To see if this custom-fit item will work for you please tell us what vehicle you'll use it with.
Thank you! Your comment has been submitted successfully. You should be able to view your question/comment here within a few days.
Error submitting comment. Please try again momentarily.
Custom designed to fit your vehicle so it can be safely towed behind your RV, this base plate has easily removable arms that offer a seamless look when you're not flat towing. Base plate bolts directly to your chassis, so no welding is required.
Features:
Specs:
This base plate's hidden design creates a clean and seamless look. The bracket arms are easily removable, creating a slick appearance when you're not flat towing. Because the arms can be removed, you also won't have to worry about banging your leg into any protruding arms when you walk by.
Attaching and removing the bracket arms is a breeze. To attach the arms to the base plate, simply insert them into the receivers and rotate them until they lock into place. Once you're finished towing and want to remove the arms, pull the pin to disengage the lock, rotate the arms, and remove them from the receivers. Finally, plug up the now empty receivers with the included receiver covers to help keep dirt and debris out of the base plate and provide a finished look.
Flat towing your vehicle is much more convenient than using a trailer or a tow dolly. These other options take up much more storage space, leaving you less room both at home and at the campsite. In addition, securing your vehicle to a trailer or tow dolly can be a hassle and more time consuming than hooking up with a tow bar.
There are 5 basic components needed when flat towing a vehicle: a tow bar, a base plate kit, a safety cable set, tow bar wiring, and a supplemental braking system.
The tow bar links your towed car to your motorhome. It attaches to the custom-fit base plates that install on the frame of your towed car. Safety cables ensure that your towed car does not separate from your motorhome in the event that your tow bar becomes detached. Tow bar wiring allows your towed vehicle's signal lights to sync up with your motorhome's tail lights, which is required by law in most states. Finally, the supplemental braking system - also required in most states - brakes your towed car when the brakes in your motorhome are activated, preventing wear on the motorhome and decreasing braking distance for your entire setup.
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Today on our 2015 Ford Focus we're going to show you how to install the Blue Ox Base Plate Kit with removable arms, part number BX2654. Here's what the base plate's going to look like installed on our vehicle. As you can see, we're not adding a whole lot to the car. It's pretty low-vis. We're going to have our connection points for our removable arms on each side here via round holes. Had to cut our fascia right here on each side to accommodate for it.
These are going to be our safety chain connection points on each side. That's going to be the part that's going to stick out the furthest away from the front of our vehicle there. Breakaway switch, we mounted that on the back side. It comes out one of our holes right there using the included bracket that came with our base plate itself. There's really nice, easy install there. This is going to be our wiring connection point.
This is going to take either a 4 pole round, 6 pole round, even comes with tabs for a 4 pole flat so you can bring that over a little bit narrower, whatever you decide to do. When we're ready to tow, we'll just bring in our removable arms. We'll slide them straight in, and then rotate them until our tab locks into place. Once we've got them both in place that's going to give us a great connection point here for our tow bar and allow us to safely tow our vehicle down the road. We're going to get just a couple measurements here so you'll know exactly what we're going to be adding to the front of our vehicle with the base plate installed. Looks like from the front edge of our tabs here it's going to be about 2 1/4", maybe up to about 2 1/2" there. Then to the end of our arms it's going to be about 3 1/2.
We'll be about 3 1/2 when we're set to tow and we're going to be about 2 1/2 when we're not. Not adding a whole lot to the front there. Just for reference, our wiring tabs, those are going to come out by about 1 1/4". That'd be from the front corner here to the bumper, just to give you an idea of what you're going to have added onto the front. To begin our installation we're going to need to get our headlights removed. You'll pop your hood, prop it up, then we'll take a T30 Torx bit or a flat head screwdriver, and we're going to remove the screw located right here at this front corner and then if we go all the way to the back side, the one right up here on the top of the fender.
We'll pull our assembly out just a little bit. Then we want to unhook our light here on the back side. Press down on this tab here. We'll just wiggle it and separate it. Just let that rest back there. Set our headlight aside somewhere safe so it doesn't get any scratches on it. We'll do the same thing for the other side. Now for our upper fascia cover here we're going to take out the two push pin fasteners. Just pull the center core out of it. Once that's propped up far enough or it comes out completely, you can take the outside of it. Got one on each corner there. Then we're going to take out the five T30 fasteners right beside our bumpers there. We'll do the one closer to the engine. If we come just over right down beside where we removed our headlight bolt, there's going to be another screw there. Got one pretty close to the center, and then the same two spots on this side. Now on our hood release side here under the hood, we want to follow that cable back. There's going to be a little keeper here we'll take it out of, also one right here. We should just be able to pull up on it. Now we'll come into the fender well area. Right down here at the bottom we've got a T30 Torx. If we come up right in this little pocket there's going to be another one. We'll take both those out. Then right here on the bottom edge there's going to be a push pin fastener that points upwards to the top. It's right here. You can see it. Let's get that pulled out. It's just like the first ones. We just want to pop that center core out, and then the rest of it should come if we wiggle it around a bit. All right, now we'll head over to the passenger side and do the same thing there. Now we're ready to go around the underside here. We want to remove the six push pin fasteners. There'll be two located in front of each wheel area. We've got one here and one just a little further towards the front of the vehicle, right here. Then we've got two that'll be located right in the middle. Then, of course, two on the same side in front of the wheel over on the passenger side. On each side of the vehicle, this is where our headlight was. Just under it there's going to be this little clip. We just pull up on that. See how they come out just a little bit. We'll do that on both sides. If we start on our top corner here and just start pulling out gently, we're going to release the clips that hold the fascia to the fender. Then it's just a matter of working it all forward. We need to look behind and look for a wiring connector. We've got one right here, so we need to push in the tab located right there. Just wiggle that to separate it, and then just check all the way around, fog lights, ambient air sensors. Could be several things in here that we'll need to get separated. Then when we get that all separated, we just need to set this away somewhere safe, maybe in the box your tow bar came in. Just let it rest on there until we're ready to reinstall it. If we look here on the driver side there's going to be an 8 millimeter bolt we want to remove. That's on our support brace for this. Once we've got that out, going to move this out some. We want to bend that tab out. We'll do that as much as necessary to allow for base plate clearance. That's going to be the little tab that sticks up right there. If we look just a little further in towards the frame, we're going to have another bolt right there. This is holding our horn in place. We'll want to get it removed. We'll disconnect our horn here just by pressing in that tab on top. Now we move over to the passenger side here. This is our windshield washer fluid reservoir. Separate our electrical connectors there. This one's got a tab on the top. The one here on the pump, that's going to have a tab right here on the back side. That's going to have a little keeper here on the reservoir itself. I'm going to pull that out of there. This will clear out for our fluid line here. Now we're going to take off the two bolts that are actually holding the reservoir in place. We've got one located right here. There's one a little bit tougher to see located right back in here. Once we've got those two out, just keep a hand on our reservoir here. I want to separate the hose that comes off, so you just pull up on that black clip. We can slide that off, put our finger over the end. We'll have to lift up. The filler head there, set it aside. Then we can bring our reservoir down and out. We set it aside. We're also going to remove the passenger side horn. This one's going to have a 10 millimeter bolt coming up from the bottom. Set it aside. Here, when we removed our windshield washer fluid tank, this was where that forward bolt went in. It's actually time to cut that off. We want to cut right on that angle there, and we'll be removing this area. Here on the top of our frame rail, we want to move the wire loom here. Just going to be a push fastener into the top of the rail. Pull up on the bottom of that. That'll give us the room we need to drill out our holes. Using the hole that's in the top of the frame as a guide, we use our 1 1/4" hole saw. We want to drill that out. Now let's do the same thing here for our passenger side. On each side we're going to have this plastic filler cap. What we need to do is trim this off all the way across so that it's above the bottom edge of our bumper there. We'll just take off this bottom area. We'll be removing that piece, so that our bumper's exposed all the way across. Do the same thing over on our passenger side now. Here on our wire loom we're going to have a small fastener into our frame here. This is on the driver side. Let's get that pulled out of the way. It covers up one of the holes that are going to be used for mounting our base plate, which is going to be here, here, and the oblong hole located just in front. We're going to hold our base plate up into place and try to match up the holes in the side with these holes. Then we're going to see where we need to trim this air intake here. We can take off some of this on the side where we need to so the base plate will fit in. Here in our middle section we're going to have these braces that come down. We need to cut these off, a little over halfway down, and we're going to remove this top section just up to where it meets right up there. For our outer panel here we'll go right to the bottom, that rounded tab, and bring that over towards our middle section. As we get a little bit firmer there, we should just be able to go straight up from there, come out on that angle. We're getting rid of this little corner area. If we turn back on this line we may be able to keep this little top section. All right, now we'll test it again and if we need to we can trim out a little bit more. Here, the tab that we trimmed off earlier, you remember it had the little tab that stuck up like this. It was for our washer reservoir. Well, this is still interfering so we're going to go ahead, there's a little indention right there. We're going to trim straight back behind that nut and we'll come back up here on that side. That should give us the clearance we need. Now we'll test fit it again and see if we can get it in there. Add a bolt in there just to hold it in place. We'll check our other side. Now it's time to grab one of our 3/8 bolts. We'll place one of the 3/8 split ring lock washers on there, and also some red Loctite. You want to keep in mind, we're going to use red Loctite on all the bolts we do. Grab one of our nut plates. We need to start placing our bolts through our base plate, through the frame of the vehicle, and then thread them into the back side of each of our nut plates. We'll do the three on top on each side, then we'll drill out our holes for the bottom. All right, with the three of these loosely started we'll be able to head over to our other side and we can get those started as well. Now that we've got our three bolts on each side started, we need to come around to the bottom side of our base plate. There's going to be a hole right here. We're going to drill a 3/8 diameter hole there. We're also going to do the same thing here in the front. What I'm going to do is use my 3/8 bit and mark my center just using the base plate as a guide. Of course, watch drilling around our wires there. That'll give us a nice, centered hole mark in there and we'll drill a pilot hole first. All right, now with the driver side done let's go repeat that process for our passenger side. Now it's time to bring our 3/8 bolts up through the holes that we've just created. We're going to be threading those into nut plates just like we did the other three on each side. Red Loctite, be sure we've got that on our bolts. Bend our nut plate like that so that'll be level. We'll just try to feed it down in there. A socket with an extension can help out with turning the bolt. Now we'll start by tightening our lower bolts first. We'll get those torqued to the specifications we'll find in our instructions and we'll move on to our upper bolts. What we want to do is get rid of all of our handles off of our nuts. As you can see, two of the ones have already broke off when we we're tightening it. Then we just want to flex these up and down. That'll wear out that connection where it meets the nut. We'll be able to pull it off. You'll see now we're going to have a nice, clean open hole in there so we won't have to worry about those handles vibrating together and making noise. You can just cut them off if you like, but you might have noise down the road so it's a good idea to get rid of them completely. Now we're going to get our permanent base plate safety cables installed. You can see, nice heavy duty cable. It's going to go to our quick links here. What we want to do is run this around the frame of the vehicle, so I'm going to go right behind the mounting tab here. As we do this we're going to need to avoid any wiring, anything like that. We don't want to do any damage. Then we want to connect both ends here, right there to the attachment tab. Just need to put a little torque on there to keep them in place. Typically a zip tie can help to keep everything tidy and tucked together here. Just going to draw all the slack out, then we'll put a zip tie around them right there. That'll hold it in place. All right, now we can bend our tab back up. After we have that bent back and aligned, we want to attach our horn to this as well. Just bring that right over our hole, right over our bolt. Once we have it snugged down, we can plug our horn back in. Make sure you hear that little click, be able to push and pull on it without it coming disconnected. Now we can head over to our passenger side. We can use our existing oblong hole that's here on our frame. We'll align that with our horn, and we can use the original bolt that we removed to reinstall it. We also want to rotate the bracket on our horn downward. That's going to give us room for our washer fluid reservoir. Let's bring our reservoir back up into place. Connect our water line here to reduce our leaks. Now we'll start getting our bolt started. Here on the forward side we're going to use the new tab that's created with the base plate. We'll slide through a 1/4" bolt with a flat washer. Then we're going to put a flat washer in the back side. We're also going to put a nut. It's a nylon lock nut. We're going to get our other one started back in the factory location there. We'll slide our filler nozzle right back into the top there. It's nice and secure. It's time to tighten up our bolts. As we tighten this one up, we want to be sure that our washer fully covers the hole that's in the reservoir itself. Now we're ready to just come through and reconnect our pump motor line there and also the sensor line. Just want to make sure they click, that you can push and pull on them without them coming apart. Now you're fully connected. Remember that small keeper on the side and a small one here on the top. Just keep our lines routed the proper way. While our fascia's off the vehicle, this is going to be the time to get all of our wiring ran. All right, now it's time for our first fascia test fit. Just want to bring this up and easily guide it into position where it's going to rest. See, our safety chain connection points are going to come out here with no issues, no interference. We've got our area here for our wiring to attach to. Again, for right now we're not going to trim anything. If we need to, we'll take some out, but it's passing through there now. I want my breakaway switch to be right beside that. I'm going to see if we can't get it to come out of the hole located right there. Just make a little mark down here for reference, right in the middle of that opening so I know about where I want that to be and I'll know I want it to be level with my wiring arms that come out. Then you'll see our connection points here where our removable arms are going to go in. Not going to be much trimming required, but we are going to have to get rid of that bar that sits in front of it on both sides. We'll get rid of that area as nice and cleanly as possible, and after we mount our breakaway switch bracket there we'll be ready to get our fascia put back on. Here you'll see we used some of that packaging material from our base plate to allow our fascia to rest on. We know that we need to take out this area right here, and that little tab that comes down on each side. Now we can use a razor knife, or you could even use a cutoff wheel if you'd like, to get in there and trim those areas out. All right, now we'll take just a second to clean that up. We'll do the same thing on the other side. Now we want to pre-start our hole here in the bottom. We're going to use a small self-tapping screw, align it with our mark that we've made here, and then screw it in. Now we'll take the bracket that came with our base plate and we'll get it installed. All right, you can see that's going to give us a nice solid mounting point. Now we'll grab our breakaway. Now we can place a 1/4" bolt through our bracket, bring our breakaway switch up on top of it, and we're going to thread on a nylon locking nut. We can rotate that around into position. As you can see, it's going to be about flush with the front side of our wiring there, which will be perfect. Cinch it down a little bit more. I like to take my wire here where it's red and white and I also like to take my other wire here and wrap it up with some electrical tape just so we don't see those colored wires behind our fascia. It's certainly optional and up to you. We'll put our breakaway switch into it there, make sure we got that fully connected, and then I'll even wrap tape right around that. That way we'll give ourselves a little bit of a moisture barrier there. Any excess we have, we can take care of that with a zip tie, just running that around our base plate. Let's fit our fascia back in place. Feed through our wiring if we need to here on the front. Just guide it into position, nice and easy. Remember your plug here on the driver side. We want to put that back in. Make sure it clicks and again, that we can push and pull on it. In this configuration our breakaway switch is really poking out further than it needs to, so we should be able to reverse our bracket like that. That's going to suck our breakaway switch back in a little bit further. That range should be sitting pretty much flush with the front of our fascia for us. I'll guide it back on again. Now we're ready to slide our push pin fasteners back in the top. We just need to push the top down to secure those. Let's also tighten down the two screws we're using to hold it in place, as well as our third one with our T30 Torx. Now let's also put our T30 back in the side. Do that on both sides. With that nice and secure, we can move it into that wheel well area and start our two fasteners on our edge. We have one at the bottom and then one really close to the top here. We also want to put our push pin fastener. Remember that one went up through just like that. Then we'll push that metal back up. Now we'll head over to our passenger side and do the same thing there. Now we can grab our six push pin fasteners and we're going to put them back underneath here. Remember, we've got two right here in the center and then we'll have two located right in front of each of our tires, one closer to the front of the car and then one right by the tire itself. Where we've cut our holes out here it's not required, but I would certainly spray it down with a little rust-preventative spray paint just to cover up those bare steel areas. Now we're going to grab our headlight. Plug it back in. That way it'll work. Then get it put back into place as well. We're going to be re-securing these with the two Torx bits as well. Now we'll head over to the passenger side and do the same thing there. Then we'll bring our cable back around, put it in its keeper here and the slot there, and then reinsert it. inaudible 00:25:47. Now with our fascia back in place, that's going to complete our installation of the Blue Ox Base Plate Kit with removable arms, part number BX2654, on our 2015 Ford Focus.
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (3051 Customer Reviews)
Custom designed to fit your vehicle so it can be safely towed behind your RV, this base plate has easily removable arms that offer a seamless look when you're not flat towing. Base plate bolts directly to your chassis, so no welding is required.Great refered video easy to follow. Follow the instructions it's easy enough to install
I put this base plate on with the assistance of my wife very easy to install. Do recommend the video to install
Just got it installed. It took about 8 hours including the light wiring. Seems to work just fine.
order took 3 weeks , and the box had parts missing, base plate assembly seemed correct and is halfway installed, while i wait for parts. now the car in unusable for awhile. bummer! we are going away for 4 days, but can't tow the car.
I am very pleased with the base plate that bought. I received it a few days after shipment was made . It was exactly as showered on the photograph.
Also please with service provide by Greg S Thanks
With the help of your installation video. I installed it myself in just over 2 hours.
On time service great people to work with A plus
The size of the box terrified me but I had to do this one myself.
This project is not for the faint of heart. When you think about what could go wrong you could wet yourself. I went with my gut and just opened the box. Hmmm, packaged very well with everything you need for the install. No going to the hardware store for this or that. Sat there with a cold sarsaparilla and read the very detailed instructions, went back to the etrailer web site and checked out some vids and pics. Hmm, it didn’t seem that daunting of a job. On my 04 Lexus GX470 most of the holes were drilled. Before I knew it 5 hours had past and I owned a toad! I took it to my local Rv service center for an inspection and it was deemed safe to use.
This thing is awesome, tracs straight as an arrow.
Now, I have to figure out this diode lighting kit. Camping is fun! Yah!!! :) Noah and etrailer made this a tolerable project. I urge everyone to take advantage of the resources that are on this sight. I always learn something when I’m there. See y’all on the trail….Rod
Well, I'm glad I'm good with tools, grinders, drills, and such. It was not just bolt-on dal. The car grill was able to be used any longer as it was too tight of a fit. Some of the lower fascia had to be trimmed and also removed OEM nuts from the front, the angle wouldn't allow the stock nuts to work. But in the end, I got to work out. So prepare to spend around 4-6 hours playing with it to get it to work. I am positive it's going to work as intended.
everything bolted up easy, i simply drilled hole’s into were needed and supplied my own bolts straight through for easy installation.
I am really happy, not only with the product but the customer care I received. Very quick and helpful!!
I would make one suggestion. Take the headlights out when doing this on a Chevy Cobalt. It will make it much easier to get to the 3 bolt holding the fender to the fascia.
This kit fit well, had decent instructions, and performed perfectly every time once installed. If doing the install yourself, you'll need some metal fabrication tools to notch the D-ring plates behind the bumper but it's not complicated, just a little time consuming depending on the tools you're using. The look is also a little weird on the front of a new Bronco since you're losing the burly bumper D-rings, but it's a well engineered setup overall. I only used the tow bar setup a couple times before the vehicle was lost in a wildfire so I can't comment on the longevity, but I have no doubt it would still be working fine today.
I will start with the people that work here at etrailer are great to deal with and very helpful! These baseplates for my 2023 bronco have been great. i bought and installed myself. install pretty straight forward. and these work great for flat towing my bronco behind my motorhome.
eTrailer was very helpful in choosing the correct hitch for our rv and car. They also provided a special brake application in the car that makes it super easy for toad braking.
I am 72, and I hook up this toad and pull it with confidence. The instructions to hook up the toad was presented with ease. They knew exactly what they were doing, and we didn't rush through the demonstration. I would recommend eTrailer to anyone.
Installed successfully on my 2024 Trax LT. However, with respect to the following installation steps, I made some changes:
All - Don't use a reciprocating saw! An oscillating tool and saw attachment works best, allowing more precise cuts.
Step #8 - After consultation with BlueOx Tech Support, I elected to re-install the plastic shroud. Wasn't difficult and I felt better about maintaining the integrity of the original equipment.
Step #28 - I moved the temperature sensor to a forward facing position in the grill section directly above the baseplate.
Etrailer offered competitive pricing for the base plate and the package was shipped promptly and arrived very quickly...much faster than I had anticipated.
The packaging was excellent and included all documentation. Installation was very straightforward and the unit was a perfect fit with minimal modifications to the car itself. Only a few small pieces of plastic had to be trimmed for a perfect fit.
We did have some trouble with 2 of the nuts-with-wires attached in that the bolts did NOT want to thread in to them. For some reason, they just did not want to 'start' easily and this made the blind installation of the nuts on the bolts extremely time-consuming. The nuts/bolts did not cross-thread and there were no other issues once we were able to use a tool to jam the blind nut and stop it from moving so that the bolt could be tightened and torqued. 4 of the 6 went in smoothly and with zero issues, so do I not believe that it was 'installer error' (!).
In the end, a perfect installation and the base plate is nearly invisible. I would definitely purchase from eTrailer again and can easily recommend their products based on this experience.
Baseplate installation went pretty smooth with no surprises. I chose to separate the lower grill piece while I had the bumper cover off. This allowed me to install the bumper cover over the baseplate and then accurately determine where to make my cuts in the grill for the baseplate protrusions. The Blue Ox base plate is well made and fit perfectly.
The hitch is a great product; however, the installation is not a bolt on and you are done process as I was led to believe. It is highly doable with a little fudging, die grinding to fit, and tweaking. The grainy instruction pictures leave a lot to be desired. It looks good on my 2014 Suzuki SX4 and I am glad to have it, but even as an experienced body shop man it is still a challenge to install. Would I do it again, yes, without hesitation. It is solid, durable, and looks good in my grill.
Pretty easy to do my self but the instructions could have been a bit larger with more pictures. I think the hardest part was drilling the holes to attach the two brackets as there was only one hole on each frame. Getting the square nuts with wire attached were difficult to get both aligned because the wire on the first one got in the way each time
My only negative comment is that this base plate sets the tow bar connections 23" above the ground making it somewhat of a pain to fine towbar and hitch connections. It mounts relatively easy.
Everything as advertised. Followed the videos and instructions for installing the base plates and tow bar and all were good. Did a test pull today and it towed great, straight as a dye. I only have 2 suggestions. There was no mention in the video of the space plate, which was included. Figured it out. Second suggestion, Install a 2" ball on your work bench and adjust the receiver to it. The instructions tell you what socket to adjust it with but that could have been done on the bench before shipping. Great product, so excited. We are off on a few hundred mile trip with the Fit behind the motorhome Wednesday. So excited. No more tow dolly.
This kit was installed on my 2018 Toyota Tacoma TRD Sport 4x4 last summer. The directions aren't too bad if you have mechanical aptitude. It seemed that there could have been an easier mounting method. The nuts with wires welded on so you can snake them into place inside the box frame were definitely a pain in the a$$. You will need to have plenty of patience. A vehicle lift would also be an asset. It worked as well as any other Blue Ox baseplate we have had for other vehicles so no issues there.
Bought it at etrailer as I have with other trailer hitch related parts. Installed it myself, and it was a real job. I figure about 10 hours to get it right so I didn't have to worry if my 'toad' would pass my motorhome as I tooled down the road. Fit was perfect for my 2008 Honda CRV, but make sure you keep that oil cooler line up as high as possible or you will be redoing the fit to get the front cowling back on the car. Bought an angle grinder with cutoff wheels and that made the frame notching a lot easier. Note that if the removeable attachment pins are a tight fit into the base plate, they will loosen up with a good silicone lubricant and the wear of towing. I have towed with confidence for a year without a hitch (pun intended).
Do you have a question about this Base Plate?
Info for this part was:
At etrailer.com we provide the best information available about the products we sell. We take the quality of our information seriously so that you can get the right part the first time. Let us know if anything is missing or if you have any questions.
Steven A.
12/17/2020
After a year and 5,000 miles we are happy with the system. Only wish we could use it more. 2020 has been tough.