etrailer | Roadmaster Tow Bar Wiring Kit Installation - 2012 Fiat 500
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- Опубліковано 10 вер 2024
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Rob: Hey everybody, Rob here at etrailer.com. And today we're going to be taking a look at the Roadmaster Hy-Power diode wiring kit on our 2012 Fiat 500. Now our diodes are going to allow us to transfer the signal from our motor home's lights to the lights that are already on our Fiat, so when we're flat towing it, everybody knows what's going on. Whether we're driving down the highway, we need to change lanes. Or if we're just driving at night, everyone's going to know that a vehicle is being towed behind it. And that way, when we do want to change lanes, there's no miscommunication between everybody on the road and ourselves.
Now my favorite part about the diodes is the fact that it's a one-time installation. There's nothing that we need to do afterwards to set anything up. We can simply just plug in the electrical cord, but we're not going to have to worry about setting up magnetic lights, like the old style we've seen before.Where putting some magnets on there and then you have to run a wire up to the front of your Fiat, to the back of the motor home. But then we got that wire dangling on the side, potentially scratching the paint, not to mention, once we get where we're going, we have to take them down, find somewhere to store them and then we can drive. With these our lights are going to act completely normal when we're driving our vehicle.
And the motor home is going to send all the signals to these lights whenever we're flat towing it. So again, no extra setup, no extra steps needed. The other nice thing about the diodes is the fact that it's going to protect our Fiat's electrical system. If there was any kind of problem on the motor home end, the diodes are going to make sure that it doesn't back Fiat into the electrical system and cause any problems later on.So we're going to make sure that our Fiat's electrical system is in working order. And again, it's not going to affect it when we're driving around normally.
Now your diode kit is going to come with almost everything you need to get it installed. It's going to come with plenty of wire to run it from the front all the way to the back of our Fiat, the four diodes and all the connectors. It's even going to come with an umbilical, so we can plug the front of our Fiat out into the back of our motor home. However, we ended up actually switching out from a four pole connector to a six pole connector, that way, if later on we wanted to add a charge line to keep the battery charged or any other kind of component, we can easily wire it in because there's two extra signals and terminals inside there that are being used.Now I know a lot of customers may be a little bit nervous when it comes to electrical work, but really it's very simple, pretty straightforward. We're just going to take our four-pole wire, find out where we're mounting it on the front of our Fiat and then run a wire to the back so we can access the wires back here and tap into the factory wiring for our taillights.
That may seem a little bit intimidating. The fact that we have to splice into our factory lights, but we'll walk you through how to test for each signal and which wire to use. So you can have the confidence to do it at home. In fact, let's go ahead and bring the shop and wire it up together.To start out, I do want to mention that we have our fascia removed because we just got done installing our base plate. And that's a really good time to do all the other components of your install, because we don't have to fight the fascia and try to route things behind it, with it in the way. So to get your diodes in place, the first thing you want to do is figure out where you're going to be mounting your wiring on the front. Now we already have these prongs that are built into our base plate. So we're using those and that's going to be where we're eventually going to mount our wiring at. Now you just want to make sure you leave enough slack here, that you have enough wire to work with, but we started routing it towards the back of our Fiat, so we just came over to the side of our base plate, came up and came into the engine bay right here. Then once we got it in the engine bay, we went around our battery going back towards the firewall and we dropped it straight down. So we get access underneath.Our wire came down right here. We went in and zip tied it to these existing lines to keep it away from the exhaust. Went around this mount, then we actually use this cover to our advantage. We put the wire underneath the edge of the cover, again, to help protect it against the exhaust. We ran it b
Finally got the wiring harness installed & functioning. Your instructions worked fine with a couple of exceptions. I installed a 5 pin connector in the cross brace rather than using the 4 pin included in the kit. Plenty of wire & the instructions are clear. The 5 pin connector can be anchored to the brace making connecting & disconnecting easier. To make re-installing the taillight assy easier I added about 7" of wire going from the diode units to the lights so that I could place the diode units at the bottom of the light assy cavity. Plenty of room there. I chose this kit because it was priced in the middle of the 2 options. Curt has an easier to install kit (plug in rather than cutting into factory wires) but it is kinda pricey. At the low end in a kit that uses an auxiliary bulb in the light fixture, you have to cut a hole in the factory light unit, I didn't want to do that. You could improve the kit by supplying better spade connectors properly sized for the small factory wires. I used 18-20 ga spade terminals & a 14-16 ga terminal for the one place where you have to connect 2 wires into one spade terminal. No problem doing that. Still haven't figured out the headlight anomaly. some times they will turn on with ign on only other times the engine has to be running. Good video.
I am running into several problems following your instructions. 1) Engine has to be running for the headlamps to be on. 2) Engine will only run for a minute or so with the hatch open then it starts idling kind of crazy. 3) Hatch has to be open in order to access a good ground for the multi tester. Any solutions? Also the spade clips supplied with the diode are too large for the size wire that Fiat has on the leads. Needs 18-20 ga spade connectors which I have. Unless I can find a way to keep the engine running I may go with the extra light bulb in the tail light assy & ditch the diode option. It's a neat idea but not practical for the average Fiat owner. And I have worked on automotive electrical systems all my life and worked avionics on aircraft. Is that tester you use locally available? Currently working on a solution.
What tester did you use to see which was the correct wire?
We typically use the Draw-Tite Circuit Tester when we are looking for a signal in wiring. Check it out in the following link.
www.etrailer.com/Accessories-and-Parts/Draw-Tite/40376.html