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Amber lights on a Toyota
My youngest son has a 1992 Toyota Fourunner and needs to install a hitch and wiring. I have offered to help him but he has learned from two different hitch installers that it has "amber lights" that will require some special installation techniques. I am unfamiliar with this and wondered if anyone else has an idea what these are. The hitch people want at least $240 for the job, and I know I can buy a hitch for around $90 minus the wiring harness (should I decide to use one).
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Amber lights on a Toyota
I have a Toyota with "amber" lights. It means that they have separate turn signals and brake lights, this is a very common practice. Most places have adaptors for this kind of lights, even Wally World (Wal-Mart) has them. Just look for a wiring harness for this type of vehicle. They are relatively easy to install for someone with a modicom of electrical ability. You can do a search on the web for the type of connector you need and you'll be able to find a wiring diagram to match.
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Amber lights on a Toyota
The key is to get a unit labeled to your exact vehicle and year. The problem is how to feed a separate turn signal and brake light into a single bulb on the trailer without back feeding power into the vehicles computer, cruise control and other sensitive circuits. It would make more sense to me to design trailer lighting that mimicked the vehicle-wiring scheme. But maybe the problem is only limited to a few models. I am glad I had experienced people do the wiring on my 2002 Tundra. I am told it is even more complicated than previous years.
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Amber lights on a Toyota
It sure would seem that they should make trailer light kits that matched the tail light system but I have never seen one.
For my 2000 Tundra I bought a Drawtite Hitch, and they sold a Drawtite electrical module specifically for the Tundra. This meant that the Truck had been factory wired for a Hitch as a default, and the Drawtite plugs simply plugged right into it both at the hitch and up at the battery.
Pretty slick and no issue with someone messing with splices into your wiring like they always did to my previous vehicles, though I always had someone do it and never had a problem.
I think this prewire thing is something new because of how much damage you can do if you do it wrong. It really should always have been done this way on vehicles that were likely candidates for trailers like pickups.
Dennis
CTB
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Amber lights on a Toyota
I have heard first hand accounts of late 90’s and 2000+ vehicles that suffered ignition timing and O2 sensor problems because someone used old fashion techniques to wire it for a trailer. It is real easy to do a couple thousand dollars damage while try to save a couple dozen bucks on wiring.
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Amber lights on a Toyota
That's the nice thing about the newer models. They have a connector in the harness so all you have to do is buy the correct "T" connector for your model and plug it in and mount the connector. It then will connect to standard trailer lighting systems. That 92 model should have a connector, I know a 94 does.
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Amber lights on a Toyota
I bought a module from my Toyota dealer for the 90 I had. There were not too many options at that point.
The module came with a wireing diagram but the wiring had to be cut at that era.
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Amber lights on a Toyota
This seems totally amazing to me. Who would have thought wiring a flat trailer light plug would be that complicated these days. I guess I really lucked out when I purchased the plug-in harness for the 2000 Tacoma I had. The only reason I did that was I just did not want to screw around testing and splicing like I have done for myself and anyone else that has asked me to for the last thirty years. Had I gone ahead and done the Toy like I have done other vehicles, I would have ended up with turn signal and running lights but no brake lights. I normally test for left and right turn as well as running lights. Once you have that, the brakes on the single light system are a given. As soon as I went looking I am sure it would have hit me, but the solution may not have been so obvious. If you have just one particular unit you are towing, seperate lights are an option. My utility trailer was set up like that until one set of lights rotted away and I changed it to single lights. There used to be a hot wire from the brake light switch under the dash that you could tap into for just brake lights, or for an auxilary brake unit. I suppose all that has changed as well? It's still not rocket science, it was the termonolgy that threw me.
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05-12-2002, 17:07 
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