Roadmaster Direct-Connect Base Plate Kit Installation - 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited

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 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited

Male Speaking Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, we're gonna be showing you how to install the Roadmaster base plate kit with removable arms. But before we do that, why don't you check it out and make sure that this is gonna be a set up that'll work for you. So before we get too carried away checking out the base plate and how it works and things like that, I figured it'd be beneficial just to kind of refresh ourselves and go over the main components that we're gonna need to flat tow our vehicle down the road in the first place. So there's gonna be a total of five main components that you're gonna need. First one is gonna be the base plate, What that's gonna do is provide us with a solid and reliable attachment point, that way we can hook our tow bar up to it.

And the tow bar is gonna be our the second component, and this is gonna be the physical link that actually connects the back of your motor home, to the front of your Jeep. The third main component is going to be safety cables, and these are pretty straightforward. These are there in the event of an unlikely disconnect, these are going to keep your vehicle on your motor home paired together. The fourth main component is going to be tow bar wiring, and what this is going to do is transfer the lighting signals from the back of your coach to the back of your vehicle, keeping you not only safe but legal as well. And last but not least, the fifth main component is going to be a supplemental braking system, and what this is gonna do is apply the brakes in your vehicle whenever you hit the brakes in your RV, helping to bring you to a more complete and predictable stop.

There are a couple more additional components that are not absolutely necessary but ones that definitely I'll look into and really consider picking up. One of them is what's called a charge line, and what that's going to do is essentially maintain or trickle charge your Jeep's battery whenever you're flat towing it behind your motor home. And you'll need that because what happens, your supplemental braking system draws power from your Jeep's battery whenever it's being used, and so to replenish that juice in your battery, that's where the charge line comes in, and keeps everything topped off and you know, it gives you a little bit more confidence knowing for one, your braking system is gonna operate fall asleep, cause it has the power needs. And for two, whenever you disconnect, you're going to be able to start up the Jeep and not have to fight, you know fight it trying to get a jump box or jumper cables and things like that. So just helps me everything out.

Another thing I would consider is what's called a stoplight switch and right off the top of my head, that's something you really only need with two braking systems that I can think of like I said right off the top of my head. One of them being the Stay-IN-Play supplemental braking system, as well as the Invisi-Brake. And you need that because those systems you use, it's called an indicator light, which it turns on whenever the brake pedal and your Jeep is being pushed down from the braking system. And that's going to give you accurate information by using that stoplight switch. Whenever you see that indicator light turn on, that's going to let you know that, Hey, the brake pedal on there is actually being pushed down and moving and doing what it should.

So this is what your Jeep is going to look like whenever you're not towing it behind your motor home and just kind of cruising around. And honestly, I liked the look of it since the base plate kind of pokes through our rock-hard here, you know, it's nice. You're only going to see what you need to use and whether that's a huge deal or not. It's really just personal preference. You know, honestly, I feel like just about any accessory you put on a Jeep, it looks right at home. So, you know, it's kind of your, whatever your style is. But to me, I do like it and it also makes it easy too, to Mount up your other components. So for example, our wiring bracket here, this comes included and you know, just, it doesn't force you to kind of fabricate up a bracket or try to make something work. It's all the works done for you already. And the same holds true with our breakaway switch. Since, the whole metal portion of our bumpers is exposed and not covered up by the base plate. It gives you a great spot to Mount up that breakaway switch something that as important as how easy the base plate is going to be to use whenever you are ready to hook up. And it does use these removable arms and all these do is essentially just plug in to your base plate. So we'll take them, rotating them about a quarter, turn to lock into place, same deal with this one over here. And now that's going to give us an attachment point that we need, to be able to hook up our tow bar to. So once your removable arms are in there, you can hook up the rest of your components, the safety chain openings, your safety cable openings here. I like they kind of bend inward a little bit, give you a little extra space to be able to put those up with relative ease. And then the tow bar arm. These are a quick connect style. These are going to line up, essentially, just put that pin through there, take your other pen and lock it down. That's really all there is to it. Obviously you have to hook up your other components, you know, like your wiring and the other side, but it's about as simple as it gets. Honestly, the base plate is going to work with most Roadmaster tow bars like this one here, we have the all terrain, the Falcon, all terrain and chances are pretty good and you can make other tow bars work with it as well. And that's because they sell adapters, that'll change the type of end on the tow bar and allow those different brands to pair up with this baseplate. So here's what everything's going to look like whenever you're hooked up to the back of your motor home. And honestly, I think it's a pretty clean setup. Everything is organized and kind of in line with each other. It's going to make it a little easier during your setup process when you've got to hook everything up and not to mention too, just so easy to kind of keep an eye on things when it's organized and in place, you can take a quick glance back here and see that everything looks right. You know, something that a lot of people are concerned with and it's definitely understandable is how your vehicle is going to be pulled behind your motor home. As soon as you're actually flat towing it, you know, you want something that's stable and that holds true and so on. And the base plate actually utilizes the Jeep's frame rail, so bolts right up to it. And so it's going to share that same geometry and you know that ought to pull behind your motor home a little bit better, keep it true. You have a solid point where everything bolts too. And you know, to me that just instills a little bit more confidence, knowing that I have an attachment point that I can rely on. Compared to some of the other base plates available, You know, they're all about the same. They're all going to get the job done and, and provide that same solution to the problem that you're looking for, which is of course how do I flex. With my Jeep down the road With that said, it's really just going to kind of boil down to what you think looks the best, at least in my opinion, on the front of your Jeep, you know, this one is less visible than some of the other ones. Some of the others have that cross bar that runs across from side to side and, you know, one really doesn't have an advantage over the other. I'm just going to just get to be whatever you like. And um like I said, just about anything you put on the front of it, it's going to be a decent choice and look pretty good. Other than that, at the end of the day base plate, you really can't go wrong with, you know, not only does it look good, but it's really good to open up the opportunity on what tow bars you can use, you know, works with a lot of different things. As far as the installation goes, really not too bad by any means. I'd say it falls somewhere in the middle, as far as the difficulty level goes is a face plates that I've put on and working on Jeeps really isn't, isn't too bad in general, but that this one you'll have to pull the bumper off and, and um do a couple of things to get the base plate on. But that said something I do want to mention is really pay attention to what submodel Jeep you have and what bumper that you have on the front of your Jeep, because some base plates work with certain models and so on. So double-check that. And even that holds true with this one, if you have a different bumper, the instructions kind of changed a little bit depending on that situation. So something to keep in mind, but with all that said, why don't we go ahead and start putting it all on together. Now the beginner installation are going to be here at the front of our Jeep. And what we're going to need to do is remove some of these components up here. That way we can get our base plate on first things first. So over here on the passenger side, we're going to have a connector that we need to disconnect, and that'll go to our fog lights on her front bumper on the top side of it. We're going to have one plastic fastener on each side that we need to remove. So you can take a Flathead screwdriver, pry up on the head of the fastener, and then we're able to pull the base out. And then I'm just going to repeat this over on the other side of our vehicle. And from this point on anything we do to one side of our Jeep, we're also going to do to the other side, cause it's set up the same way. So before we get too deep into this installation, I do want to mention that there are several different types of sub models of Jeeps. So you have the sports, the sport s, the Rubicon, and so on, and all those are going to be set up a little bit different. You know, the bumpers are a little different and, and things of that nature. So definitely refer to your instructions. They have specific step-by-step instructions. That'll help kind of get you through that. But with that said, you know, something just to keep in mind and kind of just to give you guys a reference. The Jeep that we have here today is a sport S sub-model. The bottom side of our Jeep, we're going to have this plastic shield here. And on each side, we're going to have an eight millimeter head fastener that we need to pull out Drilling Noise At the front edge of our rock guard here. We're going to have a total of eight push pin type fasteners. So four on each side, they went up there and kind of bury it a little bit, but we can still get to it. These take a trim tool or a Flathead screwdriver, just work the head and base out I went ahead and got the other ones out already. That's why this is starting to kind of fall down a little bit, but that's okay because the whole goal here is to actually get this removed. So, once we have all them out and lower this down set it off to the side with that shield out of the way. Now we can remove this frame guard is on each side and we're going to have a 16 millimeter head bolt. Drilling Noise Once you have this out, you can lift up on it and get it released. Now we need to turn up some of our rock guard or a frame guard here. So there's a diagram and instructions where I marked out here to get it cut out. And in order to do this, somebody you use a cutoff wheel, pretty thick steel. So something like this or a saws all maybe would get the job done, definitely recommend a power tool if you have one, you can do it by hand, but it's probably gonna take you some time. So with that said, I'll go ahead and get this material removed. Saw Noise So I put our main piece back up here and I just did that to kind of help us position the piece that we cut. So this is the only thing that's actually getting re-installed here. I did use some spray paint just to kind of touch it up and cover up that bare metal. But what I'm going to do is just line this up pretty close to our main piece. You're going to take this bolt that comes with the kit and use it don't reuse your factory on one. They say just to use this bolt. So, that's what we're going with, it looks pretty good to me. Pretty close. We'll come back with a 17 millimeter socket and snug this out. Once you have both sides on there, then we can let this off and get it out of the way. Now we can actually get our bumper beam removed. So if you look on the inside of it underneath here, we're going to have a total of eight nuts that we need to take off. So four on each side of the vehicle. There's two here, and then just on the other side of our frame rail, there's going to be another two. So I went ahead and got one side off already. And what I did was leave one of the nuts on hand tight, that way our bumper doesn't come falling off on us when we take these off. So with that said, take an 18 millimeter socket and get all of them removed. Drilling Noise With all those nuts removed, we can now get our bumper off. These things are usually pretty tight on here. So, I have to work it off and we'll slide it out of the way and sit it off to the side for now. But the bumper out of the way we can get to the frame stiffeners. So that's what these deals are here. And you're going to have two on each frame rails. So there's one there an one there and we're going to get these removed a 16 millimeter head socket. Pull the bolt out. Drilling Noise Something's off to the side. Now we can move over to our bumper, flip it over and on the sides here, there's a spotlight covers these plastic pieces. We need to trim out some of that material. So I drew that out, according to the diagram, the instructions. Be careful when you're doing this too cause, there may be some wiring back there. So in our case I feel a wire, but it's far enough away. If you push it that we shouldn't it, you know, cut it or anything. But just keep that in mind, with that said, I'm just going to use a Dremel tool like this, to remove this material. Saw Noise Now, we can come to our frame rail and we need to enlarge a couple of holes. So, this one here and this one here, we want to make sure to do that on both sides. So the holes actually go completely through, but both sides of the frame around need to be bigger so, got our bit, I'll go ahead and get these drilled out. Drilling Noise Now, you want to grab your base plate and these are site-specific. So check your instructions, one quick way to tell the safety chain arm, there should be bent or bending towards the inside of her vehicle. So this one is the driver's side. What I did as the second hole down, I took one of the half inch flat washers and taped it to the openings. And then of course you want to cut a hole there in the tape, but with that on, is it a tape, your base plate. And Slide it over the frame rail. Kind of have to work this thing in cause it'll hit stuff. And there we go. Once you have it like that, you're going to take the factory bolts that we pulled out of here, put on some red lock tight, you can grab it here the trailer. And matter of fact, all the hardware that we're going to use to secure the base plate is going to receive them for a lot of time. That's gonna line with that threaded hole on our frame, and we're going to get the started hand tight on each side. This point you can grab the long bolt and a flat washer through this hole. You're going to slide it through. And then for this one up here, you're going to take one of these pipe spacers and another long bolt at the front washer. Line that through another pipe spacer on this side. And that's going to fill that gap that we have in between our base plate and our frame rail. So once we have Mr, they're going to add one more bolt. We need to put in. So it's going to be in the shorter one, split lock washer, flat washer, a lock pipe. That's going to go through this opening here. Sometimes the base plate. Won't line up with that perfectly. If you have to take a drill bit and Wyler it out a little bit, that's perfectly fine. RK sufficient. They're pretty good. So we're gonna put that in there and then you're going to take this nut plate. And this is going to go through this opening and line up with that bolt. So you can hold that in position and start to thread that bolt into the nut plate until it takes all this, get it hand tight. Now we can tighten our hardware down. You do want to make sure that the holes in the base plate line up with our bumper plans here. So I just took some of these pry bars, kind of put them in there and kinda keep everything lined up. I tighten our bolts down. So four quarter inch wrench and socket, Drilling Noise we'll get everything once everything's snug, we need to make sure and come back with a torque wrench and tighten down all of our hardware to the amount specified in the instructions. If you don't have a torque wrench, you can always grab one here at E trailer. Or a lot of times, if you go to your local auto parts stores, they'll have one they're available to rent. So once everything's torque down the end of the handle, nut here, if you want, you can reach up there and use a pair of snips and clip it off. And I'll bend this back. I did have to kind of bend this out of the way to get access to there. So I'll just bend it back in place. At this point, it'd be a great time to install some of your other flat towing components like wiring and a braking system. And I say that because we're going to have a lot more room to work here. If you're going to be not installing us components of this time or already have them in place, what you would do now is re-install the front bumper and the plastic shield underneath here, the opposite way that you removed them with that said you are going to have to trim part of that plastic shield. You can find that information in your instructions. And so what I'm going to do is continue on with my other components and whenever I get those done, we can come back and finish everything up. So I went ahead and got one of our braking system components mounted up, and this is really that we all, all we need to do so I can get the bumper back. If that makes sense. Why was right here I also took the included wiring bracket that comes with the base plate and mounted that up pretty straight forward nut or I'm sorry, bolt, washer, put it through the bracket and take these big pipe spacers, put a knot on the other side, these just line up with existing holes that are already in the bumper beam. So you can pick whichever one you want. I usually do the side. So on our motor home, the wiring connectors on the passenger side. So I mounted this up on the passenger side, just for a cleaner look. But now that this is all done, we can go ahead and get our bumper installed. So now with an extra set of hands, we'll align our bumper back on up and push it into place. A lot of times it's going to be real tight. That's completely normal. Just do your best to get everything lined up and pushed back into possession. So now what we can do is take our plastic rock shield here and get it trimmed out to clear our base plate and our other components. There's a diagram instructions, and be sure to check which model you have, cause the trimming can be different for different styles and things like that. Like we talked about earlier, but I measured it out and on the corners, they want us to do a radius. So I think I'm going to do that first. And I'm just going to take a whole Saw. I've got an inch and three quarter one and cut that radius out first. That way we can kind of cut her lines around it Saw Noise Well, it looks pretty good. And where's that done. I'll come back with a Dremel tool and finish cutting it out Drilling Noise So that trimmed out, we'll do the same thing on the other side. And then if you want to clean up some of these edges here, what you can do is take a file or even just a razor as like this, and we'll just carefully just kind of skim it and that'll clean, clean, all that junk up. So I went ahead, got our rock-hard back in place. Just installed it the opposite way that I removed it. These openings actually fit pretty well around it. It turned out pretty good. And I did have to cut an opening here out as well to clear our other components. And the way I did that is I just held us up kind of eyeballed it, made some marks and cut it out. I like to always go a little bit less on the cutting, hold it up. And if you have to take out more, you take out more so you can always cut more out, You cant add it back. So once everything cleared, push it up, put it in your fasteners, zip on your two screws. You're good to go. And that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the Roadmaster base plate kit with removable arms on our 2021 Jeep Wrangler unlimited..