Blue Ox Tow Bar Adapter Brackets for etrailer Invisible Base Plates

Video Transcript for etrailer Tabless Base Plates to Blue Ox Tow Bar Adapter Review

Ryan: Hey everybody. My name is Ryan and here at etrailer, we install, test, fit and review a lot of different parts. That way we could try to answer any questions those of you might have. And that's exactly what we're going to be doing here today.We're going to be taking a look at and showing you how to install the etrailer.com adapters for Blue Ox tow bars. So one of the big things, when it comes to setting up a flat tow is making sure all the components are compatible with each other and that they can work as a whole. And the adapters, what they're going to do is allow you to use your Blue Ox tow bar with your etrailer.com base plate kit.

And you need the adapters because the ends that come originally on the Blue Ox tow bar, won't pair up with the etrailer.com base plate kit. So by just popping these adapters on, you're able to hook up the arms that come with your base plate and pair the two together, keeping everything nice and secure.So just to give you guys an idea on what the adapters are going to do, as you can see what I'm holding right here in my hand, this is the original Blue Ox end. And if you look at our etrailer base plate, obviously those two aren't going to pair up and that's where the adapter is going to come in. So you can see right there, there's our adapter, and that's going to allow us to connect our etrailer.com arm here. That way we can plug it into the base plate and secure it.

So just to give you guys an idea on why you'd want to use these and how they're going to work, a cool thing is too, you can hold onto these from the original Blue Ox ones that came on your tow bar, which are these here. That way in the future, if you ever get another vehicle that has a Blue Ox base plate on it already, you can just change these back. So definitely gives you some versatility as well.So there's two common scenarios, at least that I can think of, at least why you would want these adapters. And the first one that I can think of would be, say you already had a flat tow and already have a Blue Ox tow bar, and maybe you sell your vehicle and purchase a new vehicle to flat tow. So you get everything set up again.

Well, perhaps you really liked the look of the etrailer.com base plate kit. I know I do. And so that's the one you want to go with, but you realize that base plate kit you have, isn't going to pair up with the tow bar and you like your tow bar and you'd rather not have to buy another one. So that's where the adapters are going to come into play. As opposed to having to change everything out, you're just going to have to change the ends using the adapters and then, you know everything is going to work with each other.And the second scenario I can think of is, say you're setting up a whole new flat tow setup like our customer is today, and you really like the etrailer base plate, and you really like the Blue Ox tow bar.

So you really don't want to have to change either one. And again, that's where the adapters would come in. You won't have to sacrifice one thing for another. You could get exactly what you want by using the adapters and allowing the two to pair up. The adapters are going to work with most Blue Ox tow bars with the exception of the Ambassador, and these are going to be nice and thick steel, so you're not going to have to sacrifice the quality construction with the rest of your components. They're going to be really well built, and they're going to have a black powder coat finish too. So not only is it going to match everything, but they should stay protected for years to come.So at the end of the day, a great way to get the setup that you want without too much compromise. I know you're probably wondering, is it hard to put the adapters on Honestly, it is a little bit tricky. It's simple in terms of what you need to do, but the factory ends here that you need to take off are on there very tight. So it can be a little bit challenging and you're really going to have to try to muscle them off. But as long as you take your time, you shouldn't have any issues getting it done. Speaking of which, let's go ahead and do that together.Now, the good news is we only have to do this once, so let's go ahead and do that together now. I did this side already, so let's go ahead and work on this side. So the first thing you're going to want to do is take your tow bar and set it on a work bench. And if you look right here at the end, we're going to have a zip tie. We need to cut that. Be careful not to actually cut your boot itself. And if you peel that boot back, you can see that right there, we're going to have a pin that is pressed in there, and that's stopping the end here from rotating on the actual arm itself. So we're going to have to get that pin out. So what you can do is use a punch and a hammer, and we're just going to drive that out.Now what we can do is secure our tow bar in a vice. I'm actually using a vice and a pair of vice grips. When you do this, you want to be sure to put a rag or something on the arm itself and try to clamp everything down, as high as possible or closest to this end. And that's because if you do end up chewing up the metal up here a little bit from your vice grips and stuff, it's really not that big of a deal because this part actually don't go all the way down inside the tow bar. So you're not going to have to worry about tearing up your seals or anything like that. But that being said, these can be very tight, so if you don't have a vice, I would suggest getting a couple of pairs of vice grips and maybe a friend to help you out when you're doing this.And you could potentially even take some heat and run that heat right here in this area. And that's because this has a bunch of Loctite inside, so that's why it's so tight. What you can do though, is take a large pry bar and put it through like so, and start to work it, and eventually it will start to break free. We'll just keep running this until it comes completely off. Once you get a of couple turns on it, it does start to loosen up quite a bit. So to make things a little less cumbersome, I'm just going to take a crescent wrench and turn it off that way. Now that we have that removed, I'm just going to use some cleaner and make sure these threads are all nice and clean.Now we can do is take the included blue Loctite and put it on the threads here. We'll take our adapter and this is simply just going to thread on. So we'll run this all the way down and then you may have to either tighten it up a little bit or back it off a little bit, because what we're trying to do is get these slots here, to line up with the holes all the way down here, where that pin was that we drove out earlier. Just run as far down as you can. And if you have to tighten it up a hair or loosen it up a hair to get it to line up, that's where we want it. Now that we have the holes lined up, we can take our new pins, line them up and carefully drive them back in.So I took our tow bar out of the vice and set it back on our bench. And now what we can do is take the sleeves here, run them over the adapter and what's going to hold it in place is an included zip tie. So all I have to do is get it close, now hold it in position. Make sure that zip tie is nice and snug. Now I'll just come back and cut the end off. Now we can take our tabs and connect them to our adapters. So the holes and the tabs are going to line up with the holes in our adapters, get those slid into position. I'm going to take the included nut and bolt and run that through.Sometimes these can be a little tricky to get going with all the new paint and everything, so keep that in mind. But once it runs through, we'll take our nylon lock nut. We're going to tighten this down using a three quarter inch socket and wrench. Now, when you do this, you want to make sure they're nice and snug, but you don't want to get them so tight that you're not actually able to articulate this. So we'll tighten it down, check it, make sure we're still able to move it around. Get that pretty snug. Looks like we're still able to move it around. There's a little bit of resistance there, but that's good. It will loosen up over time, once we get a few miles on it. So I think we're good to go there.But as you can see with the adapter on there, we're going to have no issues at all connecting our Blue Ox tow bar to our trailer base plate. And that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the etrailer.com adapters for Blue Ox tow bars.