Question about hooking up trailer lights

J

Jeffkin

New member
I want to set up my '98 Limited to legally tow. Anyone have experience hooking up the brake lights for a trailer? Do you need a special kit or can you just wire them directly to my truck's brake lights?
 
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Wait I may have misread your post, do you mean for your 4runner to be the tow vehicle (vehicle doing the towing)? Or do you want to tow the 4runner behind something else (vehicle being towed)? The suggestion I gave you was for the second one.
 
Use my 4Runner to tow Uhaul trailers

To be specific, I just want to know what's the best way to wire my 4Runner to be able to tow trailers. We will rent uhaul trailers to tow loads of landscaping bark and such.. So need to somehow wire my 4Runner's brake lights to the trailer's lights....

Thanks man, ordered that wiring harness for $40 delivered! Will go well with the Drawtite I got off craigslist for $70 NEW!
 
Last edited:
Jeffkin said:
To be specific, I just want to know what's the best way to wire my 4Runner to be able to tow trailers. We will rent uhaul trailers to tow loads of landscaping bark and such.. So need to somehow wire my 4Runner's brake lights to the trailer's lights....

Thanks man, ordered that wiring harness for $40 delivered! Will go well with the Drawtite I got off craigslist for $70 NEW!
Click to expand...

Good luck, I bought a box that converted the wiring for the signals and could not ever get it to work right. I have settled for running and brake lights on the boat for now. It was a 2 week fight that ended up with new lights on the boat also. I hooked up the boat for the first trip of this season last Thurs nite, and had no lights. The ground on the vehicle side was bad, so I ripped out and started fresh. Then I knocked one of the lights off the trailer at the lake and had to buy a new one of them.

Someone needs to come up with a better system for trailers.
 
The led tester add on pictured in the link could prove quite useful. I spliced in a Hopkins LED 4 pin connector and at a glance you can see what is working/wired properly and what is not.

The Hopkins plug and play version is offered on Amazon with free shipping and the 4 pin LED splice-in is about $7-10 at a auto parts store like Advance Auto or Auto Express or Checker/OReilly.

Good luck with your towing.
 
I have a spare Hopkins 43415 trailer wiring kit that's plug 'n play if anyone's interested in it.
 
Thanks for the info guys! I'm going to be doing most of the towing for my Dad, he needs a bunch of bark for landscaping his yard. He's an electrical engineer, so I'm going to let him hook it all up! :surfer:
 
jdmidwest said:
Good luck, I bought a box that converted the wiring for the signals and could not ever get it to work right. I have settled for running and brake lights on the boat for now. It was a 2 week fight that ended up with new lights on the boat also. I hooked up the boat for the first trip of this season last Thurs nite, and had no lights. The ground on the vehicle side was bad, so I ripped out and started fresh. Then I knocked one of the lights off the trailer at the lake and had to buy a new one of them.

Someone needs to come up with a better system for trailers.
Click to expand...

I just took out the wiring harness I had, part number 118341, that never worked with my setup either. Just wanted to give people a head's up that if you buy this part, it is not plug n' play even though several websites carry it and claim it is.
 
Get the wiring harness from e trailer. There is a small black box underneath the plastic on the driver side rear of the cargo compartment. The wiring harness will replace this box.

There is not an easy way to "wire the trailer lights into the brake lights."

This is an easy solution. Don't make it complicated.
 
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