7-Way Pre-Wired Car Connector, 7' Lead

Video Transcript for Draw-Tite 7-Way Pre-Wired Car Connector Installation - 1993 Dodge Ram Pickup

Today we're gonna be taking a look at the Tow Ready 7-pole Wiring Kit. And all you really need to do is just go on our website and use that FitGuide at the top, put in your vehicle's year, make and model and that's gonna get you set up with the correct kit for your specific vehicle. Today we have a 1993 Dodge Ram 250 and we're gonna be taking a look at the Tow Ready 7-pole Connecting Wiring Kit. What we're gonna get with the kit, of course, our connector and the wiring, it's gonna be about seven foot long. We have a little flap and it's spring loaded. So it's gonna close shut even if you forget to close it.

It does that all for you. It has a nice seal on the inside so as you can see, there's a lip right here and then the cap actually fits right over that. So no water's gonna get in it if we're not using it and this is going to be great for your braking systems. If you have a trailer that has brakes but you only have a 4-pole, you're not gonna be able to use the trailer brakes which actually wears out your brakes on your vehicle a lot quicker. So if you upgrade to a 7-pole, we're gonna be able to use that brake controller.

If you have one, great, if you don't, we have a lot of options on our website. It also comes with a bracket and the hardware to connect the connector to the bracket. And we also have some self-tappers that come with it as well, that's gonna connect it to wherever you really wanna mount it. One thing that I really appreciate is they already have it pre-loomed so you don't have to grab any, which is really nice so you don't really have to worry about any of that. It's pretty much ready to go, all you gotta do is just splice it into your existing wiring.

So, sometimes you don't see that and I really do appreciate it. In our case on our pickup truck, we already had a 7-pole in the bed for the gooseneck and then we already had a brake controller installed. If you don't have the factory tow package on your truck, what we're gonna do is we're gonna wanna get a brake controller. If you don't need a brake controller, you don't need to do that but we will have to grab a power wire from the battery and run that back. If you do need wire, we have it here at etrailer but ideally you have both and all the wires are gonna be right here, like our situation.

So all we needed to do was to kind of splice in from the existing 7-pole. Or if you do have a brake controller installed, all these wires are gonna be here. So you don't really have to search or anything. Once you find them you're good. And the only thing we do want to do is get it its own ground. We don't wanna splice into the existing ground of whatever else is there and that's why we have a little ring terminal right here and we found a good ground for it. This kit is meant to tie into your vehicle body harness. So we're gonna have all of our different wires tied in and we're gonna match it up to function. But first we need to find that body harness and on this particular truck, it's right underneath here. You can tell if you're in the right spot if you have the same colored wires but also the same quantity of wires. So kind of take the piece and you notice that we have plenty of wires that match up with all of them. So this is definitely where we wanna be. Now that we know where we're getting our signal from, we have a bracket and the piece that we're gonna be plugging into, we're gonna figure out exactly where we wanna put it. So our customer wants it to be mounted on our hitch receiver. So not here but it's a little bit farther back. So now that we know where the wires are and where we wanna put it, we can take our cable and start to route this back. I typically like to stay with the body harness just because it's ideally the best spot just to run it next to a bunch of other wires so it's out of the way of anything that might hurt 'em. The brackets should go on one way, not like this, we wanna put it like this. And we do have self-tapping screws that come with the kit but I tend to just mark these with a little drill bit and make a pilot hole just so they go in there a little bit smoother, they don't run on us at all. We definitely do that. It's just a better way I found with my experience here at etrailer. So mark one hole and mark the other. Make sure it's nice and square too. And here we go. Now I can take our self-tapping screws and I'm using a quarter inch socket. So now what I'm gonna do is take this and slide it in. It should line up with the holes. Gonna have a Phillips head that goes through there. This does come with the kit, which is nice. And on the other side they have a little nut with some catch on it. Kind of thread this on, like that. And once we get 'em all put in, that should be nice and centered on there. We'll take our Philips and tighten this up. Since the nut does have a little catch on the back, we might not need a wrench but if you did need a wrench, it's three eighths of an inch but they are catching pretty well. So we wanna tighten this down so it doesn't go anywhere. And there's only one way this is going to snap in so it's lined it up. It should click into place. What I ended up doing is just following the body harness. So on the driver's side, I just found the wires that connect to our driver's side taillight and just ran on the inside of the frame rail and avoiding all the suspension components. If you're near one, just go above it just so when it travels, it's not gonna catch anything. With the kit, we're gonna have two different type of connectors. We're gonna have a heat shrink butt connector and then we're just gonna have a splice connector. Since we already have a fifth wheel, 7-pole in the bed, we're gonna have to be using the splices. So if that's not the case with you and you just have to add one to the back, you can use these. These are better but we don't really have the option to do that since we already have one installed. And then we're gonna have both a bigger and smaller one. So the yellow ones are gonna be bigger for the thicker gauge wire, it's typically for your power 'cause the power's a little bit bigger than the others. And then the ones I wanna be using is the splice connectors using one of these for the power wire. As you can see, it's a little bit bigger than the rest of 'em so that's what this one's for. But then the other ones, we're just gonna be using the blue ones that come with the kit to connect them into the wiring. And then we have our ground, which it's just gonna be self-tapped to a good ground source, typically the frame. One thing you wanna think about is you don't wanna go by color. So on the very end of this right here, it's upside down but it's gonna tell you which is which. so it's gonna say color and function. So I went ahead and tested this and you can test it with a little tester like this. This is what I was using. You can buy this on our website, if you need one, if you have one, great. So we actually had pretty much the same exact layout but the only thing with this is the brown and the green wire where it's swapped around. So that's why we wanna test for function not color. Once you get that all straight, write it down, I usually do and then we can start connecting everything up. The way these work, we wanna open it up and the wire that's completely full that has the signal that we want and slide that in. All the way into that channel. Make sure it's both on the front and the back side and then we're gonna take our power wire and we're gonna connect it just like this. Pretty much what happens here is we're gonna take like a pliers of some sort and see that little metal tab by my thumb, we're gonna push that down. And pretty much what that does, it just smashes both of them together and it gives it a metal connection. So once you get it in place. You guys can see it, it's kind of awkward underneath here. I'm gonna squeeze this down nice and tight. I want to go all the way down. And then you know that you got a good crimp on it. Okay. When it's almost all the way down and then we can flap this over and close it. And if it doesn't really wanna close, you can always just tape it up 'cause I will tape all these up once I'm done. So that's gonna be that same exact thing for all the other ones, except we're gonna use the blue connectors for the smaller ones. So I'm gonna go ahead and do that and it's pretty much it. And for our ground wire, we don't wanna splice in to the existing ground wire going to our in bed 7-pole. We wanna give it its own ground so just grab the self-tapping screw with the kit and find a good ground. I'm just using the little support rail underneath the bed. Before we clean up the wiring means and wire loom and make sure it's all nice and pretty, we wanna make sure and test all the functions and make sure they work properly. First we wanna see if we have power, which it seems like we do. And then we wanna see if the brake controller's gonna work. So press down on that manual override on your brake controller, that works. And then our brake should also work. And then we can do left turn signal, which is working. Right turn signal, which is working. We have the running lights, which is working and then reverse. And we're pretty much good. Once everything's working properly, we can go ahead and clean up the wiring a little bit. I suggest wire loom. It does not come with the kit, it's actually on our website. So definitely add that to your cart. And that's pretty much it for a look at the Tow Ready 7-pole Connector Wiring Kit on our 1993 Dodge Ram 250..