet bracket to that factory aluminum bracket. And that gives us a good spot out of the way to plug anything into it. Once that's done, we need to start routing our wiring, and the wiring is simply gonna go up the firewall a little bit. There's gonna be a factory grommet. If you have an automatic transmission, you can use that grommet to run our wires through. So I poked a hole in it and simply pushed our wires through it. Now underneath the hood, we can start to route our wiring towards our battery. So here's where the wiring comes out, and I simply just pushed it along our firewall here, comes out here, and it turns out that we are gonna fall a little bit short as far as the length goes to get to our battery. So I already went ahead and extended the ground side of our wiring. We still need to do the power side, so let's go ahead and run through that together now. So the way that I did the ground is I simply just stripped back our wire, used a heat shrink butt connector, and then connected on maybe a two foot piece of wire, crimped on a larger ring terminal, and now I'm gonna do something very similar with this one. I wanna mention this can be hooked up to a hot fuse. So this could be plugged in like your fuse block on a fuse that has constant power. But with that said, especially on these Jeeps in the past, we've ran into issues where they have retained power circuits and other issues like that. So the reason we're doing this, we're going right to the battery, that way we can avoid all that and have a for sure, 100% connection. So with that said, this does come with a fuse, but it is that older type bus fuse, I believe it's called. And these are kinda starting to get a little outdated. It'll work just fine but my thought is, if you end up popping it, it's probably gonna be tricky to. You're probably not gonna have one laying around or anything like that. So what I'm gonna do since we have to cut this and extend the wire anyway is cut that off and I'm going to replace it with a fuse holder like this. A little more common and chances are pretty good you'll probably have a fuse readily available that you could use in a pinch. So that said, first thing we'll do here is strip back the insulation on this wiring. Give it a good twist. I'm gonna open half to make it a little bit thicker since I'm using a little bit bigger butt connector here, but this is gonna slide right over it and then we can crimp it down. And then I'll grab my extra length of wiring here, essentially do the same thing. Strip that back, trim it up a little bit, then it's simply just gonna plug right in to the other end of that butt connector. Crimp it down. And since I'm using a heat shrink-type connector, come back with my heat gun and seal off ends. So here's how much I extended the wire, and like we talked about, I took this fuse holder and hooked it up to our extended wire the same way. I just used heat shrink butt connector on the end of the fuse holder. I used a ring terminal like this. Again, it just crimps on. And so I'm just gonna kinda tuck this around here. This is gonna go to the positive battery terminal. Make sure you don't have a fuse in it just yet. And if you peel this back, since we have some existing trailer wiring hooked up to this post, I think that's where I'm gonna hook our new wiring up. So I'm gonna take a 12 millimeter and remove that nut. Going to slide my ring terminal over the stun and simply just resecure that nut there. Get this tightened down. And from there you have our ground wire, which this one here. This of course is gonna get hooked to the negative side of our battery. So I think I'm just gonna use this stud right here. That is a 13 millimeter. I'm gonna try to get this popped off. I might need to get a little beeper socket there, might be able to make it work. You get that broke free and take our ring terminal, slide it over, and get our nut tightened back down. Now once that's snug, we'll take our fuse here. And since the original fuse was rated for 20 amps, that's the type fuse I'm using, the 20 amp fuse, we'll go ahead and get that plugged in. So now all that's left to really do is test our outlet to make sure that it's working properly. So for demonstration purposes, I just set our Patriot 3 braking system in here. I'm not gonna go through all the trouble to hook it up and everything, I just wanna make sure that we indeed get power. So I have our plug here. I'll reach back here and get it plugged on in. Plugged in, now we should be able to hit power and hopefully everything will work. So hit power, turned right on, and it's functioning so we know we do indeed now have a working power supply. Well, that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the Roadmaster 12 Volt Outlet Kit on our 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited..