Roadmaster Accessory Kit for StowMaster Tow Bars - Tail Light Wiring - Safety Cables - Lock Set

Video Transcript for RoadMaster Combo Towing Kits Review

Hi there flat towers, today we're going to be taking a look at Roadmaster's line of combo towing kits. There are various kits available depending on the tow bar that you're using with your flat tow setup. Many of the items are going to be the same between the kits, but there are a few items that are specifically tailored for your specific tow bar. Let's cover the main items you're going to get in the kit and then we'll go over the differences between the various tow bars that are available from Roadmaster. Now, regardless of which kit you get, these are the items that's going to be the same amongst all the kits, because it's useful items that you're going to need no matter what when flat towing. One of the first things is our lighting options which we've got here on the right, because when you got to flat tow your vehicle, you'll need to wire it up so that way the lights in your motor home are mimicked on your vehicle.

People behind you know your intentions going down the road.The most common thing you're going to use is your diode wiring, which is the kit that you see here. You'll receive four diodes, all the wire you need to hook it up, and some loom to protect your wiring when you're routing it, as well as some zip ties to keep everything secure. You'll get all the connections that you'll need as well in there. The diode's main purpose is to allow signals to pass through it to reach its destination, but not to back feed to go to the rest of our electrical system. They act as a one way check valve for electricity, and it's important that we have them in here because if we just hook wires up from our motor home directly to our LED lights, sure when we turn down the left turn signal, it's going to light the light here, but it's also going to back feed down our wire to the computer system inside of our vehicle which could potentially cause damage to the system.

The diodes allow it to go to the light to illuminate it but prevent it from going backwards, and it's going to do that for all of our lighting functions.The other option is a bulb and socket kit, and this is one that you're likely not going to use. It's mainly for your older vehicles, as many of our newer vehicles have LED lights and the housings are smaller and smaller, and these bulbs just don't fit inside of them. But if you've got an older vehicle or you do have plenty of room inside your taillight housings, it's another option. This is my least favorite option for wiring because you do have to drill a hole inside your taillight assembly in order to mount these bulbs inside. Over here, we've got some nice comfort items.

We've got a cover for your tow bar, this is going to wrap around our tow bar and allow us to just keep it stowed when we're not using it. If we take a look over here on the vehicle, we've actually got it in place. Inside this bag here we've got our tow bar, our safety cables, and all of our diode wires and everything all wrapped up in here. So you keep your entire flat tow setup right here at the back of your motor home, and when you're ready to hook up, you can just drive up, take your bag off, and you've got everything you need right here inside your bag ready to hook up.It's secured using a single clip and the bag just slides over your tow bar. When you're ready to use your tow bar, unhook up the buckle here on the bottom, we'll just unclip it, and then our bag is just going to slide off.

Just kind of work the end off a little bit and then usually you can just grab it here at the end and just start working it down. It is going to be a nice tight in order to hold all of your components and everything inside to keep everything together for you, so when you're going down the road you don't have things bouncing around. And the cover is also going to protect your tow bar from the elements, and this is what I really like about it. If you're flat towing all the time, if this is something you we're planning to live with for many, many years, these tow bars if left on the back of your motor home, they're out in the elements. And these arms are designed to slide in and out, and they are stainless and Roadmaster has done a great job on keeping moisture and stuff from getting inside of them. But with all materials, they do deteriorate over time, so in order to keep good operation on the arms, on your tow bars here, I highly recommend having it bagged, cover it up when you're not using it to protect it from the elements.It's also great for all of your connections inside your wiring and everything else if you can keep that out of the moisture. It's made of a leather like vinyl, so it does give it a nice, good appearance. It feels very strong so you don't have to worry about it tearing as you're taking it off and putting it on. And on the inside, it does have a nice fabric that helps it slide easily over your tow bar and the rest of your components. You also receive this small tow bag. This bag has handles inside so you can easily tote it around, and this is for your accessories such as your locks and anything else that you might need when you're going to hook up. Let's take a look at the locks here and we'll show you how these attach onto your tow bar. Now with our direct connect arm here, your tow bar is going to slide through the center there and this pin is going to secure it here in the middle.Normally you'd use the attached pin here to keep it secured, this just slides out like this, and that'll drop down in there and that'll keep it in place. But if you wanted to disconnect it from the motor home, all it would take for somebody to do is just flip this up and slide the pin out. So with our locks, we can slide the pin in through our tow bar to make our connection, but rather than using the included pin, we'll take our locks here and they're designed to slide down through those and then lock in place. And it's a nice snug fit, if you see there.Being nice and snug, it just helps to make it more difficult to remove the lock from it for any would-be thieves out there. This is going to be the same for the other side, that's why you receive two locks and you receive two sets of keys, and both of these locks are keyed alike so any of these four keys that come included with it can be used to unlock it. So it's nice that you've got plenty of options. So now that we've looked at the direct connect and how you would connect it there, let's head over to our crossbar style here. Now with the crossbar style, we're looking only at one side here, so you've got a connection here where your tow bar attaches just like on our direct connect one. So our pin can be removed and the lock can slide down to lock this in place just like it did on the direct connect.But we also have another connection on this crossbar style. Up here on top, when these pins are removed, one on each side, the whole crossbar will lift off. So if we remove this and we take our locks, you can also lock it here. So with a crossbar style, what I would recommend doing in order to keep everything secure, I would use both of your locks on one side of the vehicle, so it would be like this, lock them down, and then lock it down. And then on the other side of the vehicle, I would just use your regular old pins. I do notice here on your crossbar style you have to go from the bottom up because the lock does hit on the little bottom piece there.But this way, if we've got this side locked down and the other side here is held in by it's pins, while this side could be removed, any would-be thief is not going to be able to walk away with anything because even though they can disconnect this part of your tow bar and this right here, with the locks on the other side of your tow bar is secured to your crossbar and they can't remove it, and with the lock on top of the crossbar section they can't remove it from your vehicle, keeping you nice and secure. And lastly here, we've got our inaudible 00:07:11 connector mount. In most cases, you're going to get this with your base plate and things like that, I feel like you don't even need to use it a lot of times with the Roadmaster base plates, the connector will actually just go right onto the base plate, but it's nice that they included it just in case for your particular base plate if it's not included, or if you went with another manufacturer.Now we're going to go into the safety cables and wiring that comes with your kits. This is going to vary depending on the kit that you've chosen. There's four different kits, and they're for the specific tow bar that you may have purchased and they come with the right cables that's going to work best with those tow bars. In your StowMaster Combo kit, you're going to get a set of coiled 6,000 lb safety cables. If you get the Falcon 2/Falcon All-terrain kit, you're going to get straight cables so they can pass through the channels on the all-terrain here, and those are going to be 8,000 lb straight cables. Lastly is the BlackHawk 2 kit, which is for the highest weight capacity. Those are going to have straight cables as well for the channels, and they're going to be 10,000 lb capacity.And the last kit, which is thee Nighthawk/ Sterling All-terrain kit, that's not going to come with any safety cables or wiring cables because those come included with your tow bar so they don't need to come with the kit. Now we go to the wiring and which one's going to come with which kit. For your StowMaster combo kit, you're going to receive a coiled cable. With the Falcon 2/Falcon All-terrain kit, you're going to receive the hybrid cable that has the straight with coiled ends. With the BlackHawk 2 kit, you're going to get just the straight cable, and once again, with your Nighthawk/Sterling, All-terrain, you're not going to get any cables because those come with the tow bar. All of the kits, except for the Nighthawk/Sterling All-terrain is also going to come with a six way connector, and this is the connector that you would place on your vehicle once you've got it set up to be flat towed, that your wiring's going to plug into. This is your standard six way on the cables that come in your kit, they're all going to be a six to seven way cable.So the six way will plug into the connector that they come with that's installed on your vehicle. The other end of each of the cables, regardless of which one you get that comes in your kit, is going to have a seven way connector because that's what you're going to have on the back of your motor home. Included with your Nighthawks/Sterling All-terrain, you'll receive a hitch lock so you can protect the investment you've made into your tow bar. This one will slide through your receiver on your motor home, securing your tow bar to the hitch, and the other end here will lock, securing it in place, and this way your tow bar can't walk away from your motor home when you're not using it, or even when you're connected, you don't have to worry about any disconnections or any funny business going on.And also with the Nighthawks/Sterling All-terrain kit, you're going to receive a can of RV silicone from Roadmaster. And this is great for keeping all of your moving items in proper working order, like your tow bar, the arms where they slide in and out, any of the pivoting points on it, you can keep those points lubricated up so that way they have nice smooth operation. So when you're setting up your vehicle for a flat tow, getting a full kit like this can help simplify the installation process, because once you've made your tow bar decision, if you went with a Roadmaster here, you can choose the appropriate kit that comes with it and that way you can ensure you're going to have your wiring, your tow bar, your safety cables.Basically you have just about everything you need except for the base plate, because that's going to vary depending upon the vehicle you want to flat tow behind your motor home. You can use our fit guide to ensure you get the appropriate base plate, and then you'll need your supplemental braking system, which is a separate component from the rest of these and is also a lot of times dependent upon the vehicle you have, because depending on the room you have in that vehicle, the braking system that you want to choose, it may vary depending on how much space you have available. We've got a bunch of videos here at etrailer.com, so you'll likely be able to find your vehicle online and follow along with our videos so you can get everything installed. And that completes our look at Roadmaster's line of combo towing kits.