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To see if this custom-fit item will work for you please tell us what vehicle you'll use it with.
Roadmaster's crossbar-style brackets are virtually invisible, easy to mount and simple to remove. Brackets install on your vehicle's frame to provide attachment points for your tow bar.
Features:
The drawbars, or front arms, on the crossbar-style series base plate kit are supremely easy to mount and remove. Just insert them into the brackets and twist to lock them in place. To remove, simply twist the arms back and pull them out. Once the drawbars have been removed, the remaining brackets are virtually invisible. On most automobiles, the brackets are mounted within the grille, where they remain not only unseen, but protected from scrapes and scuffs, as well.
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Rob: Hey, everybody. Rob here at etrailer.com. And today we're going to be taking a look at the Roadmaster Crossbar-Style Base Plate on our 2017 Toyota Corolla iM. Now here's what our base plate is going to look like once we have it installed. But one of my favorite things about it is, we don't necessarily want to drive around with these arms sticking out because it is an additional thing adding to the look of our car. But they're going to have a pull ring on it, and if we pull it, we can rotate the arm, and we can actually remove it and it has a much cleaner look whenever we're not towing it.
Putting the arms back in is going to be just as easy. We're going to make sure that pull rings on the bottom. We'll push our arm in, push it till it bottoms out. We'll rotate it and you hear that audible click. And you can see that arm's not going to go anywhere.Now the main purpose of a base plate is to give you that solid connection point, so you can take your motorhome and tow bar and hook it up to it.
Because let's face it, when we hit the road in our motorhome, we get to our campsite or wherever we're going, it's a lot easier to drive a smaller car around even if it's just to run a few errands. So it's a really nice thing to be able to take your Corolla with you rather than having to drive your motorhome everywhere. Now the reason why this is called a crossbar-style base plate, is because our arms here are actually going to have an additional piece that'll bolt on and have a quick disconnect bar that we can pull off and then pull the arms out so we can make it really fast and easy to hook up.But just keep in mind that crossbar is going to be sold separately or it'll come with the tow bar that you buy if you get a Roadmaster tow bar. Now Roadmaster does include a bracket as well as two posts to mount the bracket up for, so we can add our wiring up so we can be safe and legal when we're going down the road. Just keep in mind the actual wiring itself is not going to come with it, but it is nice that they went ahead and thought about it and gave you a really nice, easy spot to mount everything.
Now if you're towing anything, including a car, you're going to need either safety chains or safety cables. Now Roadmaster put these attachment points just to the inside of our base plate attachment point. It's going to be really easy to get to, but also kind of blend in so they're not sticking out too far.And some of the cables may have some really large hooks like this. Still have plenty of room to get them hooked on or take them off. And some of the other cables you may find have smaller hooks and we still have plenty of room to get those hooked on and take them off.
Now our Roadmaster baseplate is going to be compatible with all Roadmaster tow bars that would use a quick disconnect style bar. It is also going to be compatible with some other manufacturers tow bars with an adapter, but that adapter is going to be sold separately and you can find it here at etrailer.com. Now as far as the installation goes, it's going to be pretty straightforward. We are going to be required to remove the fascia so we can get behind here and take a few components off, but it's definitely something you can do in your driveway or garage, there's no special tools needed.And really the only kind of cutting we're going to have to do is on the lower section of the grill, so we can have our component come out. We're not going to have to any of the painted section or anything behind there, and there's no drilling required. In fact, let's go ahead and walk through the installation together and give you little tips and tricks how to make it a little bit easier. To begin our installation, we want to pop our hood and right at our grill area here, on the corners we're going to have a push pin on each side, we want to pull those out. You just want to grab yourself a flathead screwdriver or a trim panel tool. Now each push pin is going to have little notches around the edge, want to get your flat blade underneath that notch so we can pull the center up. You're going to pry the center of the push pin up first. That's going to release a lot of the tension of the push pin.Then you want to come underneath the base and pull the rest of it out. You want to do the same thing on the other corner of our grill. Now directly behind the emblem on our grill or right next to the hood release, we're going to have a 10 mm bolt that we need to pull up. Grab a 10 mm socket. Loosen it up. And we'll pull it out. Now if we come to our front wheel well, we're going to come to the very front section. We're going to be paying attention to this push pin here, we're also going to have another fastener about halfway down. Now this one down here, you'll notice there's a small little notch that's actually in the fastener. We're going to grab a flat blade screwdriver, and you're going to want to rotate that till it's horizontal like that. So a full 90 degrees to where that line's going left and right. And then we can remove the center of it.Let's get a flat blade screwdriver, pop it out, pull the pin out. And we want to grab the fascia flange. I'm just going to slide this clip back. And you'll notice it's going to be attached to the wheel well liner, that's all right, but I'm going to go ahead and pull it off just so I don't have to worry about it interfering with anything else. Just kind of want to pull it, release it off wheel well liner and we can slide it off. Now this push pin is going to work the same way as the ones under the hood did. It's just very, very small. A very, very small notch there. We get our flat blade screwdriver in there, may be a little difficult, you just kind of want to work at it a little bit, you don't want to break the push pin. We want to get that center section loose. Again, this will release that tension on the pin. And typically, you can get a little bit of it loose. You can grab it with your fingers, kind of wiggle it back and forth.And then again, we want to get underneath or if we can get it to come out with our fingers, you want to pull the rest of the base out as well. Now we're going to do the same thing on the other side. At this point, we want to move underneath the front of our Toyota and we're going to have a few fasteners on the bottom. On each side, we're going to have six bolts we're going to have to remove. There'd be one towards the front of our fascia, one pretty close to it, another one here moving towards the center, one on either side, one right below our front fascia here, and then another one right in the middle. And again, they're going to be in the same location, so there's going to be a total of 12 of them. You want to get a 10 mm socket and pull all of those out. Now in each corner at the very front of our front tire, we're going to have two bolts at the back of the fascia. We need to pull those out. So we'll use that same 10 mm socket.Then you want to go to the other side and pull the other out too. Now at this point, I definitely recommend getting an extra set of hands because we're going to be pulling the fascia off. It's not that it's heavy, but it's rather large and we don't want to cause any damage or any scratches. But we'll start at the corner of our face. You want to reach in and you're going to pull that flange outward and away. And we're going to start working our way towards the center, releasing these clips. And once we get to about this area, we can actually grab the front on the bottom, kind of pivot it outward, and we can release everything from it. You just want to make sure you have a firm grip. Keep in mind though, if you have fog lights, you want to disconnect those before you get too far away from the vehicle. We're going to go ahead and set this aside where it's not going to get damaged.A lower splash shield may just kind of be sitting there. There's not anything holding it on. So we're going to go ahead and pull it out and get it out of the way. With our fascia removed, we're going to get ready to take our headlights out. Now we're going to have three fasteners holding it in place. We'll have one on the side here. We'll have one at the corner of where our hood is. And then one right about halfway in between the middle of our headlight. We're going to grab a 10 mm socket and we're going to pull all three of those bolts out.Now before we can pull the headlight out, we have to come to that one that's going to be really close to the edge of the hood here. Because this tab right here is actually pressed on to the little nut that's on there. So we're going to come underneath it and just lift up. And you'll see that it's going to release and kind of move a little bit. Just want to make sure you have a firm grip of your headlight and you want to pull straight outward because there are some pins in there that are holding them in place. Now you want to keep in mind you don't want to pull too far away because we still do have electrical components that are hooked up. And once we have it released, we're going to disconnect all the electrical cables that are going to our headlights.Now there's going to be several wires and connectors. So we'll just start working our way down. We are going to have a push pin that has our wire connected. So if you can, you can pull it off with your hand. If not, get a flat blade screwdriver or trim panel tool and pop that out so the wiring can become loose. Try to get underneath it and just pop the clip out. And we're going to work our way over to our connector. There's going to be a tab on there. Squeeze the tab. It should release the tension and be able to pull the connector out. And do the same thing for the other one over here.Now that we have all of our wires disconnected, we're going to set our headlight aside where it won't get damaged. And then we're going to repeat the process for our other headlight. Now if we look across the top of our bumper structure here, we're going to have several fasteners holding a wire loom in place. We need to pull those out and get these clips off the bumper. Grab a flat blade screwdriver, trim panel tool, whatever you have available, and you want to come underneath all these clips. We're going to pry up on them until we can get them out of the bumper. And start working our way down until we can release them all.And for now we'll just push it back out of the way. Now you may also have another pushpin fastener holding this wire loom in on the driver's side right at the back of the bumper structure. We need to make sure that everything is loose off of our bumper structure because we're going to be removing it. So again, we'll just come back with our trim panel tool and pull all these clips out. Just want to verify, double check on each side behind, top, and bottom that there's nothing else attached to your bumper. Now on each side of our bumper structure, we're going to have two bolts on top and two bolts on the bottom. We going to remove all eight of these. You want to grab a 14 mm socket and pull all of them out. Now I suggest leaving at least one in on the side you start on, that way the bumper won't fall when you pull all the bolts out.So this last one I'm going to loosen up, but then just make sure it leaves a couple threads in there, move to the other side, pull those out, and we don't have to worry about it falling. At this point you want to make sure you have a firm grip on your bumper structure. We can remove that last bolt. And there is actually a couple of tabs on top, they're almost like hooks. So your bumper structure won't fall. But we need to lift up slightly and we'll be able to pull it away from the car and we can set it aside. Now I do want to mention that our bumper structure is not going to get re-installed. Our base plate is going to be replacing it, but you do want to hold onto this in case you ever remove your base plate. Now on the side of our radiator right here, we're going to have these plastic air dams. And we need a trim out a section so that our main receiver brace can fit in place.I already went in and marked out the area that needs to be trimmed. Basically, we're just going to follow this line here, go across until we can come to about the section where it starts to thin out and go vertical. And whenever you're cutting this, you can use just about whatever you have available because it is just plastic. I'm going to be using a pair of tin snips. I'm just going to go through and cut along that line. And I always suggest trimming a little bit less than you need to because we can always go back and take a little bit off if we need to remove some more, and we can't put any material back if we cut too much. Now we're going to need to trim the passenger side as well, but we have this line running right here for AC. You do not want to cut that line. You don't really even want to get too close to it. So I'm going to kind of move it out of the way so I can keep it as far as way as possible.And I am going to be using a rotary tool so I can cut my plastic a little bit quicker and not have to worry as much about causing any damage to that line. Now it's a good idea to get an extra set of hands. We're going to grab our main receiver brace, I'll line it up. The four holes for the four holes that we took our bumper out of. And you want to make sure you held onto those bolts when we removed our bumper, because we're going to put them right back in to hold the brace in place. Now I'm just going to get one on each side loosely in place. So our hitch can support itself and then we can start putting in the rest of our bolts. Now before I put all the rest of my bolts in, I'm going to put some Loctite on there. They're going to tell you to do that in the instructions.We're going to put them on all the bolts that we take out and replace. And again, I'm just going to put it in there hand tight for now. And once I have enough bolts in place, I'll remove the first one and put some Loctite on that as well. But we're going to put Loctite on all four bolts on each side and then we can snug them up. But now that all the bolts are in place, I'm going to come back to that same 14 mm socket and snug them up. Now right underneath our base plate, if we come to the very bottom, we're going to have two bolts that are holding our subframe in place. We need to remove these, but you want to keep in mind you only want to do one side at a time. You want to leave the other side bolts alone until these are back in place. So we'll grab a 17 mm socket and we're going to pull both those bolts out of the driver's side.Now this is where we want to grab our subframe brace or the connecting piece. There's going to be two holes that kind of have these pre-welded in washers, you want those to face up and you want this flat section that has a hole in it to be going towards the side of your base plate. So I'm going to kind of sneak this in, making sure it goes over this tab right here. And you'll notice that once we have it in place, that whole will line up our base plate. And if you look underneath those two holes are going to lineup where we removed our sub-frame bolts. In your kit they're going to give you new bolts, you can put some Loctite on there. You also want to make sure you put that split lock washer in place. And then instead of putting the factory bolts back in, we're going to replace them with our new bolts.So for right now, we just want to make sure that it's inline and we get it in the correct position. So I'm going to get this loosely started by hand and get the other one in and then we can snug them up. Now where our bracket lines up with our main receiver, those two holes lineup, want to grab the half inch bolt out of our kit. Again, just a little bit of red Loctite on each one of our bolts. We're going to pass this through the bracket, through the main receiver brace, and on the other side we want to follow up with a split lock washer and then secure it down with a hex nut. Now it's a little bit tight in here, but we can actually just move the plastic out of the way so we can get our washer and bolt started. And before we move to the other side and repeat this process, we want to make sure we tighten up those subframe bolts and all the other bolts and make sure they're nice and snug.Now our new bolts are going to be a different size than the one that we originally removed, you're going to want to grab a 19 mm socket and tighten those up. And now these subframe bolts are tight. We're going to put the other bracket in on the other side using the same combination of hardware. At this point, you want to make sure you come back, and we're going to torque all of our hardware down to the specified amount in the instructions. You just want to pay attention to the size of the bolts on the chart in your instructions, because they are going to have different values for your 12 mm bolts, the bolts holding your main receiver brace in place, as well as the half inch bolts. Now whenever you're tightening up the half inch bolts from your subframe brace here, you want to use a wrench to hold the nut on the inside. And it's going to be a three quarter inch wrench and socket to tighten everything up.And go back and repeat that for any remaining hardware that we have. At this point we'll be able to put our fascia back on. But before we do, we do have to do some trimming so we can get the arms in place and all of our components can come out of the lower grill area. However, we have a lot more components that we're going to be installing for our flat tow setup. And I suggest doing it now when your fascia's off because routing any kind of wires, airline, anything you're doing is going to be a lot easier without having to fight the grill and the fascia. It's a lot easier because everything's open. So we're going to do that now. And once we're done with that, then we'll trim fascia and show you how to get everything back in place. So I'm going to go ahead and plug my connectors back in for my headlights. When you hear that click, make sure it locks into place. A quick tug.We're going to line everything up. And again, you kind of want to get that spot where we had to pry up on it. And kind of want to push down on there to make sure everything's sitting where it needs to. Then we just take our screws and we can start putting everything back in place. And if you noticed, we're going to have a couple of different style screws. That yellow recess nut, you should put the course threads in there because that's just going to bite into it since it's not a metal threaded piece. The other machine type screws are going to be going into the top and the side.And we are going to have to trim the lower section of our grills inaudible 00:18:57 the arms, the safety chain connection points, as well as our electrical bracket could come out. Now your instructions are going to have a diagram to help you cut it, but I found the easiest way to do it is if you hold your fascia up to as close as possible to where it's going to be. You can make a few marks. And again, cut as little as you can, dry fit it again, and if you need to trim some more, it's easier to take some off. So we're going to go ahead and cut a little bit, dry fit it, and make any kind of adjustments necessary. So you can see where we had to trim here. We had our fascia loosely in place, now whenever you do put it back you at least want to have one fastener on each side so it doesn't fall until you get it fully clipped in. But I'm going to come back now and I'm going to smooth out these edges and just kind of clean up my cuts.Now that our fascia's back on, it's just going to be as simple as reversing the process of taking it off, replacing all the fasteners and that skid plate underneath. And once you have all your fasteners back in place, that'll finish up your installation and your look at the Roadmaster Crossbar-Style Base Plate on our 2017 Toyota Corolla iM..
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (881 Customer Reviews)
Roadmaster's crossbar-style brackets are virtually invisible, easy to mount and simple to remove. Brackets install on your vehicle's frame to provide attachment points for your tow bar.If you are thinking of towing a car this is the company to see. Just installed a baseplate and tow bar to my Toyota. Took just 2 hours. With the video and instructions, no problems, very easy. Customer support excellent, very helpful. If you don’t think that you can do this install yourself, think again. This is a 5 star product. Thank You
This was a straightforward install. The instructions were easy to understand and follow. All the necessary parts and hardware were included. It is pretty well hidden once installed. I highly recommend this base plate and etrailer.
great fit. a slight cut needed to be made in the bumper bracket to facilitate the round tube to fit through the bracket. but, other than that, it was an easy install took about 2 hours if you include the coffee brakes. this part is highly recommended. Fast shipping. the beast human service. thank you.
Had Base Plate installed today, shop gave me 2.5 hr labor time. I returned just under 2hrs and they were backing my car out the shop. They parked it facing me. I told the Mechanic "That was quick" He said that's because it wouldn't fit. I was disappointed and asked what do I owe you for your labor> He laughed out loud and said it on there, but hard to see. I was so surprised and pleased you have to just about get down on your knees and bend down to see it. took me about 8 min to install everything and connect it to the Tow vehicle. I'm very pleased with it.
Working great on my Fiat 500l with the automatic euro transmission. Towed over 10000 miles and was easily installed using etrailer video instructions. Yes you can tow a Fiat 500 with the automatic euro transmission. The firmware was flashed on a recall and revised in the manual. Most dealers don’t even bother checking for the latest version.
So far has performed very well. Was easy to install and hookup is pretty quick and easy. You install instructions were very thorough. Practically invisible when not in use. Tried to attach two pics, but would only take one.
Works perfect and very hidden. Cannot even tell it is on my Honda HRV. Installation was time consuming since this was my first on a Honda. Your video did make things go smooth. I would buy this item again.
Ordered Product on Saturday afternoon, delivered on Wednesday, Installed on Friday. My 23 Wrangler Sahara 4Xe did take the spacer and washer on each side of the frame and was no problem getting them to fit. The lower passenger outside nut that holds on the bumper will not tighten down all the way, the flange of the factory nut gets caught in a slot in the base plate on that side. Will look into a standard nut to see if that will work - it is tight against the slot and holding.
Super-cool. It's been a year. I installed it myself and it was way less of a task than I expected. The fitment of this was incredibly spot on (no "tweaking" or drilling). Performance wise . . . it does what you expect. You insert the removable "arms", clip in onto your tow bar, and when you get to your destination the vehicle is still attached to your tow bar. Quality product.
I’m always extremely satisfied with Roadmaster products. I had just bought a new truck and planned on towing it so I needed everything to get it ready to tow. This review also applies to to the other items I purchased.
Good fit, works well. Very happy with the base plate after 1st year of use.
etrailer staff was very helpful with my questions, making certain I got the base plate that was right and advice with minor problems I had with installation.
I installed this kit on my 2015 Honda Fit. The instructions are very good, however, there are a couple of "snags" to watch out for. You might have to enlarge the holes on the blind hole part of the bumper installation in order to get all of the mounting bolts to align. The other recommendation I have is NOT to use the Loctite "red" thread compound on the blind hole bolts where you cannot get a wrench on the inside. The Loctite will dry too fast and cause issues tightening the bolts on those areas. They have lock washers anyways and you can use the Loctite on the bolts you can get a wrench on the backing nut mounts. I have been towing for months now and I am very happy with it, especially the crossbar style. You will have to purchase the crossbar separately. It's more weight and a little clunky compared to the direct attachment but it allows you to disconnect in some tough situations by pulling the crossbar off while one arm of the tow hitch is still attached. I use an Falcon All Terrain tow bar so I can release the tow arms in uneven conditions. And I have encountered all types of uneven ground, it really makes disconnect of the TOAD very easy.
The Jeep project went very well everything fit great and worked well. I really love Roadmaster products and quality and your company is the best place to purchase them. I sold the Jeep and replaced it with a new 2019 Chevy Equinox 2.0 L AWD and just purchased and installed the following items from you and installed them, RM-156-25 & RM-156-75 Battery Charge Line Kit, RM-146-7 Flex Coil Kit, RM-523193-4 EZ4 Plate Kit, RM-88333 Custom Seat Adapter, RM-751489 Stop Light Switch Kit and a RM-98160 Second Vehicle Brake Kit w/brakeaway. All these parts were in stock and arrived quickly and normal with you people, I really enjoy the o-line vidios as I do all my own installs. Thank you so much for your great service.
I will attach pictures of my install, you will see how I was able to fab a bracket and attach it to the existing mount on the base plate to mount the brakeaway switch and the air connection for the brake system.
I also fabricated a tail light bar as I didn't want to use mag-lights or splice into the factory lights and bulbs installed into the lights would not work as the factory brake lights will come on when the brake system is applyed and the turn siginals would not be visable.
Thanks for all you do, I would and do recommend you people to everyone who needs your products. Rob
Great product for my 2014 Wrangler. Good materials, solid attachment to vehicle, and looks good. The e trailer installation video was great for assisting installation. Made the install much quicker and easier. The most difficult procedure for me was disconnecting the wiring harness on the back of the bumper. An old tack puller (or tool of similar design) would have been great for leveraging the pins out of their holes. Cutting the air dam was a slow process to ensure I didn't cut too much. A paper template to mark where to cut the air dam would make this process much simpler. Again, I can't emphasize enough how great the installation video was for making the steps easier.
etrailer service was great. Received my Roadmaster base plate in 3 days. The directions from Roadmaster were fair, but etrailer's video was excellent. I had trouble mounting my base plate as the space between the two baseplate ends were too tight. I needed to use a floor jack and bottle jack to get it on. Once it was in position everything went together fine. I trimmed the Jeep' air dam differently keeping the ends that Roadmaster wants you to cut off. I think it looks better. I also had to modify the center cut in the air dam to accommodate the breakaway switch I have.
The whole etrailer family has been great to deal with.
2019 Ford Fusion Energi. A lot more trimming required on the facia than noted in the instructions, but I'll chalk that up to running changes I suppose. I used a combination of a Sawzall with a fine blade and a Dremel tool, both worked well. In the end, it took me about 8 hours (over two days) to install, and had it's challenges. I had to do some pulling and tweaking to get holes to line up, and the already mentioned extensive trimming of the facia. Overall well designed product, and of course etrailer was excellent in shipping.
Side note, adaptive cruise control is not affected when the drawbars are removed. With the bars in and the towbar mounted (it's a Stowmaster car mounted bar) the cruise control works just fine as an old fashioned CC, the adaptive part just doesn't work (it won't slow down for you when a slow car is in front, because it can't see around the tow bar). Basically perfect and what I was hoping would happen.
Solid product well make easy install
Unfortunately first set was defective from Roadmaster. Etrailer sent another set and return label which installed correctly, eTrailer was great to work with.
Installed myself with help of one friend. Assistance with install using the videows was invaluable. The installation on a brand new vehicle brought praise and comments on how clean the install looked. Great job etrailer.
So far so good. It arrived sooner than expected. Very pleased. Installing it tomorrow. I’ll try to update later.
Baseplate did not fit vehicle. Apparently it was manufactured icorrectly. All other baseplates for this vehicle were also manufactured improperly so engineering had to come up with new install procedures. Took a week to make that happen. Also, received new Easy Connect modules that are identical to one I already had.
Fast delivery, correct parts, excellent installation instructions, and everyting fit! I would buy from this seller again.
Followed directions and completed job in a little over 4 hours. had trouble reinserting some pins in difficult locations.
Later in the month I installed the wiring tow package. Goofed up and crossed a wire and it took me two days to get back under the truck and rewire. all is working great according to directions...…….
I will use etrailer again, good service, great service representatives...……..jt
Perfect fit no trimming to grill
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