Replacement Storage Plate for Demco and etrailer Tow Bars - Qty 1

Video Transcript for Demco and etrailer Tow Bars Storage Plate Replacement Review

Hey 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 gonna be taking a look at, and I'll be showing you how to install the replacement storage plate for Demco and etrailer tow bars. Our storage plate is gonna work for a wide variety of different tow bars. It's gonna work for the Demco Commander, Dominator, and Excali-Bar. And it's also gonna work for our etrailer SD, and XHD tow bars.

Now, this is gonna be red, so it's gonna match the Demco tow bars. And our etrailer ones are gonna be yellow, but this is gonna work with it, it's just gonna be a different color. This is a very common part on these tow bars to get damaged due to how thin the metal actually is. And a lot of times, whenever we're putting our tow bar in the storage position, we're kind of in a rush, and we always forget that we have to make sure that this pin actually clears that plate, whenever we're putting it into the storage position. So, a lot of these times, these things will get bent.

Or if they are in the storage position, when we're going down the road, those tow bar arms will bounce a little bit and bend these tabs. But there's no need to buy a whole new tow bar, when you can just replace this one component. Now, removing our nut and everything on our actual tow bar assembly is pretty easy. We're just gonna need a break loose our bolt on the top and bottom. We'll just use, we'll just do that using a 1 1/8-inch socket and wrench.

And once you get that broken loose, all you're gonna do is thread off that nut on the bottom. And we do wanna make note of how this is assembled. So, there are gonna be a couple of washers between our plates, our arm, and then we have a spacer down here. And again, we're gonna have more washers down here at the bottom. So, we're just gonna kinda wiggle everything around.

That way, we can get that bolt pulled out. And you might even have to grab a hammer and kinda tap on it at the bottom, just to help loosen everything up. So, when you're doing this, you wanna be very cautious that it doesn't fall apart whenever you're doing this, 'cause we don't wanna lose any components. So, what you're gonna do is kinda bend these arms out straight, and just kinda wiggle everything. But what I actually like to do is take these arms and push them down, just to have some resistance to keep everything from completely falling apart once we get these bolt out. So, with that bolt out now, let's say, we need to replace this top plate. We can carefully slide that out of position. And when you're doing this, there is gonna be a spring on the backside. So, you just wanna be cautious while pulling this apart, that we don't lose this spring. And you will kinda have to slide it out to the side and down due to the plate or this tab, I should say, on our plate. And if you do wanna replace both of them, which if I'm already in here doing one, I'm probably gonna do both, just for the peace of mind. But you can pick up another one here at etrailer, it's gonna be the same part number, and you can just flip it over for the bottom one. So now, we wanna grab our spring off of our old plate, we'll slide that on to our new one. And it's just gonna fit right over this tab in the back. We can take this plate, add our washer. And we're gonna pick up our arm. Kinda work that in with our plate above it. We want that spring to get seated on the side of our actual housing. Just like so. And then you can use your finger to kind of help align everything, as far as our bushings and our washers are concerned. And if you're having trouble getting this aligned, you can either grab a screwdriver to help you. Or you can actually take that bolt, and align one component at a time. Sliding that bolt down through. That's gonna keep everything in the right position. That way, it's gonna be a little bit easier to get it back together. And once you get all the components back in the correct orientation, I find it a little bit easier to flip it over to where the hex nut is on the top, or the locking nut, I should say. We can tighten that down by hand, and come back with our socket, and tighten that down the rest of the way. Now that we have all of our components installed and retightened down, we now wanna test it out and make sure everything's working properly. So, we'll grab that bottom one, lock that into position, and we'll repeat that same process with the top. And that's gonna do it for our look at and our installation of the replacement safety plate for our Demco and etrailer tow bars..