Demco Classic Base Plate Kit - Fixed Arms

Video Transcript for Demco Classic Base Plate Kit Installation - 2014 Chevrolet Captiva Sport

Shane: Hi. I'm Shane with etrailer.com. Today, I'm going to walk through how to install Demco Baseplate with Fixed Arms on our 2014 Chevy Captiva Sport. The baseplate is going to attach to the chassis of the vehicle and what it's designed to do, is it allows you, or gives you, a solid attachment point for your tow bar on the back of your motor home. It's going to allow you to flat tow the vehicle behind the motor home while you're traveling.It's going to be a steel construction, very durable, very thick welds. Nice black-powder coat finish on it.

Really going to stay looking nice for a long time.One of the downfalls to the Demco Baseplate is the installation side. The installation side for this baseplate is not the easiest. There are other baseplate available that are a little bit easier to install. That being said, if you like the looks of this one, it's going to work with a lot of different tow bars out there, so, it's not going to limit you to just one tow bar. You can find any of those products, the baseplate and the different tow bars, here are etrailer.com.Here is going to be our connection point for our tow bar.

This spot here, this is going to be for your safety cables. If we come over here to this center, this bracket here, you see the wiring mounted to, or this wiring bracket mounted to . this bracket is going to come with your baseplate. Typically, this .. this is going to have two holes in it and typically it would mount on either side of your baseplate.

However, you can see with this vehicle, the license plate would cover it so we actually moved it out here. So, that being said, I would recommend getting two long brackets, they're no-drill mounting brackets, and you can find those here at etrailer.com. This allows you to extend the bracket . or extend your connection point out from your baseplate so you can attach your wiring.Now let's go ahead and take our vehicle out, get it hooked up to our RV, and show you what it looks like when it's being used. As you can see here, this is what it's going to look like when we're connected.

We have our tow wire connected to our baseplate. You can see, as I mentioned, this is going to be your connection point for your baseplate. Safety cables, they're going to hook here and it's going to give us that solid attachment point or solid connection point between our vehicle and our motor home.Another nice thing about this baseplate is, when you're not flat towing your vehicle, because these do stick out a little bit, they're going to have nice caps that you can put on to give it a little bit of added look to kind of blend in with the vehicle a little bit more. Now that we've gone through some of the features, let's walk you through how to get it installed.To start our installation, we're going to remove 12 fasteners from this plastic panel underneath our hood. We're going to use a Philips head screwdriver. You don't need to push on it. All you need to do is just make sure it grips and you're going to pry out the center. If you push on it too much, you're going to push it back down in there. Just like that.I have one here, here. Across the top, we're going to have four here. This one, this one, and this one down here in the very center. We'll pull this panel off, and as I mentioned, we're going to have one right down here in the center that's holding the fascia down on the bumper beam.Take a seven millimeter socket and in each wheel well, we're going to have a bolt here and one right up top here. On the bottom side of the vehicle, on both sides of the fascia, we're going to have two seven millimeter bolts and one 10-millimeter bolt we need to remove. We're going to have one 10-millimeter bolt right here in the center and two plastic push in fasteners right here.Flat head screwdriver, turn panel tool throughout the center just like that. We'll pull this panel off and set it aside.Now, we can start pulling our fascia off. It's a good idea . it's better if you have an extra set of hands so you can go from either side. If you don't, take your box that your baseplate comes in, set your, the box underneath the fascia so you can start on one side and set your fascia on it so you don't damage it. We're going to start on the outside and start working out way to the center. Keep in mind, if you have any lights or anything like that, don't just pull the fascia off. You want to make sure you unplugged those as you're taking it off so you don't damage the wiring.Just going to pull out from the fender and we'll just pop it off like this. Again, we'll just work our way to the center. We're going to have a wire connection here. Push that gray tab down on both sides and then you're going to have a black tab right there in the center. Push that and you're going to pull up on the plug. We'll just work our way over to the other side. Once you have all your plugs removed, you can set your fascia aside somewhere safe so it doesn't get damaged.We're going to take a 10-millimeter socket and remove our radiator coil. We're going to have a 10-millimeter bolt here. This top one here, or our center one and then over here, on the passenger side frame rail where your two hoses come in, there's a push in fastener right back here. We need to pop that off. Just like that.The next thing we need to do is we're going to start the process of removing our bumper beam. We're going to have two bolts up here that attach our headlights to the beam. We need to remove all the fasteners that are holding the wiring onto the beam. We're going to have four bolts here that hold the beam onto the frame rail. We're going to have a fastener right here on the bottom where the wiring comes down. We'll start with the top two, here. This is going to be a 10-millimeter socket.Your fasteners, you can remove the same way you did the other ones. Just a drum panel tool or a flat head screwdriver. This bottom one, you want to be careful with this. This is your air temperature sensor so you want to make sure you don't break that clip. We're just going to kind of pull it to the side and push these little tabs in. Just like that.Take a 12-millimeter socket and we're going to remove the four bolts on each side . and then we'll have one more 10-millimeter head bolt right here. I'll go ahead and start removing out bumper beam. We're going to kind of pull up on our lights. They have a little tab there that holds it into place. Again, make sure you don't just pull this off in case you miss any wiring or anything like that that's still connected to it. We're just going to slide it back slowly and slide our radiator hoses out just like that and then we'll set this aside.On our passenger side, take a 10-millimeter socket, we're going to have two bolts. We're going to be removing our air baffle. One here and one here and then we'll set that aside.On our driver's side, we need to remove our windshield washer reservoir. These hoses that are coming up, they're going to connect right here at the top. Mark one of them where you're disconnecting it so you know which one is going to which hose because these are little pumps and you want to make sure they're going to the correct one. What we're going to do is, we're going to pull that apart and you can take a little screw or bolt, put it inside the hose so it doesn't leak when you take if off. Then we're going to have a couple of bolts to remove from here. We'll have one right here. And we'll have one right down on the bottom. And then we'll have one right back here. Need to pull your plugs off the top of the vacuums. If it's taped, right here, there's a little tab inside there and it's going to face in. Push that tab and pull these off and we'll slide this off. You're going to have to watch the neck because it goes up into the engine compartment and we'll have a fastener right here on the backside. Move. It's just a push in fastener. And then we'll set our tank aside.Then we'll take a turn panel tool, we're going to remove the fastener that's holding the wiring onto this frame extension. This is going to be on the drivers side and then over on our passengers side, we're going to remove this fastener here. So, you're going to use a Philips head screwdriver and it's going to come out the same way that you're top ones did.Next, we'll take a 12-millimeter socket. We're going to remove the frame extension from each side. We're going to have four bolts. Two at the top, and two along the bottom. Remove both of them, and set them aside.Driver side, I've found, had a little tack weld right here. I'm not sure why they did that. The other side wasn't like that. If it does, just pop it off. Pop the extension off.Next, what we're going to do, is you're going to take your frame bracket. It's going to be marked rear with a sticker. One sides going to have two holes and the short flap is going to be shorter, it's not going to have holes in it. You're going to put it up against the backside of your frame rail. Two holes are going to be on the side and you want to measure, on this side, three quarters of an inch down, passenger side's going to be an inch and a half. You just want to make sure you're following your directions on all your measurements.You can see, I got a little black mark there. I clamped it, like this. What I'm going to do, is I'm going to use a drill bit and I'm going to drill the center out of each one of those and then take it up to three eighths.Before I start drilling holes on the other side, I want to show you what the end results going to look like. This is our rear bracket. You can see how I have this one marked. Drilled through both my frame extension here. We have a front bracket that's going to go on and also going to have holes drilled in it. I just wanted to show you what it's going to look like even though we're going to take you step by step and show you how to get it installed.The best way to do this is to start with a pilot bit, do a small hole, and then step it up every couple bits up to a three eighths. One, it's going to save your arms. Two, it's going to save your drill bits.We'll take a three eighths bolt. You want to make sure you're using the blue Loc-Tite that comes in your kit. We're going to run it through each of the holes in the bracket that we just drilled and then we're going to put on a lock washer and a nut.Then, with a 14-millimeter socket, we're going to tighten and and torque the hardware to the specifications on the instructions. We're going to make sure, if at all possible, you torque it from the nut side, not the bolt head side so that it's inaudible 00:13:17. Should have enough room in here with the small torque wrench to get it inside there and a short bit.You're going to measure from this top hole down two and three quarter inches. You're going to go in seven eighths of an inch, and mark it. From there, you're going to go down to five and three quarters from this top hole down, to five and three quarters. Again, in seven eighths and mark it. We're going to drill out two holes, only we're going to go through this plate and then the plate we just installed, or the bracket we just installed. We're going to take it from our pilot hole all the way up to three eighths.Next, we're going to temporarily reinstall our extension, our frame extension and then right back here, they're not going to tell you this in the instructions, but this fastener right down here Go ahead and remove it. What we're going to do is we're actually going to drill from back here through instead of tapping it and then pulling this off and re drilling it. This is going to make it a little bit easier to get our holes to line up better because I had a little bit of a problem on the other side. Their measurements are a little bit off and we're going to see if we can't get this one to line up any better. Now, all's I'm doing is I'm using my drill bit to mark the holes on the extension and then I'll pull it back off and drill them out of the way.Once you get holes opened up enough to get these bolts through, then what you're going to do is install the plate. Don't tighten it down and we're going to mark these holes and drill them out. Now we're going to take the whole thing off, including this front bracket, and we're going to mount the front bracket onto our extension.You'll notice, there's an overlap here. We're going to take a flat washer that comes in the kit, and we're going to slide it in the bottom hole only and run our three eighths bolt through. On the inside, we're going to put a lock washer and a nut. Now, before putting the nut on, you want to make sure you're using the Loc-Tite. Again, you want to use this in all the hardware that we're installing for the baseplate. Then, we're going to tighten and torque the hardware to the specification in the instructions.For bolts that are going through, through this bracket, through this plate, and then through this bracket, they're going to be three eighths bolts but they're going to have the collar on them. Again, make sure you're installing Loc-Tite and then we can reinstall our frame extension. Once you have these tightened and torqued down, you can repeat the process for the other side of the vehicle.Next, we're going to lift our baseplate up into place. We're going to temporarily install it using the existing weld nuts. What I did, was I put two on each end just to hold my baseplate up and then what we're going to do is this very bottom hole, we're going to drill it out to the same size we did the rest of our hardware. Before we take these off, we're going to install the hardware here. Then we'll remove these and put our bumper beam back in place. We're going to tighten our bolts down and then we're going to torque them to the specifications in the instructions. These are actually going to be a 13-millimeter socket for the nut side.Next, we can reinstall our air box and our windshield washer reservoir. Once you have your bumper beam put back in place, you're hardware that you're going to be putting in, you're going to have eight bolts. They're going to be the same length, same size. You're going to put on a lock washer and then a flat washer. Install them again into the existing weld nuts that are already going through the baseplate into the frame, and then you're going to tighten and torque them to the specification in the instructions.Once you get your bumper beam put back in place, you're going to have to trim your fascia. Just follow the instructions for the trimming. It's very simple. You'll notice a couple of extra brackets here. These do not come in the kit. These are long brackets and what I did with these, is this is a bracket that comes with the baseplate. This is for mounting your wiring and typically, it's going to mount on one side or the other. With this vehicle, the license plate sits right here on the bumper fascia and it actually covers this, so, mounting it here would not work. So what I did is use two brackets, drilled a hole in the back, just ran a bolt through it, through the slip in the bumper beam. Drilled a couple extra holes here. Once I get the fascia put back in place, that's going to sit just like that and then with out braking system, we can mount our break away switch right here on this side, that way everything is together.Once you get your fascia cut out, it's a good idea before you put your fascia back in, to add any additional items you may be needing like your wiring and your braking system. It's a lot easier to run all of your wires where they need to go while your fascia's off.Well guys, I hope you enjoyed this video. That's going to do it for our look at installation on the Demco Baseplate on your 2014 Chevrolet Captiva Sport.