Installing the etrailer Installation Kit for Trailer Brake Controllers on a 2018 Toyota Highlander

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Hey there, neighbor, it's Kevin with Etrailer and today we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to install the 7-way installation kit here on our 2018 Toyota Highlander. So, our neighbor came to us today in need of a 7-way and a brake controller. He's planning on taking out his family on a camping trip. And his camper is large enough that it has trailer brakes and he's gonna need all of the help that he can get because the Toyota Highlander, while it is pretty capable, isn't really that capable compared to a half-ton truck. So, to make sure that he is nice and safe out on the road, we installed the ETBC7 here, which is going to give him the ability to not only send over his light signals so that way all of the lights on his trailer are functioning properly, but also send over that brake signal so he can activate the brakes on his trailer and stay nice and safe. Now, the 7-way kit is for vehicles where there is not a factory hookup, because we are gonna be running wires.

Everything that you're gonna need is pretty much in the kit besides heat shrink butt connectors, I would definitely pick a few of those up. These are gonna be the 10-gauge ones and that is so that our connection points back here, if you pull this harness back, it's gonna have all of those connections for your power, your ground, and running your reverse light circuit, as well as for the brake controllers. Aside from that, running the wires can be a little bit tricky to get it all the way up there without going near anything that's gonna be generating heat or anything that's gonna be moving. So, on this one, once you get past the rear axle, you have a bunch of underbelly panels that are just plastic that you can kind of drop down and just push the wire through. So, it's not too difficult with this specific vehicle, but in some cases it definitely can be.

So, once again, if that is the case for you, definitely feel free to use our dealer locator and you can enter in your zip code to find a shop near you and get it professionally installed. Now, if you are wanting do this yourself, stick around and I'll walk you through the process. So, to software I install, we need to make sure that we already have a 7-way. Now, ours does not, so we are adding on our kit here. This is the ETBC7, which is gonna swap us from that four pole wiring harness, which we have hanging out right over here.

And that's gonna plug right into our ETBC7 so that we can transfer over our light signals. And then we're gonna have a couple other functions that we're gonna need to run ourselves, which is gonna be 12 volt power in ground. We'll also need our brake output for our brake controller and then we have another wire here that's gonna be for a reverse light circuit. Now, in most cases you're typically not gonna use this and you can just kind of bend it back and then tape it up, just cap it off and save it just in case later on maybe you need it. Typically, you're really only using that if you have a boat trailer with surge brakes, so that way you could have a electric lockout so that way when you're backing up the boat trailer you can prevent the surge brakes from activating and you can actually back up with it.

We wanna make sure that we first have four pole wiring, which our neighbor has already installed today and it's just hanging out below. From there, we're also gonna need a way to mount it up to our trailer hitch. Now it does come with a mounting bracket that you can use to drill into your fascia, but in most cases you really don't wanna be putting extra holes in there and most times, the plastic really isn't strong enough for you to be putting the plug in and out of it a bunch of different times. You can end up wearing through it and having this kind of fall off of your fascia, and then now you've got some ugly holes in it. So, I highly recommend picking up a no-drill bracket so that you can mount it up to, it's gonna come with a hose clamp, and these are gonna come in either short or long. I went with a short today, just because the long kind of stuck out a little bit too far. It'll look a little goofy, whereas with our short, we can have that still stay around the same length out from our vehicle as the trail