Towbar Wiring

[knobblywobbly]

I'm planning on fitting a towbar with only 1 socket for trailer lights to my mk2. Do I need to fit any kind of relay for this, or do I just connect up the wires without one? I did a search on here but couldn't find a definitive answer.

I want to do this myself as I can get a towbar kit for around £68 including the ball & electrics, but they want £125 to fit it. As another place told me it was just under an hour to do I point-blank refuse to pay someone £125/hour, unless it's a naked Cheryl Cole doing :censored: to me :drool:

[Rustscrat]

Mine's got an after market tow bar and pretty sure it hasn't got an additional relay. It has got one of those annoying sounders for the indicators though!

Cheryl cole , £125 - - does she do a bogof deal? :lol:
:thumbsup:

[steve valentine]

It will need a bypass relay, simple to fit but you need a permanent live from the battery/fuse box.

I did mine in around an hour including wiring and fitting the tow bar.

[evdama]

I fitted a towbar to my 07 mk2 van without a relay -it worked fine.
On both my '10 plate and the '12 plate Mk 3 vans I have put a 7 way bypass relay.
Its not much extra work and is fairly simple to do. I would recomend it even on vehicles you dont need them on.
It also includes the indicator bleeper integrated ready so in fact its slightly simpler.

Ive put Euro 13 pin sockets on the last two towbars and have taken advantage of this by putting reversing lights on my trailer.
If you plan to hook up a caravan you will need at least two live feeds in addition to the relay feed.Make sure they are fused as close to the power source as possible.Take the fuses out while working.
13 pin sockets have small screws and are tightly spaced -a good screwdriver is essential! Go down the prewired route if you can afford to.
Ifyou do wire it yourself watch out as there are already several different sets of colour codes for 13 pin -so much for a 'standard'
13 pin cable is scarce and expensive-you can use two runs of 7 pin cable instead.

You can access most of the wires you need from the area between the nearside wheelarch and light cluster.Then feed the wire from the offside indicator and taillamp up and over inside the rear door 'frame' box section.Unpop the rear light cluster and you can probe the multiplug with a multimeter to see which color wires to scotchlock into.You can drop the cable down to the towbar down the inside of the nearside rear door pillar.
Most towbars need you to cut a little section from the underside of the MK2 bumper -it doesnt show.
I didnt need to remove the bumper.
Use copaslip on your towbar nuts and bolts in case you sell the towbar and van separatley later on.
You use spacer tubes within the chassis rails on a MK 2 they can be b***ARds to remove later on.
Check the tightness of the fasteners regularly and especially after the first few active service missions.

[tanto]

I'm planning on fitting a towbar with only 1 socket for trailer lights to my mk2. Do I need to fit any kind of relay for this, or do I just connect up the wires without one? I did a search on here but couldn't find a definitive answer.

I want to do this myself as I can get a towbar kit for around £68 including the ball & electrics, but they want £125 to fit it. As another place told me it was just under an hour to do I point-blank refuse to pay someone £125/hour, unless it's a naked Cheryl Cole doing :censored: to me :drool:

Hi Knobbly,
I bought a genuine Citroen towbar and single electrics from my local dealer in 2010 for my Mk2 van. Total cost was £135 . Electrics were done using a ''plug and play'' style harness which required no scotchblocs whatsoever. It was simply a case of removing the plugs from the rear light clusters, plugging the harness to the light clusters and then putting the original rear light plugs into the harness. Only other connection was a wire from the new harness to the earth point next to the light at I think the drivers side. From each harness, a cable ran down through an existing hole to be fed to the position of the socket on the towbar. Took me about 2 hours to fit the towbar and connect the electrics on my own using a set of car ramps to get some height to work under the van.
The part number for the electrics was 942805 and the price was £30.61 plus vat. Had to fit an indicator buzzer seperately into the wiring at a later date as there was no visual or audible telltale on the van and Citroen wanted £70 an hour to hook up to the diagnostics on the off chance that they could enable this themselves. Bought the buzzer for £4 from an Ifor Williams dealer when I bought my trailer. Fitted it myself in 30minutes.
Fog lights on the van are automatically disabled when the trailer lights are connected.
Hope this is of help to you

Dave.

[knobblywobbly]

Thanks folks.

I bought a towbar today and started to fit it tonight. What an absolute pain in the ´arris!! It didn´t help that I don´t have any ramps, ended up working by torchlight and spent an hour trying to fit 8mm nuts to 10mm bolts! :brickwall::brickwall::brickwall::brickwall::brickwall::censored:

I´ll be attempting the wiring tomorrow, but I´m not very confident!

[Rustscrat]

Ahh yes, the square peg in the round hole syndrome, I prescribe fanny by gas light to shed light on the situation!:lol::lol:

Let us know if you require any drawings etc. alut: