Help needed - trailer wiring for mini cooper
 

I'm trying to wire my daughter's mini cooper for a trailering harness. The directions included aren't anything like the parts I have. I have no clue how to figure this out on my own.

Anyone around this weekend that I could drive to for help?

That was fun.... :p

I assume Tony got it done for you. There are detailed instructions and a video on eTrailer.com - I had to do this for my wife's Highlander, as the optional trailer hitch only had a 4-wire connector. Not a simple job if you want to hide the wiring well, but it's held up for 5 years so far.

Tony took care of me. I couldn't have done it myself. We had instructions, but they were for right hand drive cars.

OK now this makes no sense. Wires don't care. Were the colors different or something? Wasn't this just a disassemble the taillight, tap into the wires operation?

Tony could tell you what the confusions from a standard install were. My head was spinning a bit. I didn't know how to figure out which wire does what or tap into the wires. Don't have the tools either.

If the trailer has surge brakes, it's just tap into the tail lights (both of them, for turn signals). But if you need to hook in a brake controller, it's more complicated. The parts in the instructions that look hard are really easy. Running the wires safely to the rear of the car takes planning, time, and band-aids. https://www.etrailer.com/faq-install...m-scratch.aspx.

Peter

We eventually got it figured out. The problem started when John installed the wiring module on the "passenger" side of the vehicle, per the instructions. Unfortunately, based upon the UK instructions, that should have been on the left rear panel. John installed on the right rear panel, per a left-hand drive version of the car. Not a big deal, except that most wires on the module were short, with only 2 wires being long enough to reach the other side. Once we figured out what was happening, we were able to make it work. The module was attached with VERY strong adhesive tape, so we decided to not remove/relocate it. In the end, as most of the relevant wires were on both sides (except for the 12V source) we only had to "re-direct" the turn signal wires, so the correct ones were lighting on the trailer plug.