Hopkins Trailer Wiring Installation Kit

Video Transcript for Hopkins Trailer Wiring Installation Kit Review

Hi do-it-yourself-ers! Today, we're gonna be taking a look at Hopkins Trailer Wiring Installation Kit. We're gonna be using the deluxe one here today. Comes with a few extra components, but there is also a standard one. So you're installing your wiring. Can you open up the box And this is really what you're going to see. We've got our module on our four-pole.

We're routing our wires now, but I wanted to show you what hardware does come with a typical custom fit wiring kit. You're going to usually get a ring terminal so you can make your connection to the battery. You're going to usually get two bud connectors and they are heat shrink butt connectors, which is nice. And these are usually for running the power wire from the rear of the vehicle up to the front. And then you get a self-tapping screw for connecting your ground.

That's on the module and that's it. So if you're making any repairs, one of these rolls off. If you go to crimp a wire and the wire falls out of there while you're crimping it, you don't have any other hardware. There's nothing else that comes in the kit. You don't get any extra components.

So having these laying around can save you a trip to the store could save. You potentially really need in that job to be done. And you don't have your parts on hand, but having them on hand, you can ensure you can complete that and do everything you need to do. Additionally, if you've had your wiring installed now for maybe a year or so and service, and maybe you ran over something or somebody hit you at the back end or just any little thing might've happened out on the job site, you need to make her a pair to any of your wires. You're going to have all the components on hand to be able to do so, so you can keep on working and keep on enjoying yourself if you're out on vacation.

So here we can see inside of our kits some things you're going to get in there. You get some zip ties. So you get some various butt connectors, ring terminals as well as self tapping screws. So you can get those mounted up. You've got some quick splices here. Replacement ends for four poles for the dust cover to get some terminal grease to protect your connections to four pole ends as well as a terminal brush here. This is great for cleaning out those females terminals on your a four pole connectors and also get some electrical tape and plenty of zip ties to secure everything up. And it wouldn't be complete without a set of wire, strippers, and crimpers. So we can utilize all these parts here and get everything installed. One of the things we're going to be using here on our particular install is these loom clamps here. These only come in the deluxe kit and when you have a location where there's just no place to zip tie your wiring when you're running it front to back something like this can really come in handy to ensure your wire doesn't get into a predicament like touching on your exhaust and Melton through and shorten out or getting tangled up in your steering or suspension components. So we're gonna go ahead and use one of these. Now we're also gonna use one of the self tapping screws to get it installed. Ruined, pull this out. And we're going to go ahead and pull out one of the self-tapping screws. So you can see here this is our power wire that we've connected up in our wiring kit that we're installing here for our Jeep. And this wire has to run all the way to the front and this spot right back here. There's just really no good place to zip tie. This wire and our exhaust is right here. So we really want to keep it away. Try to keep it over on this side. So we're going to be using one of the cable clamps that came in the kit. We're just going to slide it over our wire, just like that. And then we can use the self tapping screw that comes in the kit to secure it right to the side of the frame there. After making our connections at the back we do have to run that power wire all the way to the front. And it was as if title on the wakes we want to keep it nice and safe. We've got those clamps for locations where there's just nothing to tie it to but there's no reason to keep drilling holes in your vehicle. If you've got a place where you can just put a zip tie on to hold your wiring. So we're just going to run this through one of these open holes in our under shield here and our wiring's right there. That's going to keep it secure. That's going to keep it away from our exhaust over here cause our again, our main goal is to get this wire up to the front without getting damaged. By anything down when driving down the road and then, we can take the rest of our excess here and we're going to trim it off using our wire cutters here because we want to have a nice clean looking installed as well. We've got our wire right up here towards the front of the vehicle, but we need to get up to the engine compartment to get this connected to our battery. So one of the things you're not going to get in your kit is any way to really get this up there. You're just going to have to push her up there and try to figure it out. Well, if you're watching and following along with a one of our videos at home trying to get the installation you're being with you're probably going to see us do the fish wire trick where we take a piece of airline tubing or a coat hanger or something. We pushed that down from the top that where we can attach our wire to it, to pull it back up so we can use some of that electrical tape that comes in our trailer, wiring installation kit. And we're just going to tape that wire to the piece of airline tubing. I've run down. And that way, when I go back up top cause it's much easier to push this down. I can just pull this wire right up and that's going to make our life a lot easier. In addition to the fish wire trick here let's go take him to all sorts of scenarios. Maybe when you we're making your connections or cutting your wires you accidentally Nick the wire a little bit and you've got a small exposed section. You can take this up to seal that back up through it and your shorts. If you've got wires that are blood cut and maybe there are some you're not going to use. Cause when you're doing certain vehicles you may have some wires that just don't end up getting used. You just got to ground those, your tape off the ends. We can do that with this to keep and ensure that none of our live connection wires are going to ground out or touch against anything else and causes any problems down the road. So we've gone ahead and pulled that wire up now thanks to that electrical tape and our fish wire. I've gone ahead and routed it around our box. We are here at our battery when you start making some connections over here. So we're going to take our strippers that come in our kit. These are cutters and strippers and they get to here. We can do the entire job with just these. We can cut, We can strip and we can crimp. And I do like that, the crimpers are on the outside. That actually makes a pretty big difference in where you're going to be able to fit these crimpers. Some tight locations are going to have a real hard time crimping wires when they put the crimpers on the inside like this. So I do like that, they've got it out there. How we've got that crimp, we're just going to strip this other side. we've got to put a butt connector over here to connect to that black wire that we ran up. Now this is an outside connection, so rather than using one of the connections that come in the trailer installation kit we're going to be using one that comes with our custom fit wiring harness here since this does live outside the vehicle. And if we take a look at the ends here the crimpers are also designed for insulated wires which is important with these outside heat shrink butt connectors because it's not gonna protrude through the plastic there and it's still going to give us a good crimp. So once we heat this up it's going to seal this completely with no chance for leaks. So now I'm gonna go ahead and make my connection to my black wire. Here. We can use those cutters once again and we can strip this. This wire is a little bit different gauge than the fuse harness there but we've got plenty of options here. We can go between a 10 gauge wire all the way to the tiny little 22 gauge wire. And that's going to be enough for just about everything you would do as far as trailer wiring's concerned. This is a great kid, especially if you're looking at upgrading from this wire from just a custom fit wiring like this to a brake controller as well to some of the parts that come included with our trailer installation kit are really going to come in handy with a brake controller. In addition to our custom fit wiring here. With our wiring, it's all we want to test everything out. I've got an assistant in the vehicle so we can operate the various lighting signals. And then we want to see if we've got them here at the back. Currently, we've got the tail lights on with the left turn signal take your clip and put it on ground. That's going to be the exposed stud our terminal there on your four-pole. And then we go over one. We're going to have our tail lights. And if we see here, we touch it and it lights up which means we've got our taillight signal. Next is going to be our left turn signal here. And we can see we've got a blinking signal there. We'll then get our assistant to switch it over to the right turn signal. And we can see that we've got our right turn signal there. And then if they hit the brakes we should be able to get brake signal on both the turn signals on the scene. We've got brake on the passenger and brake on the driver's side. So our systems working out and this tester can be used not only for testing your four-pole but you can use this really anywhere that you've got a 12 volt connection that you need to check for power at. So this can be even useful on your trailer. If you're making repairs over on that end as well a couple of additional parts you're going to get in your kit for your four-pole here. You're going to get a terminal cleaning brush. This is great for cleaning out those terminals, nice tight fit. That's going to really get in there and get that corrosion out. If you do have any corrosion or maybe it's just dirt and debris, that's in there causing you a bad connection we can ensure that we get that out of there. So when we go to plugin, we've got good metal contact to help combat against corrosion. We do get some terminal grease included in our kit. So we're going to go ahead and put this here. This comes with our trailer installation kit. We're just going to rip that open here. And you do want to be pretty generous with this because this is going to keep out moisture as well as dirt and debris that can get up in there and cause corrosion cause that dirt and debris also holds in moisture, which causes things to corrode even faster. So we want to keep all that stuff out of there. This one that we just installed has a dust boot that's made onto it, but some of them just come with ones that slide on. And this year, this can get easily get ripped off. If something happens to it gets cut. Maybe it hits something or those other ones that you have to slide on. They sometimes you lose them. They fall off of there. You need a couple that come in your kit. So you're going to have some replacement dust caps here. It's nice to ensure that your connection stays a corrosion-free cause once you put that terminal grease in there and seal it up with this cap, that really makes a big difference on how long this connector's going to last living outside the vehicle here. You're also gonna get a couple of other items in your kit. Let's say you gotta hook up to your trailer and you've got all your lights, but one and it kind of comes in and out as you're messing with your wiring, check your ground. In many cases, your ground is what's causing your your components to cut in and out. And a lot of times it's just corrosion that builds up or maybe the surface you had put your ground on has a it's a painted surface and you're not getting a good ground. So you're going to get some angry clause in there. This is an abrasive material that you can use to just clean that up. And you can also use this to clean off corrosion in other areas, maybe you got it on your terminals. We showed you the little brush for cleaning out the inside but maybe that ground on the outside of your connector needs a little bit cleaning up. You can knock those off with this as well unless we get some quick splices in our kit. And when you're installing your regular custom fit wiring and things like that and doing repairs on your trailer, they're not as useful. Cause this is really exclusive for inside the vehicle because corrosion will occur on these if left outside the vehicle. But where they really shine is when you go to install a brake controller in your vehicle you're going to have to tap into your stoplight switch. And this is going to be one of the quickest and easiest ways to get that stoplight switch signal for your trailer brake controller. And when you're all done the packaging works as a storage case. It keeps all of our components nice and separated. So we can just fill this in our toolbox and it's ready for the next time we need it..