This is in a 2000 '**, I don't know enough about these rides to know which years are the same.
My tow/haul light will not come on. I’ve fixed this once before, but need to fix it again so I figured it would make a good post.
The wire that goes to your tow/haul button located on the end of your gear selector runs underneath your steering column and up through the gear selector. When the button is pushed, it cycles the tow/haul mode on and off. Since this wire goes up through the gear selector, every time you put it in gear and every time you tilt the wheel, the wire gets worked back and forth. After a while it can break. I fixed it once before but didn’t have it securely out of the way and it got pinched in the notches for the different gears (see first picture) and eventually this cut it in two. In the second picture you can see the orange wire on each end with wire spliced in between, covered with electrical tape, and a few small yellow zip ties to hold it in place. This obviously didn’t work. So here’s how to fix it. Notice how the orange wire comes up from under the steering column and is held in place with a black bracket or plug.
First, remove the tilt handle by firmly pulling it away from the steering column.
Second, remove the lower cover to your steering column. It is held on by two T-25 torx screws. Remove these. You can’t just pull the cover straight down as it is held at the bottom by two hooks. See third picture. Slide it down the direction of the steering column to disengage these.
Now turn the key on and move the gear selector down so you can remove the boot from the bottom of the selector from the top cover of the steering column. Slide this up the gear selector and return the gear selector to the top and turn off the key. Look at the wires coming out of the gear selector and the wires coming out from the dash under the steering column. You will see a heavier orange wire come out under the steering column, it should be held in place by a small black plug that pushes into a little metal bracket under the bottom of the steering column, refer back to the second picture. This wire will continue up and around so that it goes up into the gear selector. Somewhere along here it will likely be broken. It is actually two very thin white wires with an orange outer cover. Once you locate the break you will need to strip off the orange cover. Be careful with this as the white wires inside are quite thin and you don’t want to cut them up. It’s a little awkward stripping the cover and the wires due to how close they are too the steering column and the fact there is not much slack. Just take your time and be careful. The white wires were too small for my stripping tool so I very carefully just drug a line around them with my pocketknife and pulled off the white insulation. I didn’t have any crimp connectors that small so I stripped off a length about three times as long as I needed, folded it over three times, and crimped it with a crimp connector. I did this on each end of the white wires then crimped in between them a heavier gauge black wire. Heavier only because I didn’t have anything that small, and it’s easier to work with.
In the fourth picture, you can see the orange wire come out of the gear selector, I crimped them up high so the crimp connectors would shield them from the gear selector. I then ran the black wires down and zip tied them to a heavier black wire or cable that runs under there, I’m not sure what it is. If you follow from the lowest red zip tie you can see the black wires drop down to where the red crimp connectors splice them back to the white wires in the orange sleeve. A roll of electrical tape is hanging there because I was about to wrap up the connections. I have pulled the orange retaining plug out so I have more slack and have pulled the orange wire out all the way from underneath the steering column.
In the fifth picture, you can see I have wrapped both pairs of crimp connectors in electrical tape (actually you can only see one, the other is tucked under the steering column) and have securely zip tied the black wires I spliced the full length of the black cable. I did not plug the black retaining plug back in, I simply tucked the wires back under the steering column where they came from. While you are doing this occasionally stop and work the gear selector up and down through the full range to make sure nothing pinches, binds, or is too tight. Now reverse the order to put your steering column back together.
Due to the nature of these wires and the length there is to work with, if they break again at the shift selector I won’t bother with them. I’ll simply buy a little switch and mount it under the steering column and wire the wires to it.
Hope this might help.
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