2009 Ford E350 Van Brake Controller Installation

"Standard" Wire colors to the controller (Tekonsha and others):
- Black, Battery Positive to controller
- White, Negative Ground for Controller
- Blue, Brake feed from controller to Trailer plug at back of truck
- Red, tap into truck Brake light switch signal to tell controller to apply brakes

Remember, the above colors are just a GUIDE. your colors may be different, read the instructions!

We found the brake light switch tap on the long connector attached to the steering column. It was the Purple Wire with a white tracer Stripe. The picture shows looking up from the floorboard.

The brake light switch is hard to reach, but with a probe tester, look for a wire under the dash that lights with the brake lights. Once we located that wire, I unplugged the connector to gain better access. Tap into the wire for the brake light feed (red wire on most controllers) again, on this truck, it was the Purple wire with white stripe

For power, we ran a wire through the firewall, and tapped onto the fuse panel under the hood. We loosened the Main Power Cable from the fuse box, (10 mm nut) and used a standard ring connector with #10 wire over to the 20 amp Circuit breaker, we mounted to the fire wall.

We grounded the controller under the dash to a ground screw. Easy.

The blue (brake wire to plug) was simply passed through a hole in the firewall and ran along the frame to the back plug on the truck. (making sure to use lots of tie wraps to keep the wire away from hot and moving parts

We used a 20 amp Circuit Breaker to power the brake controller, AND supply power to the 12 Volt power terminal on the trailer plug. This truck did not have wire ran to the back, so we used our 2 conductor brake wire and ran it ourselves. Drilled a small 3/8" hole in the fire wall to run the wire to the brake controller under the dash. We removed the plastic overflow tank, (on the right in the picture above) and drilled the hole in a "clear area" behind it, over to the far right side (looking back).

The truck came pre-wired with the four flat plug for trailer lights, we just connected those existing wires to the new 7 way plug we installed at the back of the truck