Roadmaster Direct-Connect Base Plate Kit - Removable Arms

Video Transcript for Roadmaster Direct-Connect Base Plate Kit Installation - 2016 Lincoln MKZ

Hi there, Lincoln owners. Today on your 2016 Lincoln MKZ, we're going to be installing Roadmaster's Direct-Connect Base Plate Kit.This is one of the major components needed to flat tow your MKZ behind your motorhome. In addition to your baseplate, you're also going to need your diode wiring, your supplemental braking system, your safety cables, and your tow bar to connect them together.This is what our base plate is going to look like when it's installed. The majority of the base plate is going to be completely hidden behind your front fascia, and it's going to be a Direct-Connect face plate, so your tow bars are going to connect directly to the arms here. What's nice about this compared to your crossbar connection, the crossbar connection is going to require a little bit more assembly with the crossbar attaching to the base plate after it's installed, and then if you want to remove it, there's a little bit more involved removing the crossbar.With the Direct-Connect style, if you want to get rid of these two to give you a little bit more stock appearance, you simply pull the pin, give it a twist, and they pop right out. To put them back in, you just push them in, twist them until they lock in place.

It's custom fit for your Lincoln MKZ, and it features a 6,000 pound towing capacity, which is well over the weight of your MKZ, so you don't have any worries that your base plate is going to be an issue. Next to each arm where your base plate will connect, you'll find your tow hook here, so you can connect your safety cables to it. And just to the right of that on your passenger side, you have your wiring connection mount right there, so you can mount your six-pole connector braking system and diode wiring.What I really like about this base plate is how hidden it is, being able to remove the Direct-Connect arms gives it a very stock clean look. It's hidden behind your bumper right here on the front, so none of your friends are even going to know that this has been modified to flat tow. You can take it on vacation with you.

You can take it to work, and it's going to look professional all the time.With your MKZ now able to flat tow behind your motorhome, you no longer need to bring a tow dolly along and have the extra large components hanging out at your campsite, everybody else seeing that you've got all that stuff laying around. Your campsite is going to be nice and clean looking with this. And if you need to run out and grab some more supplies, you can quickly hop into your MKZ and do it and not have to tote your motorhome along, which is much more of a hassle to find a parking spot and just to drive around in general.We'll begin our installation by removing the cover above our radiator. There's going to be eight plastic pushpins we're going to want to remove. We'll use a flat-bladed screwdriver or a trim panel tool to pop out the center, and then the entire thing will pop up after that.

We'll do that for all the remaining fasteners. We can then pull our panel off and set it aside. We'll now remove all the Torx bolts across the front of your fascia. You're going to have a total of five on each side. We're going to use a T25 Torx socket to remove them.We're now on our driver side wheel well.

We're going to remove the bolts that you see with a small hex head on them. We're going to use a 7mm socket. To get easier access to them, I recommend that you turn your steering wheel in, so that way you can get your tools in there. When you do the other side, you'll want to turn your wheel the other direction. There'll be a total of four on each side.Now, underneath the vehicle we're going to be removing all of the bolts that hold on our front splash shield and the undershield for our engine. Across the front, you're going to have several bolts we're going to remove with a 7mm socket. You'll have four on each side you're going to be removing, and then at the back of our shield, you're going to have three more bolts you're going to need to remove on each side.Across the middle of our shield, we're going to have four bolts we're going to remove with a 10mm socket. Now we can take our undershield down and set it aside. Then we'll remove our undershield. There's seven bolts on each side we're going to need to remove with a 10mm socket. Once you've removed all the bolts, you can set your shield aside. On each side, after removing your covers, if you look up the fender well, you'll two bolts that we're going to need to remove using an 8mm socket. These bolts are attaching your fascia, and we'll need to take them out so we can remove it.Now, on your passenger side, you're not going to be able to go up from the bottom due to the washer bottle that's there. So you're going to have to peel the fender liner back. You're going to feel up and your bolts are going to be located here. So you just got to feel them because you're not going to be able to see them, and you're going to use your 8mm socket to get in there and get them out. A smaller ratchet with an extension is typically your best option here.We're back at our headlights. We're going to need to remove two bolts that hold our headlight assemblies in as they're going to come out with our fascia when we take it off. We're going to remove the Torx bolt located here and the one located here. We'll use a T25 for the smaller one towards the center and a T30 for the one towards the rear of the vehicle. We're going to do that on each side.We're now ready to remove our fascia starting on one side. You'll want to pull it down. As you can see, there's some alignment pins there. You want to pull it down to get those free and then we can pull out away from the vehicle. Once you've got one side loose, you want to check for any electrical connectors and unplug those. So we're going to unplug our headlight assembly there. We're just going to see if there's anything else here. There's another one over here, and while it's still attached, you just kind of want to let this side hang out here and then go release the other side, unplugging electrical connectors on that side, and then we'll take the whole thing off.We've got both sides released and electrical connectors disconnected on both sides. We're now going to slowly pull away and we want to check towards the center as there may be more electrical connectors, depending on the options that you have on your MKZ. After we double check for all of our electrical connectors, we'll grab an extra set of hands that's going to help us set our fascia aside where it won't get damaged.With our bumper set aside, we can now access our lower radiator support. We're going to be removing this. When you do this, you want to be careful to lower it down slowly and gently as our radiator is just going to be hanging at that point. We're going to use a 13mm socket to remove the bolts. There are going to be two on each side.Next, we'll drill out holes in our bumper beam here. You want to go 2" back. Refer to your instructions. It'll give you a nice template there and the picture, show you where to drill it. So we've gone back and we're in the center of the beam. We've made our mark, and we're now going to drill it out. I'm going to start by making a pilot hole with a 1/4" drill bit, and then we're going to step it up to a 1/2". We're going to repeat that same process on the other side.You can kind of see here on the inside of our bumper beam there's a hole, and this is going to be directly across from the hole that we just drilled. So we're going to take our 1/2" drill bit, we're going to go through the hole we just drilled, and we're going to enlarge this hole on the inside of the frame as well. We'll do that on the other side as well. Below our bumper beam you'll find your frame sticking out here. There's a hole in the top and bottom of the frame. We're going to use the same 1/2" drill bit to enlarge those holes as well. For our all of your hardware, we're going to be using Red Loctite on the threads of all the bolts. If you need some Red Loctite, you can pick some up here at etrailer.com.We'll now take our brackets. You want to make sure you get the correct side. We've got our passenger side here. We're going to place it on our passenger side, lining up the holes in the bracket with the holes that we had drilled in our bumper beam and frame. We'll then take the longest bolt that comes in the kit, place a large plate washer on it. We're going to go through the hole in our bumper beam, come out the other side and go through the hole in our bracket.On the other side, we'll be placing a lock washer, followed by a nut. We'll take the medium-size bolts that come in the kit, place a flat washer on it. We're going to slide it up through the bottom of our bracket and then through the hole in the frame that we had enlarged. On top, we're going to follow that up with a flat washer, lock washer, and nut. We'll then repeat this on the other side.Now that each bracket is holding itself in place, we can get our rear hardware installed. If you look straight down the bracket, you'll see a hole in the back. That's going to line up with the hole in the frame that's preexisting. We're going to slide a medium-size bolt through there until it comes through the other side. On the other side, we're going to place a flat washer, followed by a lock washer, and then a nut. We'll do this to the other side too.Now, on each side we want to trim the louvers off here. We're just going to trim the sides off. So we're just going to cut straight down. We're using some tin snips to do this, and then we simply just want to cut it up, trim all that off. We're going to do the same thing on the other side. You may have a module here that you will need to cut around. You don't want to cut into that or cause any damage to it.We'll now take our cross brace. We want to position it between our two brackets that we just installed, lining up the holes on the side of our cross brace with the holes in our bracket. We'll then take our shortest bolts that come in the kit. We want to go through the outside towards the inside through our bracket and then our cross brace, and on the inside we're going to place a lock washer followed by a lock nut. We'll repeat the same process for the three remaining holes. We can now go back and tighten up all of our hardware using a 3/4" socket and wrench. An extension may be required to tighten down your back bolts. Then you can go back and torque all of your hardware to the specifications found in your instructions.We'll now need to trim our fascia in order for it to reinstall and fit around our bracket. Gone ahead and marked out here where we'll be cutting for the openings that we'll need for our bracket to poke through to be able to connect to our tow bar. We'll also need to trim these off along our absorption pad here. You can find a template for these in your instructions. We're going to be using a cutoff wheel to cut these out. We'll repeat the same thing on the other side. You can see a small portion here that I wasn't able to get with the cutoff wheel. It's okay to use a pair of snips or a razor knife to clean up the small bits that you may not be able to get.We'll now also cut off the strips here that we won't be needing. Now that we've got everything trimmed out, we need to relocate the wiring that runs along the bottom here. We want it to be above our base plate, so we're going to use our trim panel tool to pop out all the connectors where it's holding it on. You'll have four bolts that hold this piece on here. We're going to remove those using a 5.5 mm socket. I'm going to start by just removing the bottom ones nearest our wiring as you probably don't have to take the top ones out. That pops out enough to give us the opportunity to poke our wiring up behind it. That's all we're trying to do is get our wiring up out of the way. Once you've relocated your wiring, you can reinstall the bolts that you removed.Now that our fascia is all trimmed out, you can set it up, make sure that everything pokes through the way it's supposed to. If you need to, you can trim it out just a little bit more, and then to reinstall it, follow in the reverse in how we removed it. Now, if you're doing an entire flat-tow setup like we are, I recommend that you hold off on reinstalling your fascia until you've installed the rest of your components. It'll make it much easier to install your wiring and braking system if you leave your fascia off. That completes our installation of Roadmaster's Direct-Connect Base Plate Kit on your 2016 Lincoln MKZ.