Blue Ox Base Plate Kit - Removable Arms

Video Transcript for Blue Ox Base Plate Kit Installation - 2018 Jeep JL Wrangler Unlimited

Speaker 1: Today, on our 2018 Jeep JL Wrangler Unlimited, you're going to be taking a look at and we'll show you how to install the Blue Ox Baseplate kit with removable arms, part number BX1139.This is what our baseplate looks like when it's installed. It's going to give us a solid connection point between our Jeep and our RV to safely flat tow. It's going to be one of five main components in a flat tow set up. The other four are going to be your safety cables, your tow bar, your braking system, and your wiring. It's going to be a durable, steal construction, with a black powder coat finish that's going to resist and rust or corrosion.It's going to be a custom fit baseplate. It's going to mount directly to the chassis of your vehicle.

It's going to spread the towing force evenly to minimize the weight placed on your suspension. It's going to have removable tabs that attach to your motor home mounted tow bar. To install these, you're going to have a spring loaded pin. You simply turn the tab, push it to where the spring loaded pin is fully inside, spin it, until it locks into place. To open it up, you simply pull the ring, twist it, and you can remove it.It's also going to come with caps to keep and dirt and debris out of your tab mounting locations.

It's going to have pre-welded mounting locations for your wiring accessories, and for your brakeaway switch on your braking system.This baseplate can be used with Blue Ox tow bars, and it's compatible with Road Master tow bars with the Road Master adaptors, part number RM-031, RM-031-5, which are sold separately but can be found on our website.It's also going to come with pre-welded brackets for your brakeaway switch for your braking system, any wiring accessories. It's also going to come with a cap to keep any dirt and debris out of your tab mounting location. And, then, you're going to have safety cable hookups. Keep in mind this baseplate is only going to work with the factory bumper. It will not work with the bumpers that have the guards on them or the wench.As far as the installation, it's pretty simple, straight forward installation.

You will have to remove the bumper, you will have to drill two holes. Other than that, it's going to use holes that are already on the vehicle or in the chassis of the vehicle. And, as you can see, it fits very nicely and it's not going to protrude or stick out past the bumper or past the edge of the bumper. Now, that we've taken a look at some of the features, let me show you how easy it is to get installed.To start our installation, we're going to take an 8 mm socket, we're going to have two bolts right here on our belly pan we're going to need to remove. Next, we're going to have eight fasteners just like this that run right across the front here.

Use a flathead screwdriver to remove them. All you're going to do is you're going to pry up on the center, and they should pop right out. You want to make sure that the base comes with it.It may be a little bit easier if you can find a pick or something with an angle like that to get in to some of these in the center. Once you have them all off, we're going to set this aside to be trimmed and reinstalled later on.Next, on the passenger side, we're going to need to unplug this wiring here. The plug for the wiring is going to the lights that's attached to our bumper. We're going to push in on this gray section right here, and pull out just like that. You're only going to have this on the passenger side. Next, we're going to take an 18 mm socket, you're going to have two bolts on this side of the frame, two bolts on this side of the frame, holding our bumper in place. This is just on our passenger side. We're going to do the same thing on the driver's side.Now, on the top, before we remove our bumper, we're going to have to take a couple push pin fasteners off that are holding this plastic piece onto our bumper. Take a flathead screwdriver and just pry up on the center here. Just like that. Then, we're going to have one on the passenger side, also. Next, we're going to remove our bumper and set it aside.Next, we're going to take a 16 mm socket, we're going to remove the outside bolt on our frame rail. We're going to repeat that same thing on the other side. Next thing we need to do, is we need to slot this bottom hole. So, what we're going to do is we're going to cut a line about up to where that bend is. We're just going to slice it there. I'm going to use a Dremel tool with cutting blade. A rotary tool with a cutting blade will work. We're going to do that same thing on the other side. Now, I'm going to take some paint, clear coat anything you might have, enamel, then I'm going to cover up that bare metal to resist and rust or corrosion later on down the road.Now, with an extra set of hands, we're going to set our baseplate into place. We're going to take a 10 mm bolt, lock washer or flat washer, we're going to put them in this top hole. Once we get this bolt started, you see this bottom hole We need to line it up with the hole in the frame. And, then, we need to tighten this. So, what we're going to do to make it easier so that hole stays lined up is we're going to use one of the bolts in our kit, you're going to slide it into place like that. Go ahead and do that on both sides.Next, take an 18 mm socket and we're going to snug the top bolt up. We're not using Loctite at this time. Do that on both sides. Next, this top back hole, we're going to eventually drill it out to a half inch. But, we're going to start with a smaller bit, and we're only going to go through this side, we're not going to go all the way through. So, what I want to do is I want to start with my half inch bit just to make me a mark in the center of the hole, and then I'll go back to my small one. Once you got one side done, then we'll do the same thing on the other.Next, go ahead and remove this bolt here. Then, we're going to do the same thing we did on the front, we want to spray that hole on both sides to kind of cover up that bare metal. Next, we're going to loosen these enough like that. Next, we'll take a half inch bolt, lock washer, some red Loctite. Now, this does not come in your kit. But, you can find it on our website. Put a little bit of Loctite on your bolt, spacer block. We're going to get our hole to line up that we just drilled. We're going to take a handle nut, we're going to go through the hole that we drilled in the front, and we're going to thread it on our bolt that we just put in.Once you get your handle nut started, you're going to make sure you turn your spacer block so it's sitting parallel with the baseplate. Use a 19 mm socket, tighten that down a little. You're going to repeat that on the other side.Now, we're going to remove this front bolt, Loctite, then we're going to reinstall our frame bracket. And, we want to make sure that our frame bracket goes in between our baseplate and our frame. It's basically just going to go right back in the same spot it was when we took it off earlier. We're going to take our hardware that we just removed. We're going to put it back into place. And, what I suggest, before you tighten either one of these is try to get that bottom one in place first. Use some Loctite. Make sure your frame bracket here is lined up with the holes in the front so we can put our bumper back on.And, for our bottom one, another handle nut, we're going to come right up through the bottom. One thing I do recommend is before you finish snugging these up completely, go ahead and get the other side all your bolts put in place. That way if this, the baseplate tightens up at all, we won't have to move it to get these in. We won't have to loosen one side, get the other side installed. Go ahead and install them at the same time, that way they're in place.Next, we're going to torque all of our hardware to specifications in the instructions. You're going to repeat that for all remaining hardware. Next, we're going to install our safety cables. We're going to run it back behind this mounting location on our frame. We're going to come out the inside. This outside, we want to make sure that our cable is not going to rub up against our sway bar. Next, we're going to take our convenience link, go ahead and run it through your cable. We're going to run it through this back hole on our baseplate. First, we're going to take the other side of our cable, go ahead and get that in place like that. And, slide it through, and then, we'll close it up. Just like that.I'm going to take a zip tie, and zip tie the inside part of my cable right to my frame. There is a hole right there that makes a very easy to keep it from moving around. It will also keep the outside tight and off of the sway bar. And, you're going to repeat that same thing on the other side. Once you have both sides installed, take a 19 mm wrench, go ahead and tighten that nut up just a little bit. And, after that, we're going to take some metal shears and we're going to cut the end of our handle nuts off.Next, thing you can do is reinstall your bumper in reverse order from the way you took it off. Next thing we need to do is measure out, not measure, but mark out where we need to cut out for our baseplate to go through our belly pan. You can see I already have it marked out. This is how I did it. The two holes down here at the bottom where the bolts or the screws hold that in place, what I did is I just lined them up and I marked right at the top where it meets. Now, I only marked to here. I'm going to cut it out to here, because we have to get it to slide up like this. I marked it out to here to see if we can fit it like that. If we need to cut out some more, we can. I don't want to try to take out any more than I have to. And, you can see I marked the yellow so you could see what I was doing. I went back and traced outside of it with a black marker, because my panel's black. And, I'm just going to use my Dremel tool that I used earlier.If you take a utility knife and just run it on the edge like that, you can clean all the burrs off. Do the same thing to the other side and then we'll test it out and see. So, you can see here, we're not quite high enough. So, we're going to cut this down a little bit more.Once you have everything trimmed out, and it fits in, go ahead and reinstall all your fasteners across the top. And, we'll have our two fasteners on the top side. Once you have those in, don't forget to make your connection with your plug on your passenger side.That will do it for the look at and installation of the Blue Ox Baseplate kit with removable arms, part number BX1139 on our 2018 Jeep JL Wrangler Unlimited.