Thread: MY12 tow electrics - trailer ecu standard?

Yes, pretty sure that's right Graeme, ECU is factory fitted.

I only had to buy the harness (and the tow tongue) for my car Graeme, all works fine so assume the Ecu was already there.

I don't have the wiring schematic for these vehicles yet other than a couple specific areas but I now suspect they don't use the separate trailer ecu of the earlier models. The parts manual does not show a trailer ecu anywhere, only the trailer harness connecting to an existing loom connector.

I'll need to be able to tow a trailer almost from the day it arrives home so will have to organise a harness of some sort and at least a box-trailer height tongue too. I may just use spade terminals to connect to the loom plug and fit a flat 12-pin from the outset rather than pay $200+ for a genuine harness primarily to get the connector.

Can't really help you there Graeme. When I bought my car - it was 10 months old - the first owner hadn't had the tow kit fitted, so I had to do all that myself. From memory I just went to the parts department of the local dealer and bought the tongue and wiring loom, then had the dealer's service department do all the fitting.
I had some issues when it came time to fit the electric trailer brake unit but that was purely a wiring issue, which the auto sparky eventually fixed.
Everything seems to work fine, even down to the little green trailer icon on the dash flashing on and off while indicating.

Worth noting though, the OEM tongue from the LR parts bin was far too low and too short, and I had to buy an after-market tongue from ARB. (Still have the OEM tongue if anybody wants it:-)

Unbeknown to me at the time, the selling dealer Alto LR kindly fitted tow electrics to my vehicle prior to pick-up. A s/h standard tongue is on its way to me which will suffice at least for my box trailer but it sounds as though I'll have to remove the 2nd tail-light circuit to prevent the trailer brakes from operating when parkers are on prior to towing, similar to the D4.