Roadmaster Direct-Connect Base Plate Kit - Removable Arms

Video Transcript for Roadmaster Direct-Connect Base Plate Kit Installation - 2023 Chevrolet Trailblazer

Hey, everybody. Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2023 Chevrolet TrailBlazer RS, we're gonna be showing you how to install the Roadmaster Base Plate Kit with Removable Arms. Before we do that though, let's take a minute, check this out, and make sure it's gonna work for you. Before we jump right in, I figured it'd be a good idea to touch base on the main parts that we're gonna need to flat tow our Chevy down the road in the first place. And usually we like to be hooked up to the motor home, and really give you a good visual, but it's thunder storming outside today, so bear with us, but there's gonna be five main parts.

First one is your base plate, all right And that's going to give us a attachment point. That way, we can hook our tow bar up to it. So the tow bar, we'll plug into the ends here, and that'll be the actual link that connects the front of your Chevy to the back of your motor home. The third thing that you're gonna need is tow bar wiring. And you're gonna have a cable that'll plug into the front of your Chevy and go to the back of your motor home.

That's gonna transfer all the lighting functions from the back of your RV to the back of your TrailBlazer. The fourth main part will be safety cables. And so those are gonna attach to the base plate, and then attach to your motor home's hitch. And in the event of an unlikely disconnect, they're gonna keep everything paired together. And last but not least, the fifth main part for the Chevy will be a supplemental braking system.

And what this is gonna do is apply the brakes in your Chevy whenever you hit the brakes in your motor home, helping to bring you to a more complete and controlled stop. But with that out of the way, let's talk about the base plate. So I think this one turned out really good actually, in terms of appearance and functionality. So everything is going to kind of be evenly spaced apart, really easy to get to, and looks good. You know, everything comes out of this small opening down here below the grill.

And you really don't have to chop apart at the front of your car, which in some cases that is necessary, so it worked out pretty good. You know, where you put your safety cables are wide open, easy to get to. The base plate is gonna have a bracket on it that'll allow you to kind of mount up some of your braking system parts really easily, as well as a bracket on it to allow you to mount up your wiring connectors. So it just makes everything so much more straightforward when all that's there for you already. And the kit is gonna have these removable arms, all right And as far as what tow bars are gonna work with these, the Roadmaster Direct Connect Tow Bars will fall into here and you pin them, and that's how it locks in. And a lot of other tow bars are compatible as well. That's because nowadays there's adapter ends. So let's say if you have a Blue Ox tow bar, for example, you already have it, but you really want this base plate, you can pick up adaptor ends to change on the tow bar side, that'll allow you to pair these together. Whenever you're not flat towing behind your motor home, you can actually pull out these removable arms, just so you don't have these things sticking out and being super obvious here. And the way they work, you have these pins you can pull out, rotate them about a quarter turn, and then they just pop out of place. So really helps kind of clean things up. And being that they're so easy to install and remove, that'll really help kind of speed up the flat tow process, as far as getting everything set up. Compared to the Blue Ox base plate that's available. You know, they're both gonna work and get the job done, and look pretty similar. Honestly, I'd lean a little more towards this one, really because there's less cutting involved. You know, Blue Ox ones will sit further over, you have to kind of chop more of your fascia off, but you know, not a huge deal at the end of the day. So it's entirely up to you. I do wanna mention, this base plate is designed to work with the RS model. If you have a different submodel, there's base plates available that are fit for those models. So check our fit guide if that's your situation. But other than that, at the end of the day, you know, good fit, looks good. Easy to hook up, so you can't ask for too much more. As far as the installation goes, this one wasn't too bad. I definitely done some that are more difficult, and some that are easier. So it kind of fell right in the middle, but nothing really too crazy as far as base plates go. So with that said, why don't we go ahead and get started on it now. To begin our installation, we're gonna be here at the front of our TrailBlazer, and we need to remove our front fascia. And so we're gonna have these hood stops. And to get these out, you just kind of rotate them by hand and pull up on them at the same time. So we'll have two on each side. And I wanna mention, from this point on, whatever we do to one side of the vehicle, we'll also do it to the other side because it'll be set up the same way. Now we can switch out to a T15 Torx Bit, and we're gonna have three screws on each side. And then one in the center. We can now move to our wheel wells, and along this front edge here, we're gonna have some fasteners we can pull out. There's gonna be four T15 Torx Bit screws, and it helps if you turn your wheels in one way or the other, gives you a little more space to work with. (screwdriver whirls) And then, if you move kind of continuing up, almost in the center, there's gonna be a push pin fastener. So the plastic one. And to get these out, you can take a flat head screwdriver, just pry underneath the head, and then pull the base out. We can now move underneath the front of our vehicle. And on each side here we're gonna have three seven millimeter head screws. We'll run those out. And then we can switch out to our T15 Sports Bit. And in this corner here, we're gonna have two fasteners. So this one here, and this one right here. I do wanna mention too, on some models right here, you might have a push pin fastener, like we did in our wheel well liner. Ours doesn't have these so we don't need to worry about them. But if yours does, you would use your flathead and pry those out of position as well. So what I've done now is put some painter's tape along the seams here where we're gonna be working, just so we don't scratch the paint up. And this plastic trim piece, we're gonna have to pop this off about halfway. And so it's a little tricky to see, but I'll get a couple of them going here. I'll give you an idea. If you kind of come in from the back here, there's some plastic fasteners that you can kind of squeeze on to get this piece popped off here. I just kinda work my way up, and get a better idea what I'm doing. It's just so hard to see inside of there. But these fasteners, I'm just coming in with my fingers, and while I'm pulling out on this, I'm kind of pinching them down. And that'll let these pass through. If you need to get a pair of pliers or something back in there, you can do that too. But I'm just going to work this up, like I said, about halfway. To get this pulled back, what I like to do is kind of put some tape around it so the fasteners don't wanna snap back in. And then I actually took some of this foam packing material, pried it in there, just so everything don't wanna reconnect. But in this very top corner here, there's a screw. So take a seven millimeter socket and get it removed. (screwdriver whirls) So now, with a little bit of help here, we can get our fascia removed. And so you wanna start at the corners. And what you're doing is simply just taking the corner piece from where we removed that screw from, and kind of just pulling back on it. And this thing's actually unsnapping pretty easy. The clip's releasing. So you just work your way around. Once you get to out here, you know, you wanna kind of lift up on that centerpiece. So unsnap. And you may or may not have some wiring to disconnect. Looks like, in our case, we do over here on the passenger side. So can you pull down on that red retaining clip, and push down in the center, and that'll release it so we can get our fascia out of the way now. With the fascia out of the way, this air dam where it kind of connects, we want to cut and separate these two. So I just have a pair of snips, and kind of cut through there. Then to get it removed on the bottom side, there's these tabs you can kind of push up on. And while you're pushing on it, pull it out. So I got the other side out already. We can get the air dam, set it to the side, as we will not be reinstalling it. Just over here on the passenger side, we see where our intercooler is. There's gonna be this piece that kind of protrudes out, and you need to cut that flush. It's just plastic. And be really careful when you're doing this, you know, you don't want to dig into the actual intercooler and open that up, 'cause then you'll create essentially a boost leak. But that said, to help kind of slow things down, give me a little more control, I'm gonna use a multi-tool to trim this off. (saw whirls) Moving to where our bumper beam is attached, we're gonna have four fasteners. We're gonna remove these three, all right We're going to pull them all out, with the exception of that top outside corner. We're gonna have a 15 millimeter socket. We're going to go ahead and get them removed. (screwdriver whirls) What you can do now is grab these pipe spacers, and you want the (indistinct) and five eights ones. So make sure you got the right ones, 'cause there are a couple different sizes. And these are going to go into these holes. And one thing I think I'm gonna try to do, 'cause I can see this kind of being a pain to get your hardware lined up, and everything lined up and whatnot, I'm gonna take some packing tape, and kind of roughly hold this in position where it's lined up. I can almost tape it. And I think this'll make getting our hardware and our base plate up a little bit easier, with those kind of held at least roughly in position. Get them in there and then, you know, come back and cut out the center, so we can pass our bolts through. We're able to grab our base plate now, and you can take the M10 bolts, put on an M10 flat washer and a split lock washer. And then all the hardware that you use to secure the base plate, you're gonna put some red Loctite on the threads, which you will have to get separately, but you can grab a tube right here at etrailer. But these holes are gonna line up with those, and we can get our hardware started hand tight. For this attachment point, you can take the shorter pipe spacers that they give you, same hardware as the other two that we did, and get that started hand tight as well. You can refer to your instructions to find your side specific brace now. And there's two holes in it here that are actually gonna line up with two threaded holes in our frame. And if you need to, you can spray out, spray them with penetrating oil, and you know, clean them out a little bit. The hardware that you're gonna use for these will be these M8 bolts. You know, the split lock washer and a flat washer, and again, your Loctite. And so this is just going to line right up. And we'll get both of those bolts started hand tight. You are gonna have some holes on the bracket that'll line up with the holes in the base plate. And so you can take these bolts and just a flat washer and your Loctite, and those are gonna go through there. Where they come out on the other side, we can get the rest of the hardware in place. Where that bolt comes through, you then take flat washer, split lock washer, and your nut. You can get both of them hands tight here. You can now come back with a 17 millimeter socket, and you want to push up on the base plate. And while you're holding that, go ahead and snug these down. (screwdriver whirls) Move to your side plate now. You know, make sure these are positioned correctly. It's kind of a radius air on the back of the base plate and our bracket. I'm just gonna try to make sure that's gonna line up. And when we have that in position, you can take a nine 16ths wrench, and hold the backside of the nut, and then tighten this bolt down to the nine 16ths. (screwdriver whirls) We'll go ahead and get these snugged up as well. And I'm using a 13 millimeter socket. (screwdriver whirls) Now, you wanna make sure and come back with a torque wrench and tighten down all the hardware in that same order to the amount specified in the instructions. Moving to our fascia now, you look on the backside of it, there's gonna be this shock pad, this big piece of foam, and we can get that out of our way. So essentially, kind of just lifts out of place, and this will help make room for our new base plate. That pad out of the way, we're gonna move to our lower tabs here that we're holding in place, and we're gonna cut these off. (saw whirls) You can trim out our openings now. So this piece will get cut completely out. So I just got a pair of snips here. It's pretty thin plastic. And then, on the driver's side, so we're working on the driver's side. The driver's side middle, I guess you could say. This piece will have to come out too. So leave a little bit, about a half inch of plastic on each. And cut out. At this point, it'd be a great opportunity to work on some of your other flat towing components, like your braking system, and your tow bar wiring, and things like that while the fascia is off, 'cause you have a lot more room to work. And that's exactly what I'm gonna do. So once I have them components back on, or if you're not gonna be installing them at this time, you'd simply take your fascia and reinstall it the opposite way that we removed it. So now that I have our other components installed on the front of our vehicle, we can get our fascia back on. So essentially, we'll just take our time. This will go back on the opposite way that we removed it. Get everything lined up. Make sure everything is coming through. And we'll just work it back into a position here. So I was able to get our fascia reattached without any issues. It was kind of a tight fit, so just take your time working it around everything. I did have to cut out, you know, a smaller little opening here to allow our airline fitting to pass through. But you'll probably only run into this if that's the type of braking system you're gonna use. If you just have a standard breakaway switch without a fitting, you probably won't need to cut that, because it'll pass through on the bottom. And then something I noticed too on our base plate, where the little brackets come through to bolt up your connector, they we're up too high, so our plug was wanting to hit. So if that happens, what you can do is just take a socket, a small socket and extension, put it over those little bars, and you can kind of bend them down to angle and lower the connector plug to get that back on without any interference. And that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the Roadmaster Base Plate Kit on our 2023 Chevy TrailBlazer RS.