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Custom designed to fit your Ford Taurus 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.
Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today, on our 2015 Ford Taurus, we're gonna be showing you how to install the Blue Ox base plate kit. But before we do that, let me check this out and make sure it's gonna be the right setup for you. Before we get too carried away talking about the base plate and what it can do and everything else, I figured it'd be useful just to kind of touch base and refresh ourselves on the main parts that we're gonna need to flat tow our vehicle down the road in the first place. And the first one is gonna be the base plate and this is going to provide us with a solid attachment point. That way, we can hook our tow bar up to it.
And the tow bar is gonna be the second component and that's gonna be the actual physical link that's connecting the front of our Ford to the back of our motor home. The third main component will be safety cables and these will connect to the front of our Ford and the back of our motor home's hitch. And that's just a safety device in case of an accidental disconnect, they're gonna keep everything paired together. The fourth main component will be tow bar wiring. And what that's gonna do is transfer the lighting functions from the back of our RV to the back of our Taurus, keeping you safe and legal.
And last but not least the fifth main part will be a supplemental breaking system. And what that's gonna do is apply the brakes in our car whenever we hit the brakes in our motor home, helping to bring us to a more predictable and complete stop. But with that out of the way, let's check this out. So in terms of appearance, I think it's probably the best looking one available. Everything's contained within the slower portion of the grill.
It has a matte black finish. So it almost matches the plastic perfectly. And compared to some of the other ones, they sit way out here, you have to do a lot more cutting and everything. So this one's a little less, or a little more inconspicuous, if you will. The safety chain tabs, I guess you could call 'em, I feel like they could shorten 'em up a little bit 'cause they do come out a little ways.
But not really a big deal, it makes 'em a lot easier to use. You know, they're in the open and easy to get to and feel like that's really important, actually, when it comes to flat tow stuff. You know, you don't want something that's complicated. You know, you want it to be easy to use, easy to set up that way. That way you can get going and not have any confusion. And because this one has removable arms it makes it really simple. So the way these work is what you would do when you're ready to hook up to your motor home, you come to your base plate and you pull out, they give you these caps. So cleans up the look of it a little bit and keeps stuff from getting in there and chewing everything up inside. But the way these are gonna work, you just slide them in and then to rotate 'em about a quarter turn and they'll lock into place. Same deal with this one over here. And now you're ready to hook your tow bar up to it. So you pull up behind your motor home and lock your tow bar into these. These are gonna work with a lot of Blue Ox tow bars, as well as other brands. A lot of times they'll have adapter ends on 'em and things like that. So one right off the top of my head I like, the Roadmaster Nighthawk. They actually have one that has Blue Ox ends on it, so it pairs right up to the base plate. So, you know, if that's something you're looking for, definitely check those out. Something I do wanna mention, they say the base plate will work with all the different types of models. Whether you have a base model, one, the SHO or S-H-O model, the ones that have adaptive cruise control and all that, the base plate is supposed to work. So you should be covered there. And at the end of the day, you know, you really can't go wrong with it. Blue Ox makes good parts. I feel like it'll track well, and last a long time. In terms of installation, it's a little more on the difficult side. I've done base plates that are harder, tensile, I've done some that are easier. But a word of advice, if I had to give one, it would be make sure you have some sharp drill bits, 'cause there's just quite a bit of drilling into the frame area. And so it's, you know, high quality steel and pretty tough. So get some sharp bits. I think the majority of 'em I used 3/8 in size. So if you're covered there, it should really help speed things up. But still set aside probably the better part of a day to get this done. If you'd like to follow along and see how it's done, feel free to. We'll go ahead and put it on together now. To begin our installation, we're gonna be here at the front of our Taurus and we need to remove our front fascia. So first things first, pop the hood. We're gonna have this radiator cover here. So whatever I do to one side of our vehicle, we're gonna do to the other side because it'll be set up the same way. So to get this off, we're gonna have four Phillips head screws along the front edge. Pull these out. And then we can switch out to a 10 millimeter socket. And we'll have two bolts. And we'll grab a flat head screwdriver. And there's a push pin right here. So you can just pry underneath the head of it and work the base out. I already removed the fasteners on this side so we should be able to get this removed. So it was attached to this clip here. It's going through this little panel or this little cut out there. So all I did, I just reached under there and kind of lifted up on it, was to pop this off and now we can set it to the side. Now we can move to our wheel well liner and along the edge we're gonna have three 5 1/2 millimeter screws we need to pull out. It does help turn your wheel in one way or the other, gives you some more space. But go ahead, grab our socket and get these out. And once these are out, and while we're right here on this area, we're gonna have another fastener we need to pull out as well. So right there in the corner, here's the fastener we need to take out. And that's a plastic one. It's a Phillip's head. You're gonna take your screwdriver and just lightly apply some pressure. and back it out. A lot of times these will get hung up and just spin, which it looks like that's our case right now. It's coming out, it looks like. If it does just spin, you can always take a flat head screwdriver and just kind of help pry it down. Once you get to a decent point there, the center of it's not wanting to come out, take a pair of needle nose pliers and just kind of pulled out on it. That was in the middle, this plastic screw. Once that is out, then you can take the base out and just pry down on it and then get it removed. Now underneath the front of our car, if you look along this edge, we're gonna have five more of these plastic fasteners. These are the same style ones that we're in our wheel well. They're kind of tricky to get out sometimes. But I'll just use that same method to get all these removed here. So ever so slightly put a little upper pressure on it while you're backing these out. Now if you look just in front of your front tire, in the corner of your wheel well liner, You're gonna have an eight millimeter head screw that we can pull out. Now with an extra set of hands, we can actually get our front fascia removed. I did put some tape here along the seams. That way we don't scratch it, 'cause we may have to take a small screw driver and kind of pry in there, which we didn't need to. 'Cause there will be little clips sometimes in there that you might have to kind of mess with to get 'em undone. But we can just work our way around, pop these off. And looks like our fog lights are gonna have an electrical connection. You just push down on the tabs to remove 'em. And once we have them disconnected, we can set our fascia off to the side. Over here on the passenger side now, we can get our washer fluid reservoir removed. And so I'm gonna kind of take off some of the wires connected to it. We can just pry these off. And we're gonna unplug the connectors. So push down on the center of the tab and pull them out. Move that out of the way. And now I'm gonna disconnect our hose here. And what I'm gonna do, ours is, of course, completely full, really don't wanna make a huge mess. So what I came up with, I just had a piece of line laying around. I plugged it. When I pull this off, I'm gonna put this on. Hopefully that'll plug it up. And then I'm just gonna take a bolt, plug it in that line. So stuff don't go everywhere. So with this, I'm just gonna kind of carefully start to work this rubber line off of the pump. Slip that on Pop that in. Now we can get our reservoir off. So we're gonna have two 11 millimeter nuts. One right here. And then another one just like it right there. And in this corner, I believe that's an eight millimeter. And that should be all of 'em. We'll see, we should be able to kind of pull this out and work it down and out from our engine compartment. And if you look at the side of our air dam here at the bottom, we have a piece of plastic that runs back and connects to this piece. There's a push pin fastener there. So we're gonna pull that out like that. And then if we follow it up on our front bumper beam, we're gonna have two more fasteners. That's an eight millimeter. And this one is connected to a bracket that holds up this ambient air temp sensor. So I think once that is off, we can kind of lift up on this and just kind of tuck it off to the side for now. On top of our air fan assembly here, we have a wire and that has a connector on it. We need to separate it. So push down on the middle. And then I'm going to pry off all the keepers here. It's just those two. And then you kinda squeeze on these, you can pull out And behind here, kind of behind the bumper beam, there's going to be a bracket that kinda wraps around the bumper beam. And we need to get that off so we're able to remove our whole assembly here. The way to get this off, if you look, we have some tabs that kind of protrude through the bracket. One up top, two just like it towards the bottom. These are kind of tricky sometimes. We need to squeeze them in and while we're squeezing it in kinda work that bracket off. And what I think I might do, we should be able to, actually, without taking those bottom ones off, we can probably just carefully, you know, pull out on this and slide the whole assembly down. And with it removed we can set it to the side. So what I went ahead and done was get our base plate into position and you definitely need an extra set of hands with this, 'cause it's really heavy. And a couple of clamps like this. But it slides up into place like how I have it here. And there's a raised portion in the side of our frame rail. This U cut out kind of goes up and around it. And hold it in place and then clamp it down. And then you wanna make sure it's level and everything. So you can clamp, you know, keep tightening until it stops, you know, it hits the bottom of the frame. And then you wanna make sure that this distance is the same on each side as well. So I just measured from the flange, the back of our bumper beam, to this corner here. Got it the same on both sides. And then just to be on the safe side, I took a marker and just kind of traced it in case it gets bumped out of position or anything, at least we have a reference. But with that said, you know, now we can start to drill out some of the holes. So there will be a couple on the bottom and then two on the sides. We're gonna start with one of them on the bottom. So with these, I usually like to start with this one back here, but my clamp's in the way. So if you can position your clamp, I'm not gonna undo it 'cause I don't wanna have to go through it again, but if you can start, with this one. It's not a big deal though. We can always use this one here. So take the drill bit, listen to the instructions and that's the proper size. It just fits right up through this opening. And we're gonna drill a hole right into the bottom of our frame. The hardware that we're gonna use to secure the base plate, what you're gonna do is take a handle nut and this handle nut is gonna go through this opening in here. And so it's gonna be tricky to see on camera, but when you look in here, you can see where the hole is that we drilled. And so you want this to end up lining up with it. And I do suggest taking the hardware, so for the bottom bolts, you're gonna use these here and put on a split lock washer. Before you get it started or anything, I do suggest is kind of running the bolt through the handle nut, because sometimes there can be some slop in there that'll make this difficult to start. So it just makes it easier. And you're also gonna take red Loctite and put that on the threads of all the hardware that we're gonna use to secure the base plate. So I'm gonna take this, put in position here and take our bolt, run it up through, and then we can get this started hand tight. So now you wanna grab a 9/16 socket and just snug these down a little bit by hand. You don't want to hit too carried away cranking down on 'em and torquing 'em just yet. We just want to kind of take that slack out and slug it down. I'm gonna move up now to the side of our frame and I'm going to drill out this hole here. And what I'll do once that's drilled, we'll get our bolts in and then we should be able to get rid of our clamps and continue on with this one and the other one on the bottom. For the bolts that go here in the side, same deal with the handle nut bend it the way you need to, where it lines up. And then you're just gonna use a split lock washer and one of the shorter bolts. And don't forget your Loctite. So we'll go ahead and get this going here. So I went ahead and did the same thing over on the other side, getting the two bolts started and snug down. So I snugged this one down too. And that'll be enough to keep our base plate, you know, in place. And at this point, I'll get our clamp out of the way. And then I'll just continue to drill this hole, the one on the bottom and use that same hardware combination and technique to get those bolts in and snug as well. So once you have those four bolts in and snug like we talked about, we're gonna have one more that we need to drill right here at the front edge of our base plate. And so I'm gonna drill up through it, through our bumper beam where it's gonna come out in the middle of it. And once I get that done, the hardware that we're gonna use is a little bit different. So I'll get this drilled out and then show you what I'm gonna use here. So I got that whole drilled out. And then you're gonna take six flat washers and I like to tape 'em together, it just makes it a lot easier to work with. And you're gonna use those to kind of fill that gap there between the base plate and the bottom of our bumper beam. And then you're gonna take the medium length bolt, Loctite split lock washer on it. And that will run up through and then just finish it off with a handle nut. With all of our hardware in place and snug, we wanna make sure to come back with a torque wrench and tighten it all down to the amount specified in the instructions. If you don't have a torque wrench, you can always go into your etrailer or a lot of times that are local auto parts store, they'll have one they're available to rent. And once everything's torqued, you can get rid of these handles here. So a lot of times, you can just work it back and forth and snap it off. Or if that one's giving you trouble, you can always come back and with a pair of snips or something and cut the rest of 'em off. So what we can do now is move back to our washer fluid reservoir. And there's a tab on it, this one here, that we're gonna trim. It looks like it'll interfere with their base plate. So I marked it out and just being thin plastic, I'm gonna use a pair of snips to cut that portion off. Probably advise against power tools in this situation 'cause if you slip, you'll probably hit the actual reservoir and probably leak. So get the snips and just get that material removed. We can put our washer fluid reservoir back on. First, you wanna take seven of the smaller washers, flat washers. And again, I taped these together. We'll pop them over that stud This will simply just get reinstalled, essentially, the opposite way that we removed it, the exception of the bolt there. So we'll put our nuts back on, tighten them down and then we can just plug all of our connectors and everything else back in. So I went ahead, got this all plugged back in and everything just like we talked about. And then on each side of your base plate, they give you a safety cable. And so I installed those, turned out pretty good actually. I just use this hole here in our sub frame, wrapped it around twice and then you can provide a D-link to wrap it around our base plate there. And then I like to just take zip ties and kind of zip tie everything uptight, that way, this isn't clanking around or rattling or anything along those lines. Now we can move to our air shutter system. And so this is the bottom, this is the top. On the bottom, you need to remove three of the louvers, that way, it'll clear the base plate. And so if you take a screwdriver, and come into the corners here, you can start to kind of pry this piece off just like that. And to get these out, you just pry up on the middle of 'em. And then we should be able to kind of bend them in. Yeah, just bend them in a little bit. And that will allow us to slide 'em out. So I'm gonna do the same thing here for two more to get these out of the way. And if you want, if you think you ever might, you know, remove the base plate for any reason, if you sell the car or anything, you can always hold on to this type of stuff too and reinstall it. It's entirely up to you though. And now, with it like this, what we can do, these pieces, we need to completely remove two. So I'm just gonna pry them off as well. Take the one off over here on the other side. And once I get that one off, we should be able to get this reinstalled. We'll go ahead and slide this back in place. Come back around and then we'll just resecure it now the opposite way that we removed it. So now we can move to the back side of our front fascia. And on each side, we're gonna have some material that we need to remove. There's a diagram and instructions. They say to cut to about here. In my experience, they usually undershoot it. So I'm just gonna go a little bit further. It's not supporting anything or really doing anything, so it's not gonna hurt to remove a little extra, that way we don't have to fight it. So I marked that out. I'm just gonna use a cutoff wheel to get all that removed. Now, what we're gonna do is take our fascia and not put it completely on, but kind of test fit it, if you will. And the reason being, you want to kinda hold it in place and look down here and see where we need to cut. So we're in pretty good shape, honestly. What I'll probably do is pull this off and just kind of cut out some slots here. That way, our base plate and everything will be able to come through and we'll be able to use it. So you got a couple of choices. You can take it off and cut it. Honestly, after looking at it, might as well just cut it while it's halfway out in the car. So just gonna go where I think we need to remove that material, take some snips and trim it out. So once I got everything how I wanted it, in terms of trimming, I just cut them little spots out like we talked about earlier. I simply just resecured the fascia the opposite way that we removed it. So nothing different there. I did forget to mention, if you're gonna be installing other flat towing components like the braking system, or wiring, or anything along those lines, usually, what I like to recommend is leave the fascia off, get all that stuff in place. It's just a lot easier to work whenever you have all the extra space. And then once those parts are on, obviously, come back and do this. But you know, definitely makes it a little bit easier. But other than that, that will finish up our look at and our installation of the Blue Ox base plate kit on our 2015 Ford Taurus..
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (3074 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.This took about 8 hours for me over two days, I am 71 and bad joints. You might as well go ahead and buy a long drill bit of the proper size to drill the bottom holes. i worried with trying to drill them with a regular one for about an hour. you should also be prepared to replace the two top plastic holders on the top of the fender right and left as mine were no good after getting them out, and a screw driver wont work as they were in so tight that the plastic would not hold up to the twisting. Also there are three 5.5 screws on each finder instead on one at the bottom and plastic quick rivets in the other two spots on each finder. The safety eyelets shown on the 2016 Taurus that was in the film are facing to the rear of the car the ones on this hitch as you can see are facing the front, so it made them hang to low and they made a bulge in the lower plastic pan. I re routed them and they work well. I do wonder how (God forbid) if the car was to come loose how would the arms hold up being that there will now be a twist in the hook up will that work. Make sure you have the plug for the washer tank or you will have to drain it as i did, not much problem though. If you do this by yourself as i had to do a piece of cord sufficient to hold up the hitch so you can get the clamps on is a must. the blocks under the tire are about 1 1/2 inch this is what it takes for the car to be high enough to work.
After a year it still works great, though its been getting really rusty
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.
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 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.
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.
It took all afternoon to install it by myself, but the online video was perfect and the product fit without an issue. Our second vehicle to use their tow plate and we have been very happy each time!Great product and dealer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I had the base plate installed by the Chevy dealer we purchased the car from. They had to make a modification to the car, but all seams to be well and have towed it several thousand miles since.
One thing, PLEASE, OH PLEASE remove my name from your email list. Not a day goes by without an email from e-trailer that I could care less about. I have tried unsubscribeing to no avail. Your service is great and your people are very knowledgeable, thank you for great service.
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).
It turned out fine but my opinion is that you should have some average or above mechanical skills to install this yourself. As you can see, the base plate protrusions are hardly noticeable at a distance with the tow pins removed. One thing worth mentioning is I had to mount it more rearward on the frame because the front valance would not mount back on correctly. Overall, good base plate.
The item I received must have been a returned item. The box label was proof it was shipped to someone else before. Reason I'm not happy is because the bag of screws was open and most of it slipped out of the holes of the damaged box that was opened before and re-taped. The end of the crossbar was bent and not much packing inside. I needed this for our trip, so I didn't return it and had to fix and find screws to make it all work.
This baseplate fit perfectly and was a pretty easy instal after removing the bumper wrap on my wrx. Car pulls steady and straight!!
The Bx2692 is the better tow bar solution because it is higher up to hopefully keep your tow bar flat. I modified a Base bumper to install this because it is only available for the "Modular" and "Capable" bumpers. The base bumper option from bluox is for lower tow hook delete option. Took about 3hrs with the help of a grinder jigsaw and multi tool.
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Jenny N.
9/27/2023
We recommend keeping a can of Rustoleum on hand to touch the base plate and help to protect it.