etrailer Invisible Base Plate Kit Installation - 2020 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited
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How to Install the etrailer Invisible Base Plate Kit on a 2020 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited
Clayton: Hey, guys. How's it going Clayton here at etrailer.com, and today we'll be taking a look at and I'll show you how to install the etrailer base plate kit on our 2020 Jeep Wrangler.So our base plate is one of the key components in our flat tow setup. This is going to be the main attachment point from our tow bar and our RV to our vehicle. Our main components are going to be our base plate, our tow bar, our safety chains, our supplemental braking system, and our smart diode wiring.So our base plate kit is going to come in a nice black powder coat finish. This is going to resist rust and corrosion very well over time. Our kit is also going to come with a nice bracket that's finished in the same black powder coat finish, and we can mount our wiring and our breakaway switch to that.One of my personal favorite features of this base plate kit is how nice it looks under the front of our Jeep.
Some other base plate kits out there look bulky. They just don't look good on the front of our Jeep, and when our tow bars are not connected, this does look very clean.In terms of installation, this is the easiest base plate kit I've ever put on. It's a lot easier than the Blue Ox and even most of the Roadmasters. There's no drilling, no major tools required. Just kind of hold it up and bolt it in.
Speaking of installation, I'll walk you through how to get it installed now.To start our installation, there's going to be two plastic pushpins behind our bumper cover here. We're going to take those off with a small flat-blade screwdriver. So we'll take our screwdriver. Work behind this little flange. Pull up and we'll be able to pull our plastic clip all the way out.
We'll repeat that same process on our passenger side.Next, we need to remove our pushpin fasteners underneath our bumper. There's going to be eight push pins, starting from this hole, all the way across. You can use that same small flat-blade screwdriver or a trim panel tool. We'll just repeat this process for all of these fasteners.With all of our pushpin fasteners removed, now ready to take out our eight-millimeter bolt. There'll be one on this side and one on our other side.
When you take off the other side, the panel might fall, so just make sure you're holding onto it. Now with our hardware removed, we're ready to take off our panel. We can set this off to the side.Now we can take off our 16-millimeter bolts holding on our under body panel, and this won't fall down, because it's held in. So we'll kind of wiggle it and then push up. Then we can set this off to the side.Now we're ready to take off our front bumper. There's going to be four bolts located on each side, right here and on our other side. So we can go ahead and take those off with an 18-millimeter socket. I'm just going to loosen these up and then come back with an electric ratchet, just to speed things up. And with our hardware taken off of our passenger side, we'll repeat this exact same process on our driver's side. With all of the hardware out of our bumper, it will be supported by the studs. We can go ahead and unplug this wiring. We're going to push down right here and then pull out. It can be kind of tough, just because there's not a lot of room to work, but if you need to, you can pull that plug out of the holder. Then we can unplug it.So all of our hardware is taken off. Our electrical plug is disconnected. Then go ahead and pull off our bumper. The bumper is kind of heavy, so I do suggest grabbing an extra set of hands. But we can go ahead and pull it off and then we'll set this off to the side.The last thing we have to take off is this bracket right here. Use the 16-millimeter socket to take that off. You want to make sure to save this bolt, but you can set this aside, because it's not getting reinstalled.Next, we're going to take our washers and tape them over this hole. We're going to want to make sure to poke a hole through the tape. That will just make it a lot easier when we're putting our base plate on.Now, with an extra set of hands, we can go ahead and lift our base plate into place. We're going to take that hardware we saved and install it right back here. Ready to install our lower bolt. We want to make sure to add glue, Loctite. We'll stick that in there. Come through the bottom of our frame with our handle nut and thread that on. And you'll repeat that same process on the other side. I do like to leave everything kind of loose so you can move it around and get everything situated before it's tightened down.So we did figure out we didn't have to take this panel off, so I went ahead and put it back on. And then we'll reinstall our base plate.Now, with all of our hardware hand-tight, we can go back in and snug it down. We'll repeat that same process on the other side. Now, we can go ahead and torque down the hardware. All of our torque specs will be listed in our instruction manual.So with all of our hardware tightened down, we went ahead and ran our safety cables. I ran mine around our body mount, back through here, and you want to make sure you're not hitting any hard lines or anything electrical when you're putting these on.Now with everything put on, we're ready to reinstall our fascia. We can go ahead and slide this on carefully. You do want to make sure that you don't pinch this electrical plug on the passenger side. You might have to wiggle it around a little bit, just to get everything to line up. So now with our bumper on and our hardware started, we can go ahead. Plug back in our electrical connector. When you hear that snap, you know you're good. Then we can find that channel and slide our plug back on.Now with our electrical connector reconnected, we can snug down all of our hardware and add our fascia on the bottom, after we do some trimming.Using our instructions, I went ahead and drew out the area we're going to cut out so our lower bumper cover fits around our base plate. I'm going to use a drill and drill out the corners and then come in with a rotary tool and cut out the box. And when I'm doing this, I always like to cut out a little bit less, because I can always come back and trim it later.Now we're ready to come in and cut our lines. Now with our holes cut out, I'm going to take a pocket knife and kind of trim up these edges and use a file anywhere that I need to. And with our holes cut out, we went ahead and put our panel back, so now we can reinstall our fasteners and our two eight-millimeter bolts in the reverse order that we took them off. So with all of our fasteners re-installed, we're ready to hit the road.That's going to do it for a look at and installation of the etrailer base plate kit on our 2020 Wrangler Unlimited.
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Lennard S.
4/22/2022
whats the best tow bar to go with this