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To see if this custom-fit item will work for you please tell us what vehicle you'll use it with.
The crossbar-style hidden brackets attach to your Scion tC's frame to provide attachment points for your tow bar. The visible portions of the brackets can be removed when you are not towing.
Features:
The square drawbars, or front arms, on the crossbar-style base plate kit are simple to mount and remove, easily securing with hitch pins. Once the drawbars have been removed, the remaining brackets are virtually invisible. On most automobiles, the brackets are mounted within the grille, where they remain not only unseen, but protected from scrapes and scuffs as well.
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Speaker 1: Today in this 2006 Scion tC, we'll be having a look at and showing you how to install the Roadmaster XL Base Plate Kit with removable arms part number 1176-1. Here's what a base plate looks like installed. What's great about this, with its removable arms, it's gives us a nice clean look and doesn't even stick out past the license bracket on our vehicle.Now the reason you're gonna want a base plate for your tC is that this will serve as the connection point between your tC and your motor home. It'll allow you to hook up your tow bar, so you can safely flat tow your tC behind it.Now the way our removable arms work, we'll install them so they're horizontal like this. This pin hole here will line up with that pin hole there, and we'll secure it in place with our pin, and we'll lock the pin in place with a clip. This will keep it from being able to be pulled out.
Our other side will be the exact same way.As you see this will provide a nice sold attachment point for our tow bar to connect to. One nice feature, is we do have a safety cable attachment point here. We'll just use our . provide a quick link with the short link. Now we can attach the safety cables between our motor home and our tC.Now to help prevent theft and tampering of our removable arms from the base plate, there is a spot provided at the bottom on each side, which you can secure them together using a padlock.
We have many lock options available separately on our website.Now when comparing this to other base plate options out there, such as the Blue Ox Base Plate Kit, I feel the Roadmaster attaches to your vehicle much easier and has a more solid connection. Also it is much more compatible with other accessories, such as the Guardian or the Tow Defender to help protect your vehicle from any road debris, which may get kicked up by your motor home.For this particular flat tow set up we use the Roadmaster XL Base Plate Kit with removable arms. We used the Roadmaster diode 7-Wire to 6-Wire Flexo-Coil Wiring Kit for our towed vehicle lighting. For our braking system, we used the Blue Ox Patriot II Portable Braking System. We also used a Roadmaster Brake-Lite Relay Kit for Towed Vehicles.
For our tow bar, we used a Roadmaster Falcon All-Terrain Non-Binding Tow Bar. And for our safety cables, we also used Roadmaster 64 Inch Single Hook Straight Safety Cables. Now depending upon your application, you may or may not need a high-low adapter, and we have several different options available on the website. This will help ensure that your tow bar is level between your motor home and your Scion.Now that we've gone over some features, we'll show you how to get it installed. To begin our install, we have our hood open so we can remove the fasteners that go to our fascia to our core support.
We have five fasteners total. We'll have two on the corners by each headlight. We have a plastic pushpin fastener and a rubber fastener. The way the rubber fastener works, you simply grab it and just pull it out. The plastic push pin ones, a trim panel tool or a flathead screwdriver, you can pry up on the center section and then the entire clip will pull out. We also have a plastic push pin fastener in the center, works the same way as the other ones.All right, now we're underneath the vehicle. We'll have five 10 mm screws like this one that go across the front end of our fascia, which adhere to our splash shield. We'll remove all these screws. Now to remove our splash shields from underneath the vehicle, we'll have four 10 mm screws like this one, and then seven plastic fasteners like this one. With all of our fasteners removed, we can grab our splash shields and just pull them down out of the vehicle.Now when each one of our rear wheels will have a 10 mm fastener, which secures our fender liner to the fascia. Now keep in mind, everything we do on one side, we'll repeat on the other. Go ahead and remove this screw. Take our fender liner and peel it back. Now the corner of our fascia where it meets our fender, we'll find another 10 mm fastener that we need to remove.With an extra set of hands, we'll grab our fascia where it meets our fender and pull back, and we'll take our fascia and set aside where it won't get damaged. Now we can grab our bumper absorption pad and just pull it off the vehicle. Now basically, centered on our core support here, we have this sub-frame brace. There's two 14 mm bolts here and here, remove both these bolts. We can discard these bolts because we have new ones that will replace them.Now we're get our new bolts ready. We have an M10 bolt with a lock washer and a flat washer. Every bolt that we're installing from this point forward, we'll be sure to put some Red Loctite 00:05:34 on it, which we have available on our website. With an extra set of hands, we'll take our base plate, these wall pipe spacers, stick them over those holes, take our bolts that we got ready, go through the hole in the spacer, and we'll lift it up, and then we'll loosely thread it into the holes. Now we use a 17 mm socket to just tighten up these bolts a little bit.Now at the end of our base plate right underneath our bumper core, we're gonna use this hole as a guide and drill the pilot hole through the bottom layer of our bumper beam. We'll now enlarge the hole with the appropriate size drill bit going through the bottom layer and the second layer up in this area. Now we'll take our nut plate and we'll slide into the spot in our bumper beam right above the hole that we drilled.Now we have one of our half inch bolts with a lock washer and our Loctite, and we'll go through the base plate and the bumper beam and we'll thread into that nut plate. Now we can torque our bottom bolts that go to our sub-frame connector, and now we'll torque bolt that goes to our nut plate.At the front of radiator support, our base plate has two holes. We'll make a small pilot hole through our radiator support, first layer on both side of the base plate. Now we'll enlarge both of these holes to the size indicated in the instruction, going through the first layer and out through the second layer behind it.With both of our holes now drilled, we'll take our seven sixteenths bolt with lock washers and flat washers on them, and go through the base plate and the radiator core support. Now we'll take our nut support plate and place it on the bolts and we'll thread on our nuts on the back side. Now we'll tighten our hardware. Now we'll torque these bolts the amount specified in the instructions.Now we can reinstall our foam bumper support pad. With our fascia off, this is a good time to mount any of our breakaway switches, if we're hooking up a supplemental braking system, or mount any of our brackets to secure any tow vehicle wiring systems. We have a couple different options here. We can trim out our lower grill opening here to have clearance for our base plate and any of our electrical connectors to go through, or you can just simply remove this lower section. It unsnaps. You can see ours is already snapped loose here out of one side, and that's what our customer opted to do. So you can just pull it and work our tabs out to unlock it. Use a flat edge screwdriver or a trim panel tool.This way if you ever decide to take your vehicle back to stock, if you wanna trade it in, you can put this piece back on too and they'll never even know a base plate was installed. Just like that, we now have a nice clean opening. With our lower grill section now removed, we can now reinstall our fascia. Now we'll reinstall all of our fasteners.We're looking at the bottom of our splash shields. We have to do a little bit of trimming on each one in order for it to fit around our base plate. Since this is really thin plastic, you can easily cut this with a utility knife. You can also use a rotary tool if you wanted, or even a sharp pair of scissors. With our splash shields both now trimmed, it'll clear our base plate nicely and we can reinstall our fasteners.That'll complete our look at in showing you how to install the Roadmaster XL Base Plate Kit with removable arms part number 1176-1 on this 2006 Scion tC.
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (977 Customer Reviews)
The crossbar-style hidden brackets attach to your vehicle's frame to provide attachment points for your tow bar. The visible portions of the brackets can be removed when you are not towing.etrailer service is and has always been stellar. My order was correct and was delivered very quickly. The only reason I made this a four instead of a five was that the rear bolt position of both base plate brackets where welded on crooked. Each small plate was at a different angle from each other. In my opinion whoever welded them wasn’t paying attention to quality control. Because I was on a time crunch for my departure on a trip and could not wait for replacements (and I needed the vehicle for local driving) I made the brackets work. Other than that the installation went smoothly and I was able to test tow my 2004 CRV a couple of times without incident.
Very impressed that they're the exact fabbed fit, and easy to install! These tow base plates are super sturdy!
Item arrived earlier than predicted after viewing a very complete tracking system. The information was very clear and precise. Good job! I am 75 years of age and installed the baseplate myself. Only a couple of minor issues. One pin would not insert. Welding blob in the way. Filed it smooth and problem solved. The video was excellent but was a bit different in that it showed a different method o rear bolt installation, however the instructions on paper showed the correct way. Reinstalling the front clip had presented some difficulty. I suggest really watching the inner fender position relative to the front clip before removal. All said all went well. The finished look is great, (see pictures). Great product!
Highly recommend E-Trailer for all of your towing accessories. Great product, great customer service!!
Just completed a 6600 mile rod trip, towing the Subaru behind a motor home.
Worked great.
I've towed with it many times and Zero problems. I did find that moving the car slightly forward after stopping helps relax tension amd.make.disconnect much easier. Overall... I'd say SUPER..!!
Base plate 1910 install on 1999 Landrover disco 2
the base plate arrived fast (as does everything I have ordered from etrailer). It was a bit bent on arrival but Becky sorted me out and offered to replace it but it was easy to bend back (with a 3lb hammer).
The included instructions were great for removing the bumper but nor much else. Possibly because my Landy is a 1999 disco 2 and the pictures were of a 2002.
I have included some pictures of stuff I wish I had known. Firstly I had to loose the recovery loop on the driver side as the base plate would not fit over it. The chassis frame has steel tubes inside the bolt holes so the amount of drilling is minimal (I ordered a drill bit that they suggested but in all honesty could have opened up the holes with a file easily).
You need to oval out the aluminum crush cans before you replce them or the new bolts will not go through. The center mount bolt just needs the plastic mount for the center screw on the scoop cut out and there is a bog square hole on the top of the member (thats why you need to big square piece of steel on the top of the center bolt)
Mine was obscured by the torsion bar so I ended up dropping it to drill out the hole and get the bolt in straight.
It was easy to bolt up to the frame once everything was prepped and do yourself a favour and buy loctite red for the bolts - you don't want to be going in there again.
The bumper template was a good start but I had to reshape mine a lot particularly as the hole on the baseplate ended up halfway through the bumper and I had to do a lot of enlargement at the bottom to attach the safety wires.
The photos should make more sense of some of my description
It was easy to install, fit well and came with good instructions.
Everything looks good for us, but we have one more part that we are waiting on before we can install on the truck plus it's raining out here in Washington State. when it's time to put it all together we will take a picture and send it.
The baseplate and crossbar arrived one day earlier than expected. Directions were included which made the installation pretty easy.
I am happy with etrailers products and will buy from them again.
This base plate was installed on a 2008 Kia Spectra. The bracket is strong and not really hard to work with HOWEVER,,,,,,,,,, I am used to the BlueOx base plate which is much easier to "hook up". Unfortunately, BlueOx did not make a base plate to fit my vehicle. That is not a big problem as I'm usually not in any hurry and it only takes maybe 5 minutes longer to "hook up".
The biggest problem with the RoadMaster base plate is that due to the way it is bolted to the frame, it only allows for a 6-inch ground clearance on the front of the vehicle. I have to be very careful with any "dips" in the road, especially on cross streets. Six inches may not sound like much but since the tires are several feet behind the base plate, it reduces that ground clearance greatly. It also will not clear the concrete "stop blocks" in front of many parking spaces.
If you are not very careful and keep this in mind, you may likely bend the frame of your car when you come to one of these sudden impacts. I haven't bent anything yet but it has certainly been shocking when it hits. Most of the time, the impact will cause the base plate to scrape and lift the car to the height to clear the obstacle.
I've attached a picture with a ruler in the view.
Good information and prompt shipping.
Base plate is solid and install and use instructions are excellent.
Be warned that product install is drill two holes and install 3 bolts, BUT the entire front panel has to be removed and replaced. Not difficult, but time-consuming.
Seat bracket is solid and install and use instructions are excellent.
Brakemaster kit is good quality, but instructions are not as good as most Roadmaster products. Instructions for air line install are especially weak.
Very easy to install and works great
The hardest part of the installation is getting the grill off and back on. Of the six preexisting holes all but one lined up the sixth hole was off about a half inch but the car had hit a deer a few years ago.
My husband and I were able to install the Roadmaster base plates on our 92 Jeep Cherokee in just a couple of hours. It went on pretty much the same as the demonstration video on the etrailer web site. The minor differences were addressed in the printed instructions that were included in our package. We haven't put it to the test yet as we still need to tackle wiring for the Roadmaster Even brake system that we purchased second hand. We will be towing our Jeep with our 93 Safari Trek. Customer service provided by Marty was excellent. I will provide pictures at a later date.
Installed on a 2010 Ford Ranger Sport 2wd
Have towed over 10000 and not one issue. I did the install without one issue, picture perfect, I did use a online video to get a general idea of install otherwise I primarily used manufacturer's. . Be sure to use the recommended/ required locktite product.
Enjoy!!!
Item arrived very quickly. It appears to be of excellent quality. The salesman that helped me was very good and had very good knowledge of the product. The installation instructions were a bit vague, but I was able to figure them out. The price of the item was a bit higher than I was expecting.
Bought the two pieces to tell my vehicle that they said would match up together. Once I got it, put together and set it up and hook up, they would not fit together. Apparently there is another piece that needs to be purchased.
Base plate kit was fairly easy to install,all hardware was included and directions were clear! I would definitely buy another to install if ever needed. I do have a car lift making it easier,but would not be bad without,just a little harder on the knees!
Great product, shipping was FAST. Instructions were adequate, but minimum - this was not surprising, you have to know how to bend wrenches to install something like this yourself.
I had a factory-installed tow hook on each side that had to be uninstalled, but once you remove the front bumper shroud it is easy to remove and all the bolts are easy to remove. Once the hook was out of the way, easy-peasy!
This was a very simple install. This is my 4th baseplate I have bought and 2 pintle tow bars. Always excellent craftsmanship
Super nice people at etrailer. I wasn’t sure exactly what I needed and they helped me pick out the best hitch for me.
Great product,installation took about 3 hours,instructions were good,go step by step.works well with the roadmaster falcon tow bar.
Very rugged kit with excellent instructions. A DIYer with medium mechanical skills can install. Involved removing the front bumper which was not difficult. Value for the price is very good. As always, etrailer support was also very good.
Great product and easy to use . Car tows great behind the motor home.
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