Tow bar electrics?

[tight fart]

I’m looking to put a rack on the back of my Fiat based motorhome that will need tow bar electrics. A 2012 Ducato.
I’ve fitted them before but years ago when you paid around £15 for a kit and simply clipped it to the existing wiring.
Looking at the kits now they are £150 upwards.
What’s changed so much?
Is it now a lot more complicated with modern wiring systems?

[smokey mow]

CAN Bus electrics on vehicles have made these simple jobs a whole lot more difficult than they were 20 years ago

[donkmeister]

I've fitted a couple of CANbus kits and I'd argue it makes life easier - you get an interface box that plugs in to a spare socket in the rear fusebox, then the towing loom plugs into that.

Also the kits say the vehicle needs to be coded, but I've found the basic lighting works regardless... If you want to activate advanced towing features where the car adjusts stability programmes, deactivates parking sensors and so on that does require said coding.

[tight fart]

Only need for brake side lights etc. best I have a poke around for that connector.

[paulrockliffe]

I did a Zafira B a few years ago and that was trivial, there was a socket on the rear computer board that an expansion thing plugged into, you ran the wire out a hole and that was it, it all worked. Easier than doing the clip thing.

On the Zafira Tourer the CAN setup is much more efficient, it's a handful of wires from front to rear, with I presume each light unit then having a CAN decoder in it. So there isn't a board at the back and there's no socket anywhere else. For that one the installation is more complicated than the clip thing, I had to run wires to the front of the car and tap into the CAN system and power behind the glove box and steering wheel.

The instructions said something about coding, it wasn't very clear who or what or how, but it just works, including disabling the rear parking sensors. There isn't anything more complicated than that to adjust on the car though. I don't get the trailer indicator beep thing that warns you if the extra indicators stop working, so maybe that's what gets coded? I should really find out what I'm missing.