How to Install a Plug & Play Turn Signal Kit on a Can-Am Defender

Length: 24:22
Created: April 8, 2020

Transcript

[0:00] The first thing that we’re going to do is lift up the passenger and the middle seat. If you have a factory tool box, remove it and set it aside. Then we’re going to remove all of the hardware securing the lower portion of the dash to the machine.

Now we’re going to the front of the machine. We’ll open the hood. Remove the two push pins securing the fenders, located here and here on both sides.

Once you’ve removed the push pins, remove the two T30 torques, located here and here.

[1:30] Then we’re going to get a 10 mm. We’ll grab hold of each of our fenders and peel the fender back just enough so that we can get down to this 10 mm bolt, located right here. And then in the same exact spot on the opposite side.

Then we’re going to disconnect the plug right here by pushing down on this tab, and we’ll just pull it right out. Then we’ll pick up on this fender, slide the assembly, and completely remove it.

[2:17] Now we’re back at the rear of the machine. We’re going to let down the tailgate. Then we’re going to come right in here and remove these two screws holding the tail light.

We’re going to grab the tail light and slide it out. Sometimes it’s kind of tricky to get out. To make it a little bit easier on yourself, grab a hold of this piece right here and just peel it out. Just make sure you’re easy with it.

Then we’re going to grab our hardware, pull it out of these holes, and set it aside. Then we’re going to disconnect the factory harness from the tail light. Set the tail light there for the time being and we’re going to repeat the steps for the opposite side.

[3:22] Now we’re going to flip the bed up. Once we’ve done this we’re going to come in here and remove the pin from the bed shock. Then we’re going to let our bed tilt all of the way down and set on the rear tires. I like to go ahead and take my pin and put it back into the shock so we know where it’s at.

Then we’re going to come down here and disconnect this harness.

[4:03] The next thing that we’re going to do is grab a rear harness and connect it to the factory harness. So the connection that we just unplugged is right down here.

We’re going to take the male end, which is going to be the SuperATV portion of the harness, and plug it into the female portion of the factory harness. Make sure it goes all the way in and that it snaps.

Then we’re going to take this connector and route it up against the back side of the machine and then let it hang for the time being. We’re going to route it down here and let it hang.

[4:48] Then we’re going to take this portion of the harness—one side’s going to be longer than the other. The longer side goes to the driver’s side and the short side goes to the passenger side.

We’re just going to follow this frame rail and lay the driver’s side of the harness down. We’re going to take the passenger side and route it in between the bed and this plastic piece, toward where the factory tail light is. We’re just going to run it right out of the hole there.

Then we’re going to let our bed down for just a second. We’re going to let it set—you want to make sure you go nice and slow.

Take this portion of the harness, which is going to go to the driver’s side, and route it up and underneath of the bed just like we did on the passenger side. We’re going to pull this harness through and let it hang out for the time being.

And then we’re not going to be installing a license plate light today, but if you are, here’s the connector for it. You just unplug it, plug the provided harness in for the turn signal kit, and then wire it in.

[6:04] Now we’ll take the SuperATV harness and connect it to our factory tail lights. You want to make sure whenever you go to do this that if the factory portion of the harness sticks in there, which it does from time to time, that you remove that.

The easiest way to do it is to get a flat-head screwdriver and very carefully reach down in here and pry straight up on it. Making sure that you don’t bend these pins. Once you’ve got it pried up, you can take a pair of needle-nose pliers, reach straight down in here, and pull it straight out.

Then you can connect the SuperATV harness right to it. Make sure that it snaps.

You can tuck the factory harness up and out of the way.

We’re going to slide our tail light in place. Get both of our screws started, then we’re going to fully tighten them. And then repeat the same steps for the opposite side.

[7:18] So now we’re going to grab the control box portion of the harness, which we previously ran down over top of the gas tank. Now we’re going to follow the radiator hoses and start feeding it into the machine.

If you go right on top of the radiator hose and start feeding it into the machine, it’s going to come out right where we need it.

Now we’re going to tie up all of our wiring. Make sure it’s not laying on the exhaust and it’s in a good place to where you can close the bed. Then we’re going to reattach the bed to the shock. Then we’re going to head to the front of the machine.

[7:58] So we’re up here at the front. The next thing that we’re going to do is drill our holes for our turn signal lights. The awesome thing about SuperATV’s Turn Signal Kit is you can drill the holes wherever you’d like. You can use one indicator light on one side, two on the other, or use all of them.

Today we’ve drilled our hole here, as well as here. So now that our holes are drilled, we’ll take one of our turn signal lights. Take the grommet off of the light itself and slide the harness through.

Then we’re going to take the grommet and get it installed into the drilled hole. Take the light and start feeding it in there. The best way to do it is to wiggle it from side to side as it’s going in. That way it doesn’t roll up the grommet.

Then repeat the steps for the rest of the turn signal lights.

[9:01] Then we’re going to grab our front harness. We’re going to be looking for the side that has the four connectors on it.

You’re going to want to look—each of these are going to be labeled. This is going to be the left signal, so that’s going to be the driver’s side signal. Then the right, that’s going to be the passenger side.

So we’re going to grab the side of the harness that plugs into the control box. We’re going to start right here and feed this harness straight down.

You don’t want to get too much slack down there. Before we do anything else we’re going to get it started through the grommet.

This grommet is going to be hard for you to see. If you come over here on the passenger side and you grab your harness, you can take your hand and follow the firewall. Reach straight back then straight down. You’re going to feel your factory harness coming through and you’re going to feel that rubber grommet.

[9:56] So what we’re going to do with this plug is feed it straight through that rubber grommet and follow the factory harness. Just feed as much of that harness inside the machine as you can.

So here’s our front harness. We fed it right over top of these radiator lines, as well as the factory harnesses, and we’re just going to lay it right here in the floor board.

We’re going to head back out to the front and start wiring up our turn signal lines.

[10:26] Now we’re back out front and we have our harnesses. Here’s our right side, or our passenger side. We’re going to feed our harness down into here, back behind the radiator.

Now go right through here, underneath the headlight. I’m just going to reach up underneath of the headlight, grab our harness, and plug it into our turn signal light for the passenger side. Make sure they’re good and snapped together.

[11:04] Then we’re going to head back up here and go to the driver’s side. We’re going to take our driver’s side portion of the harness and run it right along with the factory harness.

Then we’re going to go right underneath the headlight. Pull the harness through and make our connections here.

This wire here is going to go to our horn. We’re going to leave it hanging just like it is and then whenever we install our factory front panel and hood, we’re going to slide this through and connect it to our horn.

[11:59] So now we’re going to tie up all of our wires. For this specific kit, it’s okay if you have excess. Bundle it up and take the provided zip tie in the kit. Put a zip tie around it and cut off the excess.

Tuck it back on top of the radiator. Take another zip tie and attach it to the factory harness, then cut off the excess zip tie. Then repeat all of these steps for the opposite side.

[12:50] The next thing that you’re going to do is install your horn. This is another thing that’s awesome about SuperATV’s kit—you can mount this horn anywhere you like. We send enough harness for you to mount it up over here, if you’d like to put it on the frame. We’ve found the easiest way to do it is just drill a small hole, take the stud of the horn, and stick it through the hole. Then put the nut on the backside and you’re good to go.

Now what we’re going to do is take our harness and run it up through the front compartment here. Then we’re going to get our plug that we previously removed and plug it in. Put it right back where it was.

Pick up on this fender, as well as this fender over here. Get the front compartment slid back down into place. Make sure everything is where we want it.

[13:57] As you can see, we’re going to have quite a bit of excess for our horn. What we’re going to do is plug it in. It doesn’t matter which way you plug it in, just make sure you plug both in. Should be just like that.

We’re going to do the same thing with the excess that we did with the other wires. Get our zip ties, coil the wire up, and cut off the excess zip tie. And the the hole that we ran our wires through, right here, we’re just going to take our excess wiring and feed it right back through there. Angle it toward the passenger side.

Get it all tucked in there and out of the way. That way when you walk up to the front of this machine and open the hood, you can’t see any of the wires for the turn signal kit. It will look super clean.

Replace all of the hardware for the front compartment and then we’re going to head into the machine.

[15:16] Next we’re going to take our control box and mount it to our control box mount. When you do this, make sure the harness portion is laying just like this so it’s going in between the two mounting tabs.

Then we’re going to take this bracket right here and mount it just like this. Where we’re mounting the control box, we want to use the small M5 Allen-headed screws. And for this bracket right here we want to use the short M10 bolts.

So once you’ve bolted it all together, and it’s all done and ready to install on the machine, it’s going to look just like this.

[16:04] Now we’re going to get this bad boy bolted up. We’re going to grab two of our M10 bolts and two M10 nuts. We’re going to mount it up right here, to these two tabs.

Now we’re going to get all of our harness stretched out. There’s a lot of harness here so it can get in the way as you’re trying to do this. You’re just going to have to work through it.

Take this bolt and slide it through. While we’ve got it hanging there, we’re going to come up from the bottom, take our nut, and get it started onto the bolt.

We’re going to do the same thing for this opposite side.

[17:05] Then we’re going to grab our wires and angle them over to the passenger side. Then we’re going to grab a 13 mm wrench and a 13 mm socket and fully tighten it.

Once we have the control box bolted up and in place, grab our rear portion of the harness and connect it to the rear portion of the control box harness. It’s going to be labeled. So we’re going to connect it. Make sure it snaps together nice and tight.

Then we’re going to come up here, where we previously ran the front harness through the firewall. Grab it and connect it to the front on the control box.

[17:51] Then we’re going to get our wires sorted out so everything is nice and neat. It depends on how your rocker switch panel is set up. We’re working on a XMR Edition today so the way ours is set up, we’re going to only have one hole on this side. Over on the opposite side (the driver’s side) we’re going to have two holes available.

We’re going to take our harness and the two longest portions of the harness, which is going to be the hazard switch and the horn switch. They’re going to go here to the driver’s side rocker switch panel. Then the turning switch signal is going to go right here on the passenger side of the rocker switch panel.

We’re going to follow our factory harness and run these two wires right up and into the dash. The best way I’ve found to do it is just whenever when you’re feeding this wire up through here, make sure you’re not going to get into contact with anything that it shouldn’t be.

[18:55] In this instance, it could be the steering shaft. So how I like to do it is to run it right up on top, over top of the dash bar, and then all the way around. I’m going to grab it over here and feed it into the rocker switch holes.

Now that we have our wires ran up over top of our dash cluster, we’re going to reach in this little compartment and there’s a tab. We’re going to push that tab straight up. This compartment is going to pop right out. Set it aside for just a moment.

[19:46] We’re going to grab our wires and run them through the back side of this compartment. Then we’re going to take each of them and run them through our rocker switch holes. You need to line them up however you want to do it.

You’ve got your hazard switch and the horn. I want my horn to be on the far outside so what I’m going to do is stick my harness through my hole. And do the same exact thing for the other one.

Then I’m going to get my horn switch, as well as my hazard switch. We’re going to line them up. Make sure this post here lines up with the hole on the harness.

We’re going to feed it back in here. Make sure our switch fully seats and we’re going to do the same thing on the horn. Make sure everything lines up properly. Feed it back through and line it up in the dash.

[21:07] Then we’re going to grab our turning signal light portion of the harness. Do the same exact thing. We’re going to run it through our other hole in our dash. Grab our turn signal switch and make sure the post is lined up.

Make sure they make a good connection and snap together nice and tight. Snap it into place and make sure it works properly. Then we’re going to get back up underneath the dash and install the power harness.

[22:01] Next we’re going to grab the power harness that runs off the control box. We’re going to connect our black wire—our ground wire—to the ground on the bus bar and then our hot wire to a 12V accessory wire.

We’re going to go underneath here and show you exactly which posts you need to connect to.

If you go underneath your dash, you’re going to see a bar with a bunch of wires going to it. This is going to be your accessory bar, or bus bar, as some may call it.

The wire that’s closest to you, toward the back of the machine, is where your ground wire needs to go. The post that’s farthest forward, toward the front of the machine, is your 12V accessory wire.

[22:47] Now we’ll remove the nut off of the stud, which you’re not going to be able to see, but you’ll have to trust me. Then we’re going to take our ground wire and put it on that rear-most stud. Then we are going to the farthest, forward-most stud and we’ll attach our 12V accessory wire.

Once we’ve done this, we’ll re-install the nuts. Fully tighten them, making sure that our wires are making a good, solid connection.

Then you have your fuse holder. There are a few different things that you can do with this fuse holder. You can zip tie it up out of the way, or you can take a self tapper and self tap it into the dash somewhere. It’s completely up to you. You can even lay it up in there in a good spot, where it’s not going to get in the way of anything. That’s perfectly acceptable as well.

[23:50] Go through and make sure all of your wiring is tied up and out of the way. Then reinstall all of your factory components.

And that’s how easy it is to install SuperATV’s Deluxe Turn Signal Kit on this Can-Am Defender! For more information on this Turn Signal Kit or any of SuperATV’s great products, feel free to give us a call at 855-743-3427 or check us out online at SuperATV.com. Thanks for watching and we’ll catch you next time!