I just finished fitting an eBay towbar electric kit, and thought some feedback might be useful...

The kit cost £60 and arrived quickly. I checked out the instructions in the box. These are in pure graphic form for use across Europe, and can be a little ambigous. Must be honest I was completely baffled the first time I read them. However, reading them trough a couple of times, and with help from my 17 yr old daughter, the penny finally dropped

The kit contains a couple of looms, the electrics socket, and bag full of ties and bolts

I was a little nervous, because I normally leave this kind of thing to the garage, but gave it a go

What the instructions don't tell you is how to take off the trim. You start by disconnecting the -ve terminal of the battery. Next, into the boot, and remove the 4 floor sections. These just pull out.

Next, onto the side panels either side of the boot compartment. I discovered that you don't have to remove these completely, just pull away the ends nearest the rear of the car. They come away with a firm tug. This exposes the back of the rear lamp electrics

Next, remove the 2 screws holding the rear lamp cluster in place, and pull the fitting towards you and slightly to the side, and it comes away. Pull out the conector that provides the power to the unit. Repeat on the opposite side

Now, lower the spare wheel to the floor, as this gives some room to work in. It is helpful, before the battery is disconnected, to raise the vehicle to off road height, as again this gives working space

Now, time to fit the bigger of the 2 looms. This involves making a hole in the grommet in the back of the near-side rear lamp housing. I made a small hole here, and pushed the sharp end of a pair of long nose pliers through. I was then able to grip the end of the loom (about 7 wires with brass terminators) and pull this through the hole. (It helped that I had taped these terminators together with some insulating tape first). My daughters small hands helped here !

This end (ie the bare wires) are now threaded down and behind the rear bumper, and are fed out of the hole provided for the electric connector in the centre of the bumper

Next, the second and smaller of the two looms is fitted. My tip is to start by feeding the bare wire (brass terminators) through the electric socket hole in the rear bumper. Now, take the "left" side and feed this up through the back of the bumper and into the outer rear lamp housing (I wasted about 30 mins trying to work out how to get this "into" the car (ie behind the trim) only to realise that it actually fits outside the car but behind the lamp cluster

Repeat this procedure for the RHS of the car

Now, it is simply a matter of disconnecting the various electric plugs and sockets and fitting your towbar electric loom in series.

When it came to wiring the towbar electric socket, I got my daughter to double check my connections. A level physics is really helpful here ! Seriously though, quite simple but worth a second opinion

Now time to put it all back together, but first making the slack sections of loom tidy by tying with the plastic ties.

Connected it to the horse box, no flashes or bangs or puffs of smoke, and everything worked

It took me about 3 hours, working slowly with bacon butties and tea, and lots of advice from 17 year old

Hope this helps anyone out there

Nice one Neil