Replacement Latch Sear with Lever Arm for Demco and etrailer Tow Bars

Video Transcript for Comprehensive Review: Replacement Latch Sear with Lever Arm for Demco and etrailer Tow Bars

How's it going everybody Clayton here at etrailer.com. Here at etrailer, we install, test, and review a lot of different products, to help you as a customer make a more educated decision before your purchase. Today we're going to be taking a look at, and I'll be showing you how to install, the replacement latch sear for Demco and etrailer tow bars. Now, if you've found this page, chances are you are having tow bar problems, and you might have noticed that your latch arm is actually gone or it's just not working properly. And this part is going to fix that problem without having to buy an entire new tow bar, as those can be pretty pricey. Our latch sear is going to work with Demco Commander, Excali-Bar, and Dominator tow bars.

It's also going to work with etrailer SD and XHD tow bars as well. Now this is going to be what you can see of our latch. Whenever we pull this out, you'll notice that that moves, and that actually drops into a tab in our tow bar arm. Then to release it, we'll push our lever down into that, and it's going to pull that tab out, and that's going to allow us to retract our tow bar arm. So if you are having problems with this, more likely than not your tow bar is going to be locked in the out position.

And if you are having problems with your tow bar, the way you're going to know if it's going to be the latch is if it's not locking or releasing. So as you can see when we pull this out, that latch actually kind of moves down along with our arm, letting us know that it's in the locked position. And then another way you're going to know is that if it is locked, you're not going to be able to release it. Now we can go ahead and replace this latch. We want to grab our needle nose pliers, we're going to pry out on this retaining pin, and it might spin on you but that's not a big deal.

Once you find a good spot to hold it, just grab these, kind of pry out and push back. Before we can actually remove our trigger handle we're going to have to remove our locking mechanism. We're going to take this retaining clip off the same way that we did for this one. Now we're going to take this forward pin, we're going to push that down, kind of hold everything together. We're going to be sure not to lose any parts in this process.

And this is the spring that is going to contact our actual arm. Now we have that mechanism out, we want to push down on this pin, we can pull out our arm. Chances are if you need to replace one of these components you're more than likely going to be replacing all of them. You can find your trigger handle, the spring, the pin, your retaining clip, and the latch all here at etrailer. For reassembly we want to grab our latch and our spring. We're going to put our spring into this drilled out opening in the latch. Then we can grab our trigger handle. There's also going to be a little opening here, so we're going to put the spring just like this, then we're actually going to compress it. Once you get that compressed, you want to be careful when you're doing this that you don't lose the spring. So we just set that kind of into place, compress it, and we'll just push that into the housing. You just want to push it until these holes are both lined up. Then you can grab your pin and slide that through each component, then you'll add the retaining clip right on top. And we just want to take our clip, we're going to slide that right over our pin. We're going to hold that kind of in place. We'll grab our pliers, carefully open this up, aligning that with the groove in our pin. Once you get that started, you just want to keep a little bit of downward pressure on it. And grab those pliers, and just push it forward. We just want to make sure that these snap into those grooves, just like so. We're gonna repeat that same process for our latch. You might have to push them backward or forward, depending on how you have it positioned, to get this pin slid through. With everything back in place, we now want to pull out on our arm and check that release mechanism, just to make sure it works. And in this case we're good. So if you have the same problem on the other side, you'll follow those same steps. The parts are universal so you don't have to worry about shopping for left and right. Now that we have our tow bar back in our receiver of our motor home, we can get it tested. We just want to pull our arm out till it locks. We hear it lock into place, and it doesn't move, so we know we're good, now we can check the release. Push down, just like that we're good to go. And we didn't have to buy a whole new tow bar. That being said, that's going to do it for our look at and our installation for the replacement latch sear for Demco and etrailer tow bars..