Roadmaster Direct-Connect Base Plate Kit Installation - 2020 Jeep Wrangler

Products Featured in this Video

Roadmaster Direct-Connect Base Plate Kit - Removable Arms

1859 reviews

Code: RM-521453-5

Retail: $485.13

Price:  $485.00

• Base Plates
• Removable Drawbars
• Twist Lock Attachment

• Roadmaster

Designed for use with motor-home-mounted tow bars, the direct-connect brackets are virtually invisible, easy to mount and remove, and they eliminate the need for a quick-disconnect crossbar on your tow bar. Installs on your vehicle's frame.

Do you have a question about part RM-521453-5?more information >     

How to Install the Roadmaster Direct-Connect Base Plate Kit on a 2020 Jeep Wrangler

Clayton: Hey guys, how's it going Clayton here at etrailer.com and today we'll be taking a look at and I'll walk you through how to install. Roadmaster's Direct-Connect Base Plates on our 2020 Jeep Wrangler. So our base plate is going to be one of the key components to our flat towing setup. We'll have our base plate, our tow bar, our safety chains, our supplemental braking system, our wiring, and our brake light switch.So our base plate here is going to have a really nice black powder coat finish. It's going to hold up well over time and resist rust and corrosion. It's also going to look nice underneath our vehicle.

Our base plate kit is relatively easy to install as well. In terms of installation, our base plate kit really isn't that bad. We don't need any major tools. There's only a little bit of cutting and drilling. Most of our cutting is on our underbody panel here, and there's only two or three holes we have to open up on our frame.To start our installation, there's going to be two plastic pushpins on the top of our bumper cover.

I'm going to use a small flat blade screwdriver, but you can also use a nylon pry tool. So we'll just pry up on this little plastic tab. It can be kind of hard to get in this little area. If you take your time, you'll be able to get this clip out. We'll repeat that for this side as well.

So now I'm going to take a body trim panel tool and pop off six fasteners up underneath our bumper. And these will span across the front of the vehicle.So next we'll have one pushpin fastener. This'll be on each side. It's a little bit easier to get your pry tool through the backside. And we can pry that off.

And we'll repeat that process on our other side. Next, we'll be removing this eight millimeter bolt and there'll be one on each side. Now with our bolts removed, we can take off our under body panel.So next we're going to remove our bumper bolts. There's going to be four on each side, located here, here, and on our opposite side. This is going to be an 18 millimeter socket. It is kind of hard to get up there and work. You might have to try a couple of different combinations of a ratchet and extension, an impact or a wrench. And now with our hardware off of our bumper, we need to remove this electrical plug before we take off our bumper. Now we're going to push down on that tab right here and pull it apart.Now, while we're pushing down on the tab, we can unplug our fog lights. Now with all of our hardware out and our plug undone, we can remove our bumper. It's a good idea to grab an extra set of hands just in case. Now we can set our bumper off to the side. And now we can go ahead and remove our frame stiffeners. There'll be two 16 millimeter sockets on each side. So there will be four total when you add both sides. And these will not be re-installed, so we can set these aside and just put them in the trunk of our vehicle.Our next step will be to remove this rock guard. Our instructions say that there's two bolts on each side, but there's actually only one on our vehicle. So it will be one 16 millimeter bolt. We'll take that out on both sides. Then we can just give a tap to our rock guard and that'll pop right off. So in our instructions, there's a line for our underbody panel that we need to cut out. We'll cut this out. This will be mounted behind our base plate.So we'll take an angle grinder to cut off here. We can go ahead and break this off. Now I'll go ahead and file that down to where it's a straight line. With our panel trimmed, we can go ahead and install this here with our supplied hardware. We can lift our base plate into place. Our instructions say to enlarge this hole here and this hole here with a half-inch drill bit. And we can go ahead and take our drill bit and get started.And we will be doing this on both sides of our frame on both sides. Before we add our hardware to our top holes, I want to go ahead, hit it with some black spray paint just to prevent any rust. We want to do that on all sides. Now with our hole spray painted, we can go ahead and put our base plate on. We'll be using our factory hardware for these holes. We'll just get that in hand tight, do that on both sides and then repeat for our passenger side.Now with our hardware hand tight, I can come back and tighten it down with our impact. You want to make sure not to over tighten this as we do want this a little bit of wiggle room and move things around if we have to. Now we're ready to add our stud to the top of our base plate. We'll take our flat washer add that, put our stuff through, add our spacer, slide it through our frame, add our spacer to the other side. Push it all the way through, add a flat washer, a lock washer and our hex nut included. Then we can go ahead and tighten these down with 19 millimeter socket and wrench.Now we're going to add our stud to our second hole down here. If we're going to do that, our flat washer, slide that through to the other side so you can add our flat washer, our lock washer and our hex nut and tighten these down the same way we did the top with 19 millimeter sockets, and you'll want to do this on both sides. Now we're going to take our hex bolt with our lock washer and our flat washer and our handle nut. Our handle nut, I've bent it kind of like this to where we can get it flat against the inside of the frame. We're going to stick it up through this hole. You kind of have to look on this side and find the threads. You might have to bend it a couple of times and adjust just to get the thread started.And then you can go ahead and thread in our bolt on the other side. With that good, we can hand tighten it and then come back down and tighten it down the rest of the way. We also use a 19 millimeter socket just like the rest of our hardware. Now we're ready to come back and torque everything down. All of our torque specs will be listed in our instructions. We repeat that process for all of our hardware we install. Now with all of our hardware torqued down, we can go back and break off our handle nuts. You just have to wiggle this around, it'll break off. And you want to do that for both sides.So our bumper actually wouldn't line up with our holes. So just a good tip is you can loosen up all your hardware, take a screwdriver, then kind of pry that base plate, whichever way you need it to go and it'll kind of shift around and then you can tighten your hardware back down. And now all of our bolts line up perfectly.So before we cut our under body panel, we kind of went off our instructions. We're going to make a little bit smaller box than the instructions say, and then if it doesn't fit quite right, we can come back and trim it up later. So going to take a hole saw to radius our corners. Now repeat that for all four corners. I'm going to take a Dremel tool and cut along this outside line to cut out our square.That's going to do it for a look at and installation of Roadmaster's Direct-Connect Base Plates on our 2020 Jeep Wrangler.