How To Find Cold Side Wire Of Stop Light Switch On 2017 Chevy Silverado To Bypass Factory Connector

Question:

Where can I find the cold wire to hook up to the trigger wire on the new trailer brake controller. I am hard wiring it since I believe there is a problem with factory harness. The truck currently has an integrated brake controller that cant seem to be fixed, so Im bypassing it altogether. I was told there is a wire in the brown plug of the BCM that I could tap into, but I want to be sure before I go poking around in there. Thanks

asked by: Des

Expert Reply:

I would be happy to help!

Since all of the 2017 Chevrolet Silverado 1500s like yours have the factory trailer brake controller port, we have not tried to hardwire a controller like the Tekonsha Voyager # 39510 you were looking at into the vehicle.

With that said it can definitely be done, but you will need to use circuit tester # PTW2993 to find the cold side wire of the stop light switch that only has power when the brake pedal is pressed.

To finish the install you will need to use Pigtail # 7894, and wiring kit # 5506.

You will wire the black wire from the pig tail to the black wire of the # 5506 that gets connected to the positive terminal of your battery with the included circuit breaker.

The white wire from the pigtail will get run to the negative terminal of your vehicle battery.

The red wire from the pigtail will get connected to the cold side wire of the stop light switch.

Lastly the blue wire from the pigtail will get connected to the brake output wire which you can either reuse your factory wire by cutting it from the factory trailer brake controller port, or since you mentioned wanting to bypass all of the factory wiring you can run # 10-1-1 from the trailer brake controller to the 5 o'clock pin as shown in the included diagram.

I included videos of the products mentioned for you to take a look at.