Roadmaster 4-Diode Universal Wiring Kit Installation - 2020 Jeep Cherokee

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Roadmaster 4-Diode Universal Wiring Kit for Towed Vehicles - 7-Way to 6-Wire Hybrid Cord

108 reviews

Code: RM-152-1676-7

Price:  $191.03

• Tow Bar Wiring
• Splices into Vehicle Wiring
• Diode Kit
• 30 Foot Long Harness

• Universal
• Roadmaster

Perfect for tow bars with built-in channels, this complete kit includes everything you need to connect your RV's tail, brake, and turn signal lights to your towed car. Diodes prevent feedback and wire your car to operate as a combined system.

Do you have a question about part RM-152-1676-7?more information >     

How to Install the Roadmaster 4-Diode Universal Wiring Kit on a 2020 Jeep Cherokee

Ryan: Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2020 Jeep Cherokee, we're going to be taking a look at and showing you how to install the RoadMaster diode wiring kit. So we're going to need five main components to flat tow our Cherokee down the road. We're going to need our base plate, which that's going to give us that solid and reliable connection point to hook up our tow bar to. The tow bar is going to be another component. One end is going to hook up to the front of our Jeep.

And the other end is going to hook up to the back of the motor home. And this is actually going to be that physical link that pairs the two together.Third thing that we're going to need is safety cables. Now these are here in the event of a catastrophic disconnect. These are going to keep everything attached. The fourth component will be tow bar wiring.

So the wiring is going to transfer the lighting signals from the back of your motor home to the back of your Jeep. That way everyone would behind you knows what's going on. The fifth main component being a braking system. So the braking system is going to independently apply the brake pedals Jeep whenever you hit the brakes in your motor home, that way your stops are going to be more safe and predictable. So I personally really liked the diode wiring for really a few different reasons.

First one being it's really easy to use. Once you have it installed, there's really no setup involved whenever you want to flat tow your Jeep or something, just going to have to plug in your cable that goes to the front of the Jeep to the back of the motor home.The second one being that it's going to utilize the factory tail lights. And so it's going to have a really clean look. You're really not even going to know it's there. Unlike some of the other types of wiring available, such as magnetic lighting, that's going to be separate lights that stick to the body of your Jeep.

And you're going to have to set those up every single time you want to flat tow it, which can be a real inconvenience. Third reason being that it uses diodes. And so those diodes are going to protect your Jeep's factory wiring if a short or an electrical issue we're to occur on the motor home side. And that's really important, especially in today's cars that have these advanced electrical systems. So this is going to be the cable that you're going to have to plug in whenever you do want to flat tow. One end at the Jeep one end at the motor home.This cable is kind of unique. It's a little bit different than most setups. It's going to be hybrid. And really it's going to be designed to work with tow bars that have channels and them like our RoadMaster Falcon All-Terrain that we have here today. So the straight part's going to run through that channel to utilize it, keep it up off the ground. And this coil then back here is also going to help keep that off the ground that we don't have to worry about a dragging. What's nice about this is you're going to get a little bit of extra length when you're going around them turns and stuff. These coils will stretch out and then come back whenever you're going straight. And so in my experience, it's good to have that little bit of extra length, especially considering some tow bars are a little bit longer than others.You may need to use a high, low adapter, which adds some length. And sometimes that cable can really be a stretch to get it from back of the motor home to the front of the Jeep. So this is going to give you that extra length and really make life easy. I also really liked these little handles here on the connector ends of our cable. Going to give you good spot to get your fingers and pull that out. That does come in handy as opposed to just grabbing the cable and having to pull it out that way. You're not going to have to worry about damaging or ripping anything apart. It's also going to come with the plug that you need to match up to your cable. It's going to be spring loaded. So the cap is going to come down naturally, whenever you're not using it, that's just going to help keep out any dirt or debris.I also really like these little handles here on the connector ends of our cable. Going to give you a good spot to get your fingers and pull that out. That does come in handy as opposed to just grabbing the cable and having to pull it out that way. You're not going to have to worry about damaging or ripping anything apart. It's also going to come with the plug that you need to match up to your cable. It's going to be spring loaded. So the cap is going to come down naturally, whenever you're not using it, that's just going to help keep out any dirt or debris. So overall, in my opinion, definitely the easiest way to transfer your lighting signals to the back of the Jeep here and the cleanest looking. It's not going to affect the appearance of your Jeep at all. As far as the installation goes, it's really not that bad.I will say the most time consuming part is having to run the main wiring harness from the front of the Jeep to the back. But there is quite a bit of room and I'll show you the path that I took to do that. Speaking of installation, let's go ahead and wire everything up together now. To begin our install, we're going to be here at the front of our Jeep, and we're going to take our bundle of wire one end of it. And I'm going to take the little rubber boot for our connector plug, just kind of slide that over, push it out of the way for now. And we're going to separate each one of these wires. So we'll take some snips and then carefully go in between all the wires and make a little cut that way we can kind of pull them apart from each other.See how them ends peel back. What I like to do is just kind of twist the wire and way nice and tight. And from there we can grab our six way plug. On the back of it, how's it going to work. This going to be set screws. So I'll take a small Phillips head screwdriver, and we're going to loosen up four of them. You don't want to pull them all the way out because it can be kind of tricky to get back in. You just want to back it out enough to where we're able to get our wire inside. So the four that we're going to be working with will be TM. And our brown wire will go to that. And that's for our tail lights. Right here we're going to have GD and that's going to be for ground, so our white wire will go there.Right here we're going to have LT And that'll be the left turn. And so our yellow wire will go to that. And this one here will be RT for right turn and our green wire will go to it. So, if you grab our wires. And we'll start with TM, so the brown wire. It slides down into place, and kind of hold it there and then tighten down that set screw. So I'm going to do that same thing for all of our remaining terminals. This is what the back of our plug will look like once we have all the wires connected. From there we'll take our little rubber cap. We'll slide that onto the back of the connector. And I'm going to Fasten this to the bracket here on our base plate. I'm going to use these self-tapping screws.Now, what we can do is take the rest of our wire, the big bundle and start to route this up into the engine compartment. So this is a path that I took. Just came back out of the plug and get it up and over a piece of metal there. And just followed it up kind of behind our tail light. So, into the engine compartment, here's where our wiring came up. I'm just going to kind of run it along the side. And once we get to about this point, what we're going to do, let's take our wire. We're carefully going to cut just the white wire.Cut that in half, we're going to kind of separate the ends of it from the other wires. We'll pull that back some. Get this one started too a little bit. So the end of the wire that runs to our plug at the front, we're going to strip back the installation. We're going to grab the included ring terminal and crimp it down. Now we're to use this as a ground. So we need to go to the body of the vehicle, a nice solid metal surface. We'll grab the self-tapping screw, put that screw through the ring terminal and then we can secure it to the body of our Jeep.Now, with that secure, we can take the other end of our white wire that goes to the bundle. And we're just going to strip this off completely. So we're going to pull all that wire and separate it from the brown, yellow, and green wire. So I continue to run our wire to the back of the Jeep. That's the path that I took. Just kind of came around here and just dropped the wire straight down along our firewall. So we're now on the underside of our Jeep, our wire comes out right here. And then I just followed the brake lines. Whenever you do this, if you route it differently, you want to make sure to avoid any hot or moving parts. And I just use some zip ties to keep it secure. You can just take the end of the wire and just kind of push it through the shield. And that's relatively easy to push through. Don't need to do nothing special. And here's where it comes out. Just kept following my brake lines up along the side of our tank here.And just keep following the brake lines. And once you get to this point, I actually ran it on top of our sub frame, not able to actually see the wire, but it's sitting on top of the sub frame and I use some zip ties to keep it nice and secure. That way we don't have to worry about it falling down. Just continued on, here's where it came out. Then once we got to this point, what you're going to want to do, just how we did kind of the white wire is just separate the green wire from the yellow and brown. The green wire we're eventually going to run over to the passenger side, the yellow and brown wire we're going to run up into the driver's side tail light pocket. So that's what we'll do now. Here at the back of the Jeep we open up our hatch. And we're going to remove our tail lights. Tail lights are going to be held in place by two T30 Torx bit screws. Go ahead and pull those out.Kind of grab the light and kind of gently just wiggle it and pull towards you at the same time. And that will free it. Now we're going to disconnect the connector here, you pull back on the red tab. Then we're going to push down on that center piece here and we'll be able to pull the two apart. So we'll set our light off to the side and then repeat that same process for the passenger side. So on our little harness here, I went ahead and just kind of peel back some of that electrical tape that was around it to give us a little room. And I tested our wiring to see what each wire does and what we we're looking for was our taillight signal, as well as our brake light signal. On the driver's side, the taillight signal will be this wire here. That's going to be white with a yellow stripe. And our brake light signal is going to be this wire here, and this is going to be a solid white wire.So with that being said, what we're going to do is cut those wires in half, and we're going to strip back all four ends, twist the wire. We're going to take a blue spade terminal, slide it over the bare end and crimp it down. I'll just repeat that same process for our three remaining ends. Now with that done, we can pull our wiring from the bottom up into the taillight pocket. So to make that easier I'm going to use a pull wire, that's got a piece of nylon air tube. We could always use a thicker piece of wire or even a coat hanger, something like that. So I went ahead and taped our yellow and brown wire as well as one end of that extra white wire that we saved. So with that tape to the pull wire, we can then move it up.So once we have our wires and our taillight pocket, what she can do is strip back the insulation to expose all the bare wire underneath. The yellow wire, we're going to take a blue spade terminal and crimp that on. And with the white and brown wire, we're going to do something a little different. We're going to take the two ends and twist them together. We're going to take the yellow spade terminal. We'll crimp that on to those two. So we'll take the diode and the end of it that says out with the single terminal, we're to plug that into the white and yellow wire closest to our factory connector plug. The other end of it we'll get plugged into one of the other end terminals. And since the white and yellow controls our taillights, we're going to take our white and brown wire and plug it into that last remaining terminal there.Very similar for the other diode. Single outpost will go to our solid white wire, close to the plug. inaudible 00:16:29 a bit, will just get plugged into one of the in terminals and then we'll take our yellow wire and plug it onto the last remaining one. If you look on the back side of our diode, we're going to have some sticky tape. Peel that backing paper off of each one. And what I'm going to do is just stick the two diodes together.Once you have them stuck together. We can grab our taillight, plug it back in and get it re-installed. So, we're back underneath our Jeep, we can run our green wire as well as the other end of our white wire over to the passenger side. That's the path that I took, I just stayed as high up as I could and ran it through that little panel there that's connected to the back of our bumper and I just ran it straight all the way across. It'll come out right here in this area, just run it up and over the bumper beam.And what I've done is used a pull wire. Again, just like we do on the driver's side. I dropped it down. That way when we get our green and white wire back to this point, we can tape our wires to that pull wire, go back up top and pull them into the taillight pocket. So I want to have them pull their wiring up into the passenger side tail light pocket and got them all hooked up. And this is pretty much identical to the driver's side, except a couple of minor differences. One being the color of our factory wires, the wire that's white and has a really light tan, almost a brown stripe. That's going to be our taillight signal. And so we'll hook our new white wire to it.The factory wire that is white with a green stripe, that's going to be our brake light signal. And so we'll hook our new green wire to that diode. So that's what it'll look like once you're all hooked up. That being said, we can then stick them together, plug our taillight back in and get it re-installed. So at this point we can plug our cord into the front of our Jeep and the other end to the back of our motor home. That way we can test everything and make sure it's working properly. So go ahead and turn on our taillights. We'll try our left turn signal. We'll try our right turn signal and our brake lights. And that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the RoadMaster diode wiring kit on our 2020 Jeep Cherokee.