Easy tips and tricks to trailer wiring I was doing for a friend to help him and his son move to Washington. Initially, it started out he was going to tow this little truck behind a moving truck then he changed his mind and decided to tow a trailer. We had to get this little Jeep ready to tow a trailer. So he got himself a universal trailer harness from a moving company that would be easy to wire up to his vehicle. He comes to me to help him set it up. We first take off the tail lights then we fed the universal wire harness to the tail lights as indicated by the package instructions.
While under the vehicle I searched for good clean ground and found one under a mounting bolt that holds the hitch to the frame of the Jeep. As you can tell by looking at where the ground is located in my picture, the rust confirms a good ground
Once the ground is confirmed, we can then move on to all the other connections. We have to lightly strip off some of the insulation off each wire going to the tail lights to test which one to confirm where to connect the universal harness too so everything is working. But we did only one at a time. Once each wire is connected we would go down and test the plug making sure we had power at the end of the trailer plug instead of getting ahead of ourselves.
Driver Side Tail Light.
Strip into some the Insulation with a pocket knife for testing our lights for our universal connection.
Passenger Side Tail Light.
Then connect another wire from the harness to the tail lights and doing the whole process over again till we have everything connected and once we’re finished we can be sure everything is done and remount our tail lights. Once we connect these wires from the universal harness to the tail lights we use a splice connection to do so, so there isn’t any cutting of wires. So this universal trailer connection is safe, secure from any electrical sparks and can be used for many years down the road, for this owner or if he sells the vehicle or for any owners after him.
We posted this picture to show that we weren’t getting any power at one wire that should’ve been working? But was actually wired into the towing harness at the front of this jeep.
this Picture show 2 Plugs that’s unconnected? these plugs go to the front tow hitch from a previous owner used to tow this vehicle. Which does not have any power to now?
This is a splice connection we used in this project very useful.
See the Red wire pictured here it goes to the right side tail light from the universal trailer connection harness as instructed.
Re-Install of our left tail Light.
Where I said I sliced a little insulation off the wires for testing, I always put just a little piece of black electrical tape on this spot being away not to get my fingers on the electrical tape because the oil in your fingers will wreck the adhesive bond in the electrical tape. So do it in just a little piece, holding it to start it, wrap it tightly and then cut off when finished. And you will have a perfect neat job that you will be very happy with!
