Demco Kwik-Tow and Blue Ox Adventurer Tow Bar Adapter Bracket for Demco Tabless Base Plates

Video Transcript for Demco Kwik-Tow Tow Bars to Demco Tabless Base Plate Adapter Review

Shane: Hi. I'm Shane with etrailer.com. Today, we're gonna be taking a look at the Adapters for the Tabless Demco Base Plate. These are gonna give us our solid connection point between our tow bar and our base plate so we can safely flat tow our vehicle. The reason we need these adapters is because the tabs that come with this base plate will not work with the older style tow bars like our Blue Ox we have here. Now before installing these, on the base plate, you're gonna have a sleeve inside that needs to be removed.

It's gonna be easier if you remove the fascia first because you're gonna have two nuts and two bolts that are holding those in place. With our Demco Base Plate, these are the tabs that are gonna come with it. These are gonna connect to your tow bar and to use them, you just slide them in. You're gonna have a hole on each side. You're gonna line up this so you slide them in.

Twist them. Then you put a pin in. To remove them, remove them out like that. Fold your tow bar up.Now to install these tabs on your newer tow bars, you would take this bolt out. This will go on and bolt right in place of it.

Our problem is our customer has an older Blue Ox tow bar. These tabs will not work. The new adapters is going to allow us to use our older Blue Ox tow bar with our Demco Base Plate.Now that we've gone over some of the features let's show you how to get it installed. We need to start by removing our fascia. So we're going to have four plastic fasteners and two 10 mm head bolts we need to remove.

Our four plastic pin fasteners run right across this front plastic piece and then our two bolts are right here. And these are just plastic so you don't have to put any pressure on them. You just want to make sure that you get this bottom part out too. Once you have this center out like this, it's easy if you just pull up like this and it will come out just like that.In each wheel well we're going to have three 5.5 mm head bolts we need to remove. Now your instructions are going to tell you three push pin fasteners you're going to have to remove from underneath the vehicle which are going to be these three here. But actually you're going to have one on each side for your mud flap. Where your front fascia actually hooks into your mud flap. You're going to have to remove one of those on each side too so technically you're going to have five. So we'll remove three of these. You can just do it with a flathead screwdriver. You can get the center pried out there. Take a trim panel tool, pull out the base, just like that. And this one here, on the very lower front part of your fender liner, or in front of your tire. Once again, you'll have one of these on each side.You're going to have a couple of 5.5 mm head bolts on each side we need to remove. First we're going to remove this one, and this one, just like that. Then you're going to remove those same two on the other side of the vehicle. We need to unhook our fog lights if you're clipped. This plug here. We're just going to push in on this back side. Right there, we're just going to push in and pull out. You're going to do that some thing on the other side.With an extra set of hands we're going to remove our fascia. We're going to start on the very outside of our fender where our fender meets our front fascia and we're going start to pull out and work our way to the center. And remember when pulling this off, don't just pull it off because of there's any additional wiring or anything in there that needs to be unplugged you don't want to mess up the plugs. Once you get it off you're just going to set it aside in a safe place for now.Next thing we're going to need to do is we need to remove this inner sleeve. We're going to have two bolts and two nuts to remove. We'll use a 19 mm socket and wrench to remove this. Then we're going to be reusing the bolts that we take out. Pull out this sleeve and put on our new adaptor. You're going to make sure that your slots are not facing this way, they're facing this way, side-to-side. The kits going to come with new nuts. Bolt head on the inside of our bolts. Center bolt is through and your nuts are going to be on the outside. Now if you notice out nut is inside here. These bolts have to be torqued down. Typically you want to torque down the nut side of the bolt, but you can see here we're not going to be able to get a socket on there.So we're going to have to torque it down from the head side and we're going to have to do this before we put the lower one in. So if you get a pair of pliers, channel locks like I've got here, try and get it on that on that nut to hold that nut and keep it from spinning. Then we're going to torque them to the specifications in the instructions. Just like that. Then you're going to repeat that same process for the other side. Once you've installed your hardware and you've got them tightened and torqued to the specifications in the instructions you can reinstall your fascia in reverse order from the way you took it off.That's going to complete our look at the Adapters for Demco's Tabless Base Plate.