Video Transcript for Roadmaster Direct-Connect Base Plate Kit DIY Installation - 2025 Ford Maverick

Hello neighbors, it's Brad here at etrailer and today we're taking a look and installing the Roadmaster baseplate on a 2025 Ford Maverick. This is what your baseplate is gonna look like once you have it installed on your Maverick. And I will say this is one of the cleanest looking ones that you can get for the Maverick. Roadmaster does a really good job of utilizing the open grill space to be able to get all your components mounted up. There's no cutting or drilling required on the fascia to get it all installed, so that means a few things, easier installation, but also it's gonna keep it looking clean when not in use. And going along with that, your arms are gonna be removable by just simply pulling a pin back, giving it a quarter turn, and that's gonna slide out.

So when you're just normally going down the road, really the only thing you're gonna see is the openings, the safety chain loops that stick out just barely, and then potentially your breakaway switch and six pole, but overall, it keeps a really clean look. When you are ready to flat tow, it's also easy to just push your arms in quarter turn and that's gonna snap in place, allowing you to hook up your tow bar safely. Along with a clean look, they've also done a really good job of creating mounting points for your components. A lot of times you're searching or having to fabricate to get everything to look clean and work, that's not the case here. They've put tabs from the factory for your breakaway switch that puts it at a perfect spot.

They have a unique design on the six pole bracket too that allows you for a nice clean installation as well. So if you're doing this yourself, it really is gonna make it a lot easier to be able to get that all mounted up. Now something else that you're gonna want to take in consideration is determining whether or not you need a high-low adapter. You want your tow bar to be within a 3" variance of the height of the baseplate. So a quick measurement for you all at home.

Ours comes in right at about 14." So measure from the ground to the center of the hitch pin hole on your RV and then compare the difference. And if it's over 3," you're gonna want to get a high-low adapter to bring that window into place so your tow bar's level as necessary. Now speaking of all of your components mounting up clean, we're gonna pull our truck a little bit farther forward and hook up and I'll show you how everything goes together. Now with everything hooked up, a few things that I wanna point out. If you have a Roadmaster tow bar with Roadmaster pins, it's gonna go directly to your baseplate and you're not gonna have any issues.

But today we have a Blue Ox tow bar and that's totally okay as well because you can get adapters to adapt to the Roadmaster baseplate. Now keep in mind, Roadmaster does have specific pins, so you're gonna wanna pick those up separately. So pretty easy though. We just swapped out the ends, got the new pins and we're good to go. The rest of the hookup, pretty simple safety cables, again, nice and easy to hook up here. We have our umbilical, our breakaway switch, and then our other side. Other than that, all you need to do is get your vehicle in flat tow mode and then hit the road. When it comes to flat towing, any vehicle including the Ford Maverick, there's gonna be five main components that are always required and these are at minimum that you need. Sometimes there's a few other things that you'll need to add in for it to all work cohesively, but the basic ones starting on the vehicle side, you can have your baseplate that's gonna mount to the frame of the vehicle and become the structural mounting point for a lot of your other components. But also the connection point for your tow bar. Your tow bar is gonna be the that connection point between your baseplate and the hitch on the RV. And just like towing a trailer, you have safety chains. Here we have safety cables, so in case of a disconnect, you still have this attached to the vehicle so it's not just free floating down the road. And speaking of that, you'll also need a supplemental braking system. It's gonna apply the brakes on the vehicle as you apply them on your RV, but part of that's gonna be a breakaway switch. In case of a catastrophic disconnect, of everything was to fail, this is your last line of defense. It'll pull that cable applying the brakes on the vehicle and that way it's not rolling down the road. Now finally, we have our diode wiring and this is gonna transmit the light signals from the RV to the taillights on the towed vehicle, and it's using a seven to six way umbilical. Beyond that, you may have again, some smaller features, but this is gonna be the main thing to get you down the road. Now when it comes to the installation, if you're doing this at home, this really isn't that bad of a baseplate to get installed. It is gonna require your front fascia coming off, and that's pretty standard for most baseplates. And I recommend if you're gonna have that fascia off, do the rest of your components. So get your braking system and your diode wiring at the same time. It'll really allow you to get a nice clean run of everything. But as I mentioned previous, no trimming or cutting required on the fascia, everything went back together well and there is a decent amount of trimming on the shutters on the inside. To make room for our crossbar to go across, you are gonna have to take those out and it's kind of subjective on some of the cutting in the instruction manual, but through the video I'm gonna give you plenty of pointers and tips to make sure that it works well for you and overall step by step, it's not too bad. Now with that being said, if you watch the video and you decide this is beyond something I want to tackle, maybe you don't have the place, the time, the tools, or even the want to do it, I totally get it, but you still wanna flat tow your Maverick. You can reach out to our dealer locator to find someone close to you to get your baseplate and any other flat tow components installed, that way you can be flat towing your truck down the road. Now speaking of that installation for UDI wires, hang around, we'll walk you through all the steps and once you're done and have it installed, take a picture, send us a comment, any tips, tricks. If the video is helpful, please let us know. We love to hear how you're using your vehicle and how the install went. To get your baseplate installed on your Maverick, it's a fairly long process, but really none of it's that hard. A few tips before we get into it. Have a nice organized spot to keep all of your hardware. It's gonna make reinstallation a lot easier. And also going along with that, a lot of times when you're taking your fascia off to get the baseplate on, it might be worthwhile to get the rest of your flat tow components all mounted up before putting the fascia on, that way you can get a nice clean look, get everything routed, and then put the fascia on and it's just gonna make everything easier than trying to go back and do that. Now in order to get this started, we're gonna pop up our hood and we're gonna grab a 10 millimeter socket. The four bolts that we're gonna be attacking are gonna be at the top here by our radiator support. So we'll get these taken out. (drill whirling) (drill whirling) (drill whirling) (drill whirling) The next step we're gonna be headed to each of the front of the wheel well liners where there's gonna be plastic push pins, as well as a few screws that are in the small little air damer mud flap up front, To get those screws outta the mud flap, 7 millimeter socket's gonna accomplish that. There should just be three of them. So we'll get that taken out first. Now it is gonna get pretty tight here because of the tire I have an electric ratchet which makes it a lot easier. But if you don't have something like this and you want a little bit more room, you can hop in the truck, turn the steering wheel one way or the other depending on which side you are, and that's gonna open it up, making it a lot easier for you. (drill whirling) (drill whirling) (drill whirling) Now once we have these removed, the plastic push pins just go up and we're gonna go all the way up to the one that's on the front fender. Now there's gonna be a slot in each of 'em that's gonna allow you to get a trim panel tool or a flathead screwdriver slotted in there. So just kinda wedge it, pop out that center section, and then you should be able to take the whole plastic clip with you. So make sure you try to keep these together. If they do pop out the center, just make sure you have all the pieces to put 'em back later. So we'll get these all removed and then hop over to the other side and do the same thing. Now we need to remove the bolts that attach the front fascia to the front quarter panel and where we have our seam, you're gonna find that there's gonna be three bolts. They're gonna be a 10 millimeter socket to get those taken out. They're a little bit tight here, so probably a short, well, 10 will get you there and we'll just get these all removed and then we'll repeat on the other side. (metal ratchet clacking) Now head underneath to the bottom of your fascia and there's gonna be a series of screws you'll see kind of doubled up on the underbody panel and the fascia bottom. And they're gonna be a T-30 torque spit to get those removed, so a total of eight. (drill whirling) Now something that I've done, we're gonna get ready to take the fascia off here shortly, is put painter's tape along the front fender and the fascia. This is gonna just make sure that we're not gonna get any chips or scratches as we take this off or when we put it back on, it's a nice easy way to protect it. Now I did notice that on the bottom of this mud flap here where we remove those seven millimeter screws, there is a plastic push pin that's tucked in a little bit further and that is gonna need to pop out in order for our fascia to come off. So we'll get that taken off first And then where we remove those 10 millimeter bolts up top here, there's a plastic clip that snaps in and that kind of holds everything together. And there's two tabs, if you kind of press those in and put pressure on this, it should kind of drop out. It's not exactly easy to undo. So I'm using a plastic trim tool to kind of push those tabs in and then pull pressure down. So as you kind of pull it down, you can get a gap here and you can get this one if you have a small tool to just pop in and get that loose on one side. And then I'll just go on the inside, get the other side popped out, and we should be able to draw this down. So with this popped out, you can see those tabs, they're just on this portion and on the backside and then just kind of keeping pressure, pulling it straight down. We'll make sure that we get this popped out. So at this point you might want to grab an extra set of hands, you can get the other side unpopped and hold it like this. Have a nice spot to set your fascia because we're gonna be removing it now. So we're gonna get ready to remove this. So I got Scott helping me here. Now we do have some clips up top where the 10 millimeter screws we inchesre that we removed. There's an opening that's this rectangle spot here. If you just push on this, you can kind of catch that tab, but this holds it in place. So we're gonna wanna pull the fascia back a hair and that's gonna help kind of get everything separated. Now these are a little bit tricky. This is a small slot for this plastic to go. And the tab on the bottom is kind of what interlocks it. So if you can just kind of push up on the bottom there and pulling back, you may have to give it a little bit of force, but we should be able to get this to pop out. (fascia clacking) There we go and then just kind of hold tight here. And as we pull this back, we're gonna look for any electrical connections that we need to separate. And it looks like we have some right here on the passenger side. So we'll get these separated. The main harness, you're just gonna push on the tab and then pull this back. We then have this sensor here, the red tab, pull that back, that's just your locking tab, and then we should be able to push this in and get this separated. Now we can set our fascia aside. Now we're gonna be making some space for our baseplate to go in. And the first step that we're gonna do is remove our pedestrian alert device. So if you ever hear it making that ah noise as you're driving around in hybrid, it's because of his speaker. So we are gonna be reinstalling this later on. That's gonna bolt up to the baseplate, but for now we're gonna get it undone using an eight millimeter socket just on this bolt. (socket wrench twisting) And there's an alignment nub on here that kind of keeps in place. So just pull this out slightly like that. And there's also a metal tab that's kind of clipped on here, just pull this straight back. Don't pull too hard because the wire is, it's fairly short here, but we're gonna separate it for now. Push on that tab and then we can put this aside. Now we're gonna be removing the outer shroud that's on our shutters that we have here. It's just this kind of more flexible plastic that we have. And in order to do that, we have a plastic push pin on each side. So we'll get those popped out first. And then it's just a series of clips and they're pretty easy to get to. You can see kind of the openings that we have here. So you can just push down through the hole and just kind of pull back as you do that to separate it. And then up top, you'll see that there's openings there. I believe this one, I think you pry up and that should release it. So just go through and I'll get this air dam taken out and we'll just set this aside for now. Now we're gonna be extensively modifying shutter area because the baseplate's gonna go across and the first thing that we're gonna do is cut this portion. This is a connection point between the top shutters and the lower ones and cutting this is gonna make it to where these don't work, but it's gonna get cut out anyway. So as far as cutting a lot of plastic here, so I use a multi tool, it works really well for things like this. If you have a, you know, ZAZA or a dremel or or something to make this cut, go right ahead. Just take your time, make sure you're not hitting any wires or anything in the process. Same goes for this sensor that we have located here, but right where that starts to curve up and then goes vertical, we'll cut right on that line. (dremel grinding) Now head to the passenger side and we're gonna find where we have some plastic push pins that are located here, here and then there's also gonna be one or actually two of them here on the side. So we're gonna push those in. Best way to do that, just get a flathead screwdriver, give it a quick bump and then we'll just repeat for the remaining ones. (screw driver clacking) Now this is really where it comes in handy, having a good cutting tool because we're gonna be doing some pretty extensive cutting. You can see I marked it out. This whole section's gonna be coming out. We will be cutting along this flat edge here and eventually this will cut out the shutters that we have and it'll bring the whole thing with it. But since we push those wires in, it's imperative to make sure that when you're cutting, you're not going too deep because there's well electrical and you'll have some hard lines back here. So just cut lightly through the plastic. We'll focus on this side right now and then I'll show you how to cut out the other side. (dremel grinding) So here's our finished product, and you'll see this is all open. There was an inside flap here that I pulled off. So this is all cut out and you may notice that this portion of the shutters is gonna start to pop out, that's totally okay. So have this cut out just like we have here. And you can see why you need to be careful hard lines as well as this electrical. So again, when you're cutting, just take your time. Now we'll head over to the other side and it's gonna be very similar. We'll be trimming out this portion and this should take out our shutters, but we'll go ahead and get this cut out. (dremel grinding) Now we're gonna be removing our ACC, which is adaptive cruise control and you need to be very careful with this. You'll see set aside if dropped. This is something you want to be very careful with, to not damage in the process. So first we'll get our wiring popped off here and this tape sensor here, if you just kind of reach on the backside, we should be able to unplug that and that's just gonna leave four T-30 torque bits on the bracket. So again, just hold onto it as you're removing this and we'll set it aside with the screws and then we will reinstall this a little bit later. (drill whirling) (dremel grinding) (dremel grinding) (dremel grinding) To get our shutters out, you can grab this section, this will just pop off and then these should just slide out. Now the center support, it shows a finished product of what it should look like, trimmed in the instructions. They don't really tell you to cut this, later they mentioned cutting a top portion, but the finished product of the trimming has this removed. I really don't think it's gonna cause any structural bearing on it, especially with the shutters not there. So I'm gonna go ahead and cut this center support out. (dremel grinding) Now you can grab the air dam that we took off previous and we're gonna pop this back in place and we'll get our plastic push pins put back in as well. Now I've made marks on the side of the air dam. We're gonna be cutting this portion as well as the other side. So this whole lower section's gonna go with it. It should be pretty close to where you trimmed out. So this is kind of a rubberized material that goes into a plastic. And I found that using power tools, sometimes it just kind of bounces around and it's hard to cut. So I'm just using a pair of tin snips here, and then we can remove this lower portion. And while you're on the passenger side, we have where we pushed harness out, we can actually go ahead and get these popped back in. Now on our driver's side we're gonna go to the lower bolts that we have here, 13 millimeter socket. We'll remove these bolts. (drill whirls) (drill whirls) and then we'll swap to a 15 to get the nut that's off of the stud here. Now keep your hardware handy. We're gonna be reusing this to put up our bracket. (drill whirling) Grab your side specific driver brace and it's gonna have this curved edge on the outside. This is gonna go on our studs, so just make sure that this is lined up properly and we'll slide this back. It does get a little bit tight here. There's a, looks like a ECM or something here, but this should pretty much, you know, bottom out here. And as far as getting the hardware back in place before we just put 'em back in, we are gonna wanna put a bit of thread locker. So I'll put that on our stud up here. And then also I'll cover up our bolts for down here and they said to tighten it to the factory specs. I can't tell you the factory specs to tell you the truth, but good and tight seems to be probably a decent way to do it. So try to match, you know, how hard it was to get them off. So we'll get these on and then we'll get that nut on and then snug it all down. (drill whirls) Now for the tab that goes out with the hole, we're gonna be using this backer plate and then grab one of your bolts, a split washer, flat washer, and then put some thread lock on there. Now they show going under here to get this backed, it's a little bit tight, but this is wide open up here. So what I recommend doing is bend this to where it sits nice and flat. Get this dialed in first and it may take a few bends to really get it exactly where you want, but getting this to be as flat as possible makes it a lot easier to start the bolt. So whatever you need to do to get this flat, I think I'm gonna pull from the bottom side to bend it in place. And while holding that in we'll get our hardware started. And now we're gonna get this snugged down and then we're gonna come back with a torque wrench. So it's pretty tight against this electrical that we have here. So right now ratcheting three quarters would probably be better, but I'll be using a crow's foot for our torque setting and that torque setting's found in the instruction manual, just take a look at the chart for your half inch hardware that we have here and then we'll torque this down properly. (torque wrench clacks) And then once that's torqued down the little arm that was on that backing plate, you can just bend this back and forth and it'll pop off that weld. You can kind of do whatever, but generally just kind of go back and forth with this and it'll pop off. At this point you have your driver's side all done. We're just gonna repeat the same steps on the passenger side. Should be a little bit easier because it's nice and open. We're gonna get our PAD device installed and we're gonna be mounting it up to this hole that we have here, but the wires are fairly short. So there's a plastic push that's right here. I'm gonna push that out to give us a little bit more wiring. (screw driver clattering) And it's not a ton that it gives us, but enough to where it's gonna be a little bit easier to mount up. And we're gonna need to do a little modification, so I mentioned that alignment knob, I guess you'd say, or tab here, we're gonna cut that off so it's flush. (dremel grinding) And we can plug this in and again, wires are pretty short here so we're gonna see what we can do here. But we're gonna try to get this portion mounted up. I'm gonna see if we can't get a little bit more wire to work with. I don't wanna pull these wires out, but essentially what we're gonna be doing is using this hardware to just bolt this through here. Now I got this to plug in and I feel pretty good about the fact that the wires aren't too tight. So just bolted this up pretty easy there. But what I did with the plug is there's an opening back here and if you just cut this back portion and slide the wire, that's gonna allow you to get this a little bit closer to be able to plug in safely and so that's what I found that works. If you wanna kind of do the same thing on yours, by all means, but there's no mention of it in the instruction manual. Other previous Mavericks that I've dealt with, I've kind of done the same thing because this does get pretty tight. Now with your crossbar, we're gonna get this orientated in the proper location. So your safety chain handle should be at the top. So make sure that you have it proper. And when we slide this in, we're gonna be looking to get this aligned with the three holes, but this is a good chance to look for any, you know, tolerances or things that you need to trim out a little bit for it to fit perfectly. And in fact, I'm kind of running into that over here where I cut plastic. I just need to shave off maybe a quarter of an inch and that way I can draw this in. So if you need to do any modifications, now's a great time to do it. So with everything trimmed in place, I have this kinda lined up. The hardware that we're gonna be using is gonna be our bolts, split washer, flat washer. And you may find in the instructions they say that it's gonna be tight spot to put the nut in place and you may have to thread that in. Well, because this is for the 2025 Maverick, the instructions may be from the 2024, but either way, good job on Roadmaster. They saw that it was tricky and they put weld nuts in there for us. So this makes it a lot easier, great job on that. Looking at, you know, improvements because this does make it simple. So we'll line this up. So you may have to kind of move your baseplate around. I'm gonna get the center one in first and just kind of get this threaded in by hand. And then from here we're gonna repeat the same hardware and just make sure you get another bolt on the other side. And as we start to put this in place, we should get this to where it's flush on the bottom side and there's probably about a little about a quarter of an inch, maybe a little bit less hanging off the ends. So we'll get these all snug down using a 3/4" socket and then you guessed it, we'll come back with a torque wrench and get this all torque down. Just double checking to make sure that this is nice and level here as you torque it down. So at this point we can get our ACC plugged back in and mounted up. Now you can also wait to do this until you have all of your stuff ran as far as your, you know, all of your components because there is a tab back here that they've welded on. Again, great job Roadmaster for giving you mounting points for all of it. 'cause really that becomes a lot of the tricky part when putting up your components is getting a spot to mount everything. And they've done a great job on this. So you can choose to put it in or put it in later, but I'll just get mine mounted back up. And really at this point all that's gonna be left is going to be getting the rest of your components mounted up and that's something getting the ACC back in place is gonna be important because getting some of your other components mounted up is gonna make sure that grill goes back over it as we put the fascia on. So at this point I'll get everything mounted up on ours and I'll show you a kind of finished product of how it looks and then I'll show you how to get the fascia put back on. Breakaway switch, pretty simple here, just kind of bolt that up. Those tabs that we saw is for wire management. There's one behind the ACC, so I just ziptied that up to keep it nice and clean. As far as the diode wiring, they do give you a very unique bracket, which is cool. I haven't seen this before and it really allows for kind of a custom fit to make sure that it works well. The only thing is it's gonna be really hard to do by getting this mounted up and then trying to draw the fascia on. So I'm gonna leave my wires bare from my diode wiring, get the fascia on and then I should be able to get this mounted up that's gonna give us the cleanest look possible and make it to where that grill can slide over here. Preferably not trying to trim any of the plastic. We'll see once we get it put back on. As far as getting the fascia in place, it's really just gonna be the reverse order that we took it off. Make sure you get your electrical connections plugged in, but other than that it should be pretty standard of going in reverse order and you'll have it back on. So I'll do that now and then I'll show you how to get this all mounted up. So I got this mounted up at this point we're just gonna get our diode wiring in place. And from here that's really gonna do it for the installation of your baseplate. And that was a look at installation of the Roadmaster baseplate on a 2025 Ford Maverick.