etrailer | Tow Ready Trailer Wiring Harness Installation - 2017 Toyota Rav4

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Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-install-t...
Speaker 1: Today in this 2017 Toyota Rav4 we'll be having a look at and showing you how to install the Tekonsha T1 vehicle wiring harness with a four-pole flat trailer connector, part number 118578.Here's what the wiring looks like installed. As you can see we have an adequate length wiring harness to get next to our hitch on our Rav4. Now the reason you're going to want a four-pole flat wiring harness like this one is so that you can safely and legally tow a trailer by having the necessary lighting functions required by law. The white wire here will provide a ground connection between your Rav4 and your trailer. The brown wire provides the tail light and running lights signal. On that wire we have seven and a half amps of power output, which is more than sufficient to tow a small trailer with several incandescent light bulbs.

Or as many LED lights as we want because they draw less power. This yellow wire here is our left turn signal and left brake light. The green one is our right turn signal and right brake light. On each one of these wires we have a total power output of five amps. We'll be okay with three or four incandescent lights per side.

Or, again, as many LED lights as we want because they do draw less power.One thing I like about this is even though it is designed to be stored inside we do have a nice protective dust cover to help better keep dirt and debris out of our connector when it's not in use. Now one thing I do recommend doing is taking some dielectric grease, which we have available on our website, placing it inside the connector. This will just help better prevent corrosion. Put that inside, you use the cover and close over it just like that.Now when this wiring harness is not in use you can easily store it inside your vehicle out of the way. So you can just open up your hatch, lift up on your spare tire cover and stick it inside there and it's out of the way so you can load cargo in and out of your vehicle safely without damaging your connector.

When you do want to tow you can simply grab it, pull it out, lay it flat over your weather stripping away from your latch for your hatch, that way it doesn't get pinched or damaged and you can close the hatch over it. What I really like about this wiring harness compared to other options out there is that it is plug and play. There is no cutting or splicing of our vehicles wiring. So we don't need to worry about voiding the warranty on our new vehicle. Now that we've gone over some features let's show you how to get it installed.To begin our install we'll open our rear hatch.

Now we'll remove our floor coverings. On our driver's side of our spare tire we need to remove this panel. Remove these two plastic push-pin fasteners right here using a trim handled tool. To do that you just come underneath it and pry up. Lift up on the panel now, set it aside. Now we'll remove our threshold by pulling up on it. Set that aside as well. Then on our driver's side panel we have a 10 millimeter fastener here that we need to remove. This cover here we'll take a flat head screw driver and pop open. Behind that we find another 10 millimeter fastener. Now we'll remove the eight millimeter fastener here. Now we'll remove the 10 millimeter fastener here for our cargo hook. Now we use a plastic trim panel tool to start to separate our panel from the back of the vehicle.With our black panel separated from the white one we can now pull the white one away from the vehicle. Behind the white panel we'll locate our tail light connector for the driver's side. There's a tab on it on the top, if we push on that tab we can pull to separate the harness. Now we'll take our connector with the yellow wire on it, we'll match up the two ends, plug it into the factory wiring harness and the other end will go to the tail light. We went ahead and repeated the same process on the passenger side to gain access to our connector by loosening our panels. Connector's right here, so we'll press in on the tab and pull to separate. Now we'll take our connector for the passenger side and we'll route it behind our panel and we'll make our connections. Okay. With our connections made on both sides now we can reinstall our side panels.The black wire that comes off of our module we'll stick one of our yellow butt connectors over the stripped off end and we'll crimp into place. Now we'll take one end of a roll of black wire, strip back a little insulation place that into the other end of the butt connector and we'll crimp that down as well. Now we'll take some electrical tape and go over our connector. This will just provide us with a litt