Installing a new (sort of) Trailer Hitch Wiring Harness in my 2015 Toyota Rav4 | The Fixit Shed

Hello and welcome to The FixIt Shed. This is Part Two. I'm going to actually replace the wiring harness for the trailer hitch. My Toyota RAV4 wires had been cut. I did wire up the old one more permanently because I needed to use the trailer; and, I was waiting for the new one to show up. Of course, I went online and Amazon had them for about 50 bucks. I thought I could get them for about 35; but, I couldn't find that one anymore. Amazon had them for 50 bucks and I, of course, bought a used one.

It's not really used, I don't think. The package was opened and this was $45 so I saved about five bucks. Mostly what I was interested in was the wire that runs to the front; because, it's a special insulated wire to protect it from the elements. I also didn't have this little fuse block. They had cut off the wires very short going to the lights so there wasn't much to work with. If you want to see how all of the panels and everything came out, please check out the previous video. Before I start

installing, I wanted to go through and see what I have, to make sure I have everything I need. This is the controller, which looks like all of the wiring that I need. This is your t-connector for the driver's side and then you have the green wire that runs over to the passenger side. You have your flat floor connector and you have your ground wire that connects to the frame of the vehicle. We have the fuse wire and the wire that runs from the battery all the way to the back of the car and conne

cts the power on the control box. What it doesn't have is the hardware that is supposed to come with it. If you look at the directions, there's a diagram here and it tells you what kinds of things should come with it. You need a ring connector here, a butt connector here, a butt connector here. You're supposed to have zip ties to secure all of this. There's supposed to be a foam double-sided tape that you attach the control box to the car so it doesn't bounce around. That stuff is all missing. A

lso the fuse for the fuse connector. I have the connector; but, there's no fuse here to go in it. The wire ties, not a problem I have a gazillion of those. I have the two butt connectors, I have the ring connector, I have a fuse, it's not the right one. This is a 30 amp fuse and this is supposed to be a 10 amp fuse; but, I can get a 10 amp pretty easily. I think I have everything. I just need to wait for foam tape. I'm going to have to get some of those items or maybe I might have something that

I can use to attach that to the vehicle. Other than that, I think we're in business. Let's get it installed on the car. The first thing I'm going to do is clamp this power cord down so the wiring harness doesn't come loose. I don't want to lose any of my electronic stuff, my pre radio presets or whatever. I pull that out and now that's all disconnected from Power. I'm going to take that back off for now. On the back of the vehicle, I disconnect this wire. It's no longer connected to power . I'm

going to keep the black wire because that will be some spare wire that I have around. I'm also going to keep my spool of red wire. I'm going to cut that off. We can remove this. Let's see, I need to make more space here because they bolted this right in here. I have to get that screw that's the ground wire. Let me see if I can get you over here, they bolted the ground wire in right here, I have to get that out. This is actually a T20 Torx bit in here, so I will loosen that. I need to get the t-

connector off of the lights and stuff up here the wiring. I pull this body panel out to get up here to the t-connector. I pulled this panel away and now I'm trying to reach in and grab the wiring. Inside there, you can't really see it too well; because, I have to be in the way. The plugs are plugged in like this. Press this tab down and then you can pull them apart. In an effort to give myself more play with these side panels, I'm going to remove this little compartment here. I believe it's four

screws, two on this side and two on that side. That gives me some more space. We can pull the four pin connector through, and that's out. While I have this all ready to go, I am going to put this one right in, on this side. I'm going to need to take this rubber band off. There's the four pin flat connector, flat four pin connector, whatever you want to call it, feed that down here like the other one is. These are my wiring harness connectors, my t-connector. Now I'm going to take the t-connecto

r and the white grounding wire and feed those up underneath this bracket. I'm going to attach a grounding bracket, grounding strap. The ground wire is secured so now we can connect t-connectors. Let's connect the bottom one first. That clicked in and now we'll connect the top one. That one clicked in. We're ready to run the green wire over to the other side. The controller is going to fit in this area right here; so, we want to run the T connector with the green wire down through this bottom bra

cket. Where this red wire is going in, we're going to run the green wire. Hopefully I can get my hands in here on this side too. Let's get this pulled out more. There we go, that gives me more space and here's the connector that we're going to disconnect. This one's easier to access. I can see it anyway. We're going to do the lower one which... This one is connected to the body, I can't see exactly how, so I can't get it out to show you. Now that's all free. Now we're going to run the green wir

e underneath, behind the panel back here. I'm going to try and clip in the one on the bottom first, since that's fixed in place. I need to get on the other side of the camera. Now the top part, the second side always goes easier. That's in. You might want to use some zip ties and secure that somewhere. There's a wire ring back here; so, I might take that and attach it to that piece of the wiring harness. There we go, that's attached. I think that's going to keep things out of the way. We can pop

this back together now. That's in. I think that's all clipped back into place, there are some screws that are going to hold that in a couple places; but, that looks back together. I want to run the power line from the engine compartment back to the rear of the vehicle and I'm not going to connect this to the battery yet. I'm going to run the line from the front to the back. When you're running the power line, make sure that it's not in any place where it can get pinched. Keep it away from any m

oving parts and keep it away from the exhaust system, which will get hot and could melt the wires. I want to route the power line. We want to go from the battery to the back of the car. I'm going to go underneath the car. I will leave some up here. I'm not going to attach this to the battery right now. For one thing I want to put the fuse link in there first. It's going to go around here, around the air thing. Look for saces where there are no moving parts and it's not going to get hot and melt.

I'm going to go back down here behind the air cleaner and around the ABS system. In order to feed it down that way, I'm going to tape it to this rod so that it's easier to feed down to the bottom of the car. I'm going to go down to the bottom of the car and try and pull it through. Underneath the car, I am going to reach up and grab that green stake. i am going to go into this plug right here, and then into the trunk. I did take the foam tape that was on the other one and I taped it onto here s

o that it would have some cushioning. I will use some Gorilla Tape and that's going to hold that in there. That's actually kind of stuck, good. I'm not going to leave it like that. I am going to put a piece of tape on there to secure it. I will cut a hole in this to slip over the power line so then this plug can go back into place. There might already be a hole in here. But this is not how the wire was run before. Let's see which way do I want it? There is a hole. I don't know how the power line

was run; but, I'm going to say that was it. Why else would there be a hole in there? I will put the wire back behind here; or actually, where's the black wire? There it is down below. We can use one of the but connectors and connect those two lines. You can take this and route it down through, under the trunk and have it attached out here by the trailer hitch. But, I'm going to leave mine so that it goes through the hatch and I can close the hatch on it and it'll plug in there. Use some zip tie

s and secure the wire in place. Back up top, secure this wire over here, on this little Loop. I think I can cut it off about here. I put the loop on the end of this, crimp that on. I'm going to lock this tab down so, that it doesn't come loose. I'm going to loosen this nut off and put the loop right on there. This is not live because there's no fuse in here. It's really not powered yet. We're going to zip tie all of that. Keep it out of the way, put it over on this side. That looks pretty good.

I'm going to temporarily put this 30 amp fuse in to test it until I can get the 10 amp fuse. We got the old wiring system out. I put the new wiring system in, tested it out, looks like it's working. I need to get the appropriate fuse for it and then it should be ready to go. If you got something out of this video, please be sure to give it a thumbs up. If you want to help support this Channel, please consider subscribing or clicking the join button below to become a member. Thanks for watching,

take care.