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Clayton: Hello, everyone. Clayton here at etrailer.com. Today, we'll be taking a look at, and I'll show you how to install the Draw-Tite seven-way, pre-wired connector on our 1996 Ford F350.Our seven-way connector is going to allow us to hook up to a lot of different trailers and leave that wiring in our bed. So we're not going to have to fold it over our tailgate or extend it if it's not long enough. It's really going to make our life a lot easier. All we have to do is splice it in to our factory seven way.Our connector is going to be made out of a durable plastic, so it's going to hold up to all weather really well.
It also has a really nice seal on the inside here to keep any dirt, debris and water from getting in our connector and grounding it out. So it's really going to hold up well on the truck bed and you're not going to have to worry about things bouncing around and hitting it. It's not going to break. It's going to sit here really nice, and it looks nice in the bed of our truck.And in terms of installation, it's really not that hard. We just have to drill a hole in the bed, drop our wires down and splice into our factory seven way.
And speaking of installation, I'll show you how easy it is to get installed on your truck.To start our installation, we want to find a good spot to mount our plug. Now our customer already had a hole drilled right here, but our plug isn't quite big enough to fit through there. So we are just going to enlarge this a little bit, just to make sure that our plug is going to fit through the hole. Now we're going to open this hole up with a two-inch hole saw. You want to try to locate a good spot that way we can make sure everything fits nicely.
We want this lip up here to be flush with this line in the bed. So if we hold it up like this, it might be easier to turn it over, and try to gauge how far down we need to drill. So it's looking like I'm going to need to drill right about here. We're going to go in really carefully just since there's already a hole in our bed.Now with this drilled out, we want to come back with a file and inaudible 00:01:58 any of those burrs around the edge. That way we don't accidentally cut ourselves when we're working with it.
Now I'm going to come back with some clear coat and just paint all these rough edges that already don't have to worry about rust in the future. Now, with our clear coat drive, we can grab our plug and make sure it fits. It fits up just like we wanted. It's flush along the top and there's no exposed hole. We can now grab our wiring harness. We're going to take our ends with the loose wires and just drop this through the hole. This will come out the bottom.We can now grab our plug and push it into our connector. Then pull and make sure it's not going to go anywhere. And I'm going to come back with some electrical tape and just tape around this connector before we fastened the whole thing to our bed. I can now push our connector through the hole. We want to push it all the way to where it's flush and you grab some self-tapping screws and just fasten this to our bed. It can be kind of tight just cause there is a little bit of tension on our plug due to where the wire is placed behind. We'll start nice and slow.Now at our second self-tapper, it seems pretty secure there. Now we'll add our last two and make our connections underneath. We'll try to shake our seven way. It seems really secure. You don't have to worry about it ripping out. Now let's go underneath and make those connections.This is where a harness dropped out. We want to route it over our frame rail. Now there is a nice body mount here that we can zip tie everything to. We're just going to reach over and drop this down. You want to stay out of the way of anything hot or moving.I'm going to zip tie our new wiring harness to this factory wiring here. Since it is kind of loose back here, we don't want to flopping around or moving. We are going to be tapping into our factory seven way, so we're going to want to strip back all of this wire loom back to here where we're going to make our connections. We're going to have plenty of room to make our connections here and a lot of room to hide all this extra wire.Our factory harness has electrical tape and these plastic, zip tie connectors. They are pretty rotted so we can just pull them off. But if they're not, you'll have to cut them off. We're not ready to make our connections. We're going to go green to green, brown to brown, yellow to yellow, blue to blue, black to black, orange to red. And then we're going to ground our white wire somewhere else, probably on this frame rail up here.We're now ready to cut off our ring terminal for our ground. We're going to strip everything back quite a bit and double it over and use a yellow heat-shrink butt connector. If you don't have butt connectors, you can find those here at etrailer.com. Some of these wires are thicker than the others, like the blue, white and the black. So we're not going to have to double those over, but the other ones I would recommend doubling them over just so they fit better in our butt connectors.With our butt connectors crimped on, we are now ready to make our connections. Our factory seven way has a diagram on the front that tells us which wire does what. So we'll start with our taillight signal and on our harness, that's going to be our brown wire. We'll look on here for our running lights. It looks like this pen up here, which comes back to the brown wire on our seven way. So we want to cut our brown wire. We'll try to do it right up here. Then we'll strip back both sides and then crimp them together. We're now ready to grab our brown wire. We're going to strip back quite a bit. We're going to twist it and double it over to fit in our yellow heat-shrink butt connector.Then we'll strip back this side and then we're going to grab our brown wire on our new harness. We're going to strip it back pretty far as well. Then what we're going to do is we're going to twist these together and then crimp them into that other side of the heat-shrink butt connector. And this will tie in our new wiring with our factory seven way. We're going to repeat this exact same process for the rest of our connections.Just like that. With all of our heat-shrink butt connectors melted down, I'm now going to take some electrical tape and just run it around this. I'm just going to start down here and work my way up. So I'm just going to grab the wire loom from our kit and work it as far up on this as I can. And I'll trim it off. We'll grab some more wire loom. If you don't have any, you can find some here at etrailer.com.With all our wiring cleaned up, we can now mount our ground. I'm going to run our ground right here. This is a good location. We can file it down a little bit, just for a better connection. Then once we get that ground mounted, we're going to come in and clean up all of our extra wiring.With everything hooked up, let's lower the truck down and test it out. With our tester hooked up, we can now check all of our functions. We'll start with our brake lights, our running lights, our left turn, and our right turn. With everything, hooked up and tested out, we're ready to hit the road and that's up to our favorite trailer. That's going to do it for our look and installation of the Draw-Tite seven way pre-wired connector on our 1996 Ford F350.
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (63 Customer Reviews)
Truck: 1996 ram 2500, 8ft bed.
This company is a joke. You are better off ordering from a different company. If I could add zero stars I would. Etrailers ability to execute a simple order twice could not even be done.
The first time that I ordered, the hitch was all scratched up out of the box. The two pieces that run and bolt parallel with the frame were half inch from square. Either way the holes would not line up when this was a guaranteed fit. On top of that two of the bolts they included did not even fit inside of the holes in the trailer hitch itself.
I called customer support and their solution was to push the 3/8 inch steel flanges apart with the 2 x 4. They did agree to send a replacement which I received. This time the peanut gallery couldn’t even include a hardware kit to install it. I would use my own hardware, but I need the steel spacers to fill the holes in the frame around the bolt.
Save your time and money with a different company.
The packaging was really damaged and missing a nut. The little bag the fasteners and accessories came in had a whole and looked like it had been opened before.
Installed this on my 1998 Dodge Ram 3500 with Torklift hitch. This 7-way kit has worked great in the past year that I've had it. Receiver end stays water tight and I have had no issues.
Worked great upgrading my 74 chevrolet flatbet to have trailer brakes. Fast shipping always nice to deal with this company
As expected. Cable and connector were great. Did not really like the bracket. Not an easy way to connect it. Ended up having a custom hitch installed (Classic old Truck) and they provided the bracket. Other than that works great.
This harness worked great once I straightened out the previous truck owners wiring nightmare. Helps to have a partner and a test light with a good place to ground to.
If you need to wire your vehicle for a 7 pin plug be smart and by this kit.
It has all you need to make your life easy.
Exactly what I needed to tandem tow behind my 5th wheel. Everything was in the kit. Good instructions. Easy.
This replaced the connector and wiring on my 97 Dodge Ram 2500. There just wasn't much left of the connectors after 20+ years! I mounted it in the box for convenience for plugging in the 5th wheel. I used an extension for a regular trailer.
This wiring kit is awesome. Had it installed in under 25 minutes. Have had it installed for a year now and I use my truck everyday to tow so this plug and harness is being used daily. I don’t have any pictures on my phone of it unless I would post them. Highly recommended for the price and the ease of installation and quality!
The wiring harness came with everything I needed to wire up my 1997 Silverado for my new bass boat. It took an hour or two to find all the wires I needed and tap into them. The only thing i would change if I could would be to include more zip ties in a larger size. Other than that I have hauled my boat a few times and all of the wiring works great along with the trailer brakes. If I ever have another truck I need to wire a seven pin connector to I will buy this kit again.
Fast delivery the only problem I have is your can go online and get the same product for $$$ instead of $$$ do understand lm he one that went to e trailer but I would think the price would be more competitive
Heather A.
2/3/2022
We do have a price pledge policy if you find the exact product somewhere else at a different price. I will have customer service reach out to you.
I just finished test fitting all the components of the system and found it very easy and enjoyable. The only problem I noticed was the packaging was far from robust enough to handle the product. Three of the four box's were severely damaged and were only held together by a mass amount of packing tape which made opening tough. I should have taken pictures my mistake, but wanted too make sure all components were present and accounted for which they were. Great system and was a pleasure to deal with, thanks for the great product and will sent pictures when installed in truck...
Great replacement for the 9 pole connector that was on this older truck. The fit was perfect and a previous question that I found on the site (https://www.etrailer.com/question-59450.html) helped me make the connection in no time. Now the vehicle is wired to two contemporary trailers. Thanks!
It has worked like it should but it was up to the driver to make it happen. Installing it was a bit hard, the truck did not like drilling into it. Broke two 1/2 inch drill bits
Received the 7-way kit and installed it the same day. Kit is complete and a easy way to add a 5-th wheel style plug to your truck.
Great wiring harness. Has held up well over the year. No issues.
This curt 15300 is a beast. Over rated for my f150 but rather be over kill than unsafe. Mounts right up after drilling 6 holes in frame. I feel like its a very safe choice. On the farm you never know what i might need to do with it. Very happy. And shipped out and had it on the 2nd day. Installed in bout an hour. Dull bits otherwise 30 min could of been done.
Hi Carol ,, This wire harness was exactly as you said it would be. It was a breeze to install and it worked perfect. I was completely satisfied... Bravo !!!
Excellent product. Makes wiring for a trailer easy and clean.
Well thanks I have costumer that really need to get his work done and it’s so happy because now hi has exactly what he was looking for. And I I’m happy to, I get the right parts for his work truck
Bought for a 98 dodge 3500 and it was as good as factory.
The wiring kit came fast and packaged well. THanks!
Ease of installation, no issues..
It is worth money i love it
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Keith J.
7/6/2018
It wiring harness is still work well.