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Adapts your Blue Ox tow bar so you can use it with a Demco Tabless base plate.
Features:
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Rob: Hey everybody. Rob here at etrailer.com. Today, we're going to be taking a look at the Blue Ox tow bar to Demco tabless baseplate adapter.Now, one reason why you may need an adapter is if you've got a new vehicle and you have a different baseplate, but you already have a tow bar, an adapter is going to prevent you from having to go out and get a new tow bar. Or, if you found a baseplate you really like, you upgraded your car, maybe you're upgrading the baseplate, again, it's just going to prevent you from having to get a different baseplate or a tow bar, if you already have one. It's just a lot easier to adapt the tow bar you already have than to go out and buy a whole new unit.But here we already got our tabs in place, so we'll go ahead and lift up the arms on our tow bar. We'll show you how we're going to hook them up.
So, on our Demco tabless baseplate, the tabs are going to be bolted directly to the arm, so that's one thing we're not going to have to worry about finding a spot for it. So, we'll take our arm, we're going to point it directly into our baseplate, insert it all the way in, and to make sure that the hole is facing up and down. Push it in all the way. Then we'll rotate it. Now that'll lock it in place, and we'll put our pin and clip through, secure everything down, and we'll repeat that process over in the other side.
Then once you have it hooked up, we can just continue to hook up the rest of our components for our flat tow, and we're ready to hit the road.You saw just how easy it was to hook everything up. I just really like the design of the Demco tabless baseplates, because the arm bolts onto the tow bar, so we don't have to worry about finding a spot to put them in or potentially losing them. But the installation is going to be just as easy, in fact, if you've ever had to do any kind of maintenance where you're lubricating your arms, it's going to be just about that easy. We are going to have to remove the boot and unbolt the factory tab that's on here, but it's just as simple as bolting on the new tab. Let's go ahead and do that together now.So, to start out, we already have one of our adapters in place with the arm that's going to go into our baseplate, but we'll go ahead and put the second one on together.
So, you want to grab your adaptor, the bolt, the lock nut, as well as the pin out of your kit. This is all we're going to need to actually attach it, so you want to make sure you have all these pieces for each arm. We're going to remove the actual piece that attaches to the baseplate here at the end of the tow bar, so we'll grab a three-quarter-inch socket and wrench, and pull this bolt out. We have the bolt removed. Remove the tab along with any washers that are on the inside.
Right behind that tab, we're going to have a zip tie that's actually holding this boot in place, so we're going to be careful not to cut the boot, but we want to cut that zip tie, so we can get access underneath it. Pull the boot back.The end of the arm on black section, right before it gets to the stainless-steel arm, we'll see that we have a really small hole in there, there's actually a roll pin inside of there that we need to knock out. We're going to grab a punch and we're just going to drive that pin straight out so we can take this piece off. Once you get to a certain point, you may want to extend your arm out, so you have room for that pin to fall out. Once we have the pin removed we'll remove our punch. And now you may be able to, but if you can, you're going to want to hold the arm itself while you twist the end here off counter-clockwise. It may be really difficult. You may not be able to do it by hand. If you do need to use anything to hold it still, you want to make sure that it's not going to damage the bar, so you can use a vice or a pair of vice grips. I just suggest using a towel, so it doesn't scratch the bar.We're just going to wrap a towel around the arm itself. Get a pair of channel locks on there, and then I'm going to take a pry bar, I'm going to hold my vice grips down while I rotate the end of it, but again, you want to make sure that that arm isn't spinning on the inside, because we don't want to scratch it. But once we get it broke loose, we should be able to twist it off by hand. It is pretty long threads on there, so just got to have some patience. It maybe a little bit tight depending on how long it's been on your tow bar.Once we have this piece unscrewed you can set it aside, and before I put my new adapter in place, I'm going to take some time to just clean these threads up, make sure it doesn't cause any damage or cross threading. Just take some spray lubricant, wipe down, maybe take a nylon brush and clean all those threads up. So, we can grab our new adapter now. It'll have a large hole, a small hole, and if we look at the back it'll be threaded. We're going to thread this on the end of our tow bar arm, but you want to pay attention to where that hole where the roll pin was because we're going to line up this hole so we can get it in the same spot. So, we'll just thread this on by hand. If you cleaned your threads, it should be a little bit easier, maybe a little tight towards the end. But if it does get tight, again, we can just grab that pair of channel locks, we'll do the same thing we did to take it off. Hold the arm, and then tighten it up as we go.We're getting close to lining up that hole. Should be pretty close to the end of the threads, and then once you have one side lined up, you want to double check, and make sure that it is lined up on the other side, and if it's not, go ahead and turn it until we get both sides lined up with that pin hole, rotate the arm and double check that it is lined up on the other side as well. We want to take our new roll pin. I want to get it started. Just give it a quick tap. Make sure it's in the tow bar arm, and we'll take our punch and we're going to make sure that it goes all the way in just like the one when we first removed.Once you have your pin in all the way, I suggest going and moving the boot down, and since we already have this open, we might as well clean the arm and put a little bit of lubricant on there, so we can just take some time and do that now. I'm going to go and clean off all the excess grease, and then put on some lubrication on the arms, so it will slide in easier. Once you have your arm lubed up and clean, we're going to take the boot. We're going to pull it back towards the end of the arm here. There is a little ridge right there. I like to use that to bring the boot at least that far up, then I'll take a zip tie. They do provide you with two zip ties in your kit. It's a little bit easier to collapse the arm some, so you're not stretching that boot as far, but I'll wrap it around the boot, and just replaced the zip tie that we cut off in the beginning.Again, you just want to make sure that it's covering it up. At least going on that ridge, so there's a nice spot to grasp onto, and we won't have to worry about it sliding off. At this point we can grab the tabs from our tabless baseplate. You'll notice you're going to have kind of a U-shape with two holes. Those are going to line up with our adapter on the tow bar. All we're going to need is the half-inch lock nut and the half-inch bolt. We just want to slide the arm over the tab. We're going to line up the holes. I will let you know it is going to be a little bit of a tight fit. It's a little snug, so you may have to kind of rotate the arm until we can get the holes lined up, and then when we get the holes lined up, pass our bolts all the way through, making sure that it goes through the tab, the tow bar, and coming out the other side. And once you have your bolt going all the way through, we're going to secure it with a half-inch lock nut. So, we're going to grab that three-quarter-inch wrench and socket, and we can tighten that up.I do want to mention when you're tightening this though, you just want to snug it up. You don't want to crank down too hard, because we still want the arm to be able to move. That's good. It's where it's snug. And then double check that you can still move the arm freely inside of there. If it's too tight, you may want to loosen it up a little bit, but you do want to make sure that you have at least a couple of threads coming through the nylon lock nut. This is a little tight, so I'm just going to loosen up just a little bit, because we still want it to be secure, but we don't want to have to fight with it every time we hook up. Once you have that bolt tight and your arms are moving freely, you can go and repeat that for the other arm.But that'll finish up your installation, and your look at the Blue Ox tow bar to Demco tabless baseplate adapter.
Average Customer Rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars (9 Customer Reviews)
Adapts your Blue Ox tow bar so you can use it with a Demco Tabless base plate.Bought them thinking I needed to convert blue ox tow bar for demco plates for 2009 dodge 2500. demco plates linked right up to tow bar without mod.
It took 2 orders to get here with the right product. The first guy sent the wrong item for my conversion. Madison knows her stuff and got the right part out to me. Thank you Madison.
did not did this with my kid and was re turn.
Pin holes do not line up properly
Clifton
1/12/2022
Avail 10,000 lb. I was able to get the pin through one side, but would not penetrate the other end. The whole in the adapter barely lined up with the hole on the tow hitch. Which made it difficult to get the pin in correctly. The adapter needs to thread on further to enable the pin to be installed properly.
Sierra K.
1/12/2022
This is stated on the product page: Not compatible with the Blue Ox Avail tow bars.
Excellent service...very fast shipping.
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Sierra K.
1/12/2022
What kind of Blue Ox Tow Bar do you have?