Roadmaster Sterling All Terrain Tow Bar - Non-Binding - RV Mount - For Blue Ox Base Plate

Video Transcript for Roadmaster Manufacturer Spotlight - Getting Started With Your Flat Tow Setup

Hello, neighbors, it's Brad, here at etrailer. And, today, I'm with Jeff from Roadmaster. And we're gonna be talking about some flat tow components. Roadmaster is a brand that when we do flat tow installs, which we do quite a bit here, this is always a piece of mind knowing that I have a Roadmaster base plate, or a Roadmaster tow bar, and undoubtedly we're using Roadmaster diodes, potentially stoplight switches, brake light relays, battery disconnects, fuse disconnects. You guys cover the whole spectrum when it comes to flat tow. Absolutely, we definitely have a lot of part numbers when it comes to the product that we build, and it's because we have to build all the intricate parts to make that vehicle towable.

And that's the thing is there's so many components playing ball, so, you know, the risk of things not working, a lot of times will come down to the installation. But when you have a product that you can trust right away, that's peace of mind, and Roadmaster is definitely one of those products. Most of the installations that I've done with Roadmaster products are a lot easier than some of the other competitors. The instructions are great, fit and finish, it's really well thought out is what it comes down to. And overall finish, just right here we have our Roadmaster Nighthawk, which is a premium tow bar, but one of my personal favorites.

And it's one of our highest-selling tow bars. It should be, it really is great. All the touch points are really thought out. And that's the thing, is if you're gonna be flat towing a lot, if you're a full-timer, you want some of the best products out there to make your life a little bit easier. So let's kind of break it down.

If someone was gonna, you know, flat tow their vehicle, where should they start to even begin to find what they need So typically, in reality, what you need is you're gonna need a base plate, a tow bar, because the base plate's the mounting point for your tow bar, your tow bar's the connection point between your motor home and your vehicle, so that way they both get there at the same time. And then, of course, you have your electrical cable that goes in between that's gonna activate the lights on your tow vehicle. Other than that, you have your braking system that has to be installed. And then, if your vehicle has any special parts that are needed, battery disconnects, charge lines, stuff like that, we all make that as well. And that's something some odd vehicles will, you need to pull a fuse, whether it be for ABS, or whatever it may be, or batteries need to be disconnected, and that's something, yeah, you can pull a fuse out and put it back in every time, or, yeah, you can take off a cable on the battery.

But for someone that's doing it all the time, you know, there's easier ways. Especially a guy like me, I mean, trying to get down on my hands and knees and crawl underneath there and pull a fuse, that's almost impossible. But even more so, the fact that the fuse was never really meant to be an on-off switch. So if you keep pulling it out, putting it back in, eventually you just wear out the contact. Someday, you're gonna put that fuse in, it's just gonna fall right out onto the floor. So what we try to do is make things a little bit easier. We came out with our switch that hooks up to it. Basically, the FuseMaster switch, you pull the fuse out one time, you hook the FuseMaster switch in, you mount it onto the dash. Now when your customer wants to disconnect, instead of having to crawl underneath and disconnect that fuse, they're just simply flipping a switch. That's nice, yeah, and battery disconnects are the same. You got a nice solenoid. If you push that button, you can hear it click, battery's cut, super easy. Absolutely, and the other thing too is, regarding the battery disconnect, we also have a manual version of that as well. We primarily promote the manual version for customers that are towing, like, a diesel pickup truck, because with those vehicles it creates more of an amp draw to start that vehicle and you need one per battery. So if a customer has a diesel pickup truck, more than likely have two batteries, they'll need two battery disconnects. And that's what we've seen more and more. 3/4 ton diesel trucks are becoming flat towed, which long gone are the days of just tiny, little cars being pulled and not just Wranglers anymore, things are getting bigger. And that's something that I wanna talk about too, weight capacities and tow bars. So as things are getting heavy or as people are putting weight on those towed vehicles, choosing the right tow bar is obviously a safe thing that they need to do. And what all do you guys offer as far as weight capacities and different tow bars So we start off with our lighter tow bar and it's gonna be our Falcon series. The Falcon series is currently a 6,000 pound rated tow bar. Once you start getting into our aluminum tow bar, which is gonna be the Nighthawk and the Sterling, those have an 8,000 pound tow capacity. And then, on top of that, we have the big brother to our Falcon all-terrain, which is the Blackhawk, that one has a 10,000 pound tow capacity. Okay, and I mentioned earlier, the Nighthawk, this is cream of the crop when it comes to tow bars. This you can spot across the highway. I always kind of play the game, if they have a Nighthawk or not. And that's because you'll find that there's LED strips in here. And the last time Jeff was here, I always wondered, why would you need those But it makes sense, at night, your headlights aren't on the towed vehicle. So if someone's pacing you and kind of forget there's a car behind that RV, this could be all it takes for them to go, "Oh, there's something there. I need to pay attention to that." Exactly, and that's typically the reason why we did what we did. Yes, there's not very many people in our pulled vehicle at night. But when you do, you never know, and you wanna be as safe as possible. Like I said, whenever a vehicle gets wired in, it's only the rear lights that are working on the tow vehicle. There's nothing up front. So by illuminating the tow bar, when you're passing to somebody and they all of a sudden wanna cut in behind you, they realize, "Oh, there's something there," and saves you from having a side collision. Yep, and just the storage of this, I like the spring-loaded action here. Bolt will go in there, stores nice and easy. But what I really like is cable management. For those that are already flat towing, once you have everything hooked up, if you don't have cable management, it's like throwing spaghetti across from the towed vehicle to the RV, and you guys have done a really good job of integrating a lot of that. So what you'll notice on the bottom of our tow bars is we actually channel on the bottom of our tow bars so you can run our safety cables through it, along with the umbilical cord as well. So the main reason why we do this is, first of all, more ease for the customer. They're not worrying about taking it off, storing it, or possibly taking off leaving it and driving it off. The safety cables go through here. But, more importantly, if there ever is a disconnect, we're actually holding the tow bar up off the ground. Oh, it makes sense, I never thought about that, and that's something that's really nice too. Those are included with this tow bar. Exactly, so with the Nighthawk and with the Sterling, the customer will get the umbilical cord and the safety cables as well. Now I recently got the chance to handle the Sterling up close, and very reminiscent of this. Correct, it's basically the twin sister to this. So the only thing that's really different is color, and then there's no lights in that tow bar. You have the same tow capacity. And I said we give you the same umbilical cord. We also give you the safety cables as well. Okay, now something that is unique with Roadmaster is gonna be the ends that are on the tow bar, and same with the base plate. You guys use a thicker pin than some of the other ones out there on the market. Yeah, we do a 3/4 pin on our tow bar connection. Now if the customer does have a different base plate, we can adapt this. We also have part numbers so the tow bar comes out of the box with the other end on it. And, in that case, it'll be a 1/2 inch pin. And this seems relatively new here. This style of handle is pretty sweet. So, typically, before, all of our tow bars came with a standard pin, with a finger pull on it. With the Nighthawk, now we've updated it, so it also comes with the pins that we consider we inchesre the aftermarket, it's our large handle pins. It makes it really nice and easy, especially if you wanna pull the pin out, you can actually get two or three fingers in there and actually pull that pin out, instead of trying to just fight a little, tiny finger pull. Yep, which seems small, you know, even being nonbinding, yes, it takes the tension off, and, yes, you can pull the pin out relatively easy, but you're right, just to have a actual hand handle to pull that out will make a world of difference. Jeff Correct. So obviously starting on the vehicle side, you said the base plate, that's gonna be the structural mounting point to the vehicle. And I've done a ton of different installs, and I mentioned before, when Roadmaster parts are on our schedule, it makes it a little bit easier, more peace of mind for us. Everything goes together really well, fit and finish is really nice. And so if someone's installing this at home, you're doing it yourself, I highly recommend going with Roadmaster. You're gonna save yourself a little bit of a headache there. But what makes yours stand out from other manufacturers So, basically, again, we are made in the United States, we manufacture everything in-house, we do all of our testing. So whenever we do test, we test the tow bar, or base plate, first three, four feet of vehicle, because we wanna make sure that wherever we're mounting it to is just as structurally sound as the rest of the product that's being put on it. Makes sense, yeah, and you guys really, it seems like, take the time to make it as clean as you can. Not all flat tow vehicles look pretty when they're uninstalled, but you guys really try to utilize the openings that are already there. We definitely try because, you know, when you're done with towing your vehicle, the last thing you wanna do is just see a bunch parts and pieces hang out or stuff that just doesn't look like it's supposed to be there. So, aesthetically, we want it to look as clean as possible. So we do have the disconnect fitting. So when the customer isn't towing, you just simply pull a pin, turn it 90 degrees, pull it out. And now all you just have is a little, tiny receiver where the disconnect pin was. Those small components are the things that kind of people tend to forget, you know, your stoplight switches, brake light relays, and sometimes you're gonna be missing out on any indication that you're braking without those. Exactly, so we make products, again, across the board, even if you have a braking system, it may or may not be ours, we also offer a universal brake light monitor. It is remote between the tow vehicle and the motor home. So if the customer ever does change motor homes, all they simply have to do is unplug it from the cigarette lighter, move it to the next motor home, and they're ready to go. But the nice thing about it is we actually monitor the brake pedal movement. So for any reason if something falls down and hits on the brake pedal while the customer's towing, we're gonna alert the customer that the brake pedal's actually being depressed. Well, and that's good too, 'cause there are ways to illuminate indicators based on wiring, but it's not a physical look at the brake pedal. So if a cable was disconnected, you know, on the cylinders or the attachment to the brake pedal, you could get a false negative. Exactly, and that's what we're trying to prevent. We want the customer to be as safe as possible and give them the physical reading of what their brake is doing, not what the braking system's calling for. So I've never personally flat towed outside on the road, but I always kind of envision that illumination of knowing that your brakes are, you know, applied. Having something on your dash, almost as like a heads-up display, probably makes it a lot better not having to look in a rearview camera and look at a light-up light. You can have it right there. Exactly, and then sometimes you never even know. I mean, if you're driving early in the morning, the sun's blasting in the face, are you gonna be able to see that signal in back It's much easier just to have a signal right there on your dash. Makes sense, then once everyone, you know, gets all set up, they're ready to go down the road, a lot of times people worry about rocks and, well, everything that the road throws at the towed vehicle, chipping it all up, and you guys have ways to prevent that. It's typically a concern after it happens the first time. So we have a lot of customers who will come back and say, "What can I possibly do" We actually have two different versions. One requires our old crossbar style base plate, which is our Guardian. Next, we have our Tow Defender. The Tow Defender's basically a skirt that goes across the top of our tow bar. It keeps all that dirt and debris down to the ground. We actually manufacture it, so it'll fit our product, and then competitor product as well. When the customer is not towing, all they simply do is just unpin it, roll it up. There's some elastic straps that hold it in place, and then it's just stored behind the motor home. Yeah, and those are nice, you know, you got gas struts kind of folded all together. It holds form, but it does sit back with that sleeve. So you can still get a tow bar cover, as well as that Tow Defender. So you can really protect everything, and keep all your products looking nice and clean for the next time you have to hook up. Definitely, and it keeps all those rocks and chips and everything from happening to your tow vehicle. You betcha, you betcha. Now old school days of flat towing, were magnetic lights, not the case anymore. We have so many different options now. And with the new technologies coming out with your vehicles, before we just had regular diodes, so if we need to splice into the lighting, we could just, you know, cut the wire, put a diode in. And, basically, what a diode is, it's like a check valve. It allows power to go one way, but not the other. That way we're protecting all the electronics in the vehicle. But, nowadays, they're doing something called multiplexing, which basically is one wire's doing the job of many. So we're getting a turn signal, stop light, or running light all from one wire. So how do you correct that issue We're actually gonna do it with, what we call, our Smart Diodes. The only thing that we need to know is, does that customer have an LED light or do they have an incandescent And all that is typically available on our Fitmaster as well. Yeah, and that's what we'll see a lot of times with Wranglers. In fact, the installation I'm doing today had the normal just diode kit. But if your Jeep has ParkSense, you can look in the center, you know, of your controls and see a little P looking at a cone. If your Jeep has that, you will need Smart Diodes. So you'll have Smart Diodes for LEDs, but also Smart Diodes for incandescent as well, right Exactly. So when does the Smart Diodes for incandescent come into play So if the customer, if their taillight assembly when they pull the taillight out, instead of having an LED light in it, they have an incandescent, which is the old-style bulb with a filament, that's whenever you use the incandescent style. And the only difference really is the amount of load that's put on that diode. We just have to make sure it's the proper load. Makes sense, and pretty much every flat tow install that we've done here gets Roadmaster diodes. We rarely, if any, have issues of them coming back. And I know it's scary for a lot of people to cut into their factory wires, but it's tried and true. Correct, and if you ever have someone that by any chance does not want to do that, we have a new kit that's available. It's a 10-inch LED strip. And what it does, it sticks below the taillight assembly so you don't have to worry about constantly sticking magnetic lights on. And, by the way, some of these vehicles now are made out of aluminum, so magnetic lights just aren't gonna work. But it gives you a nice LED strip that sticks below the light. Now if the customer wants to tow, whenever they hook up, the LED strips work, whenever the customer's just driving their vehicle, the normal lights work, and there's no tying into the vehicle wiring whatsoever. And a good thing when picking up diodes that you can do is really finish out your kit. So say for instance you already have a tow bar, maybe your umbilical shot or, you know, you need a six-pole to get everything mounted up, you can get the diodes in different configurations with an umbilical, and different styles of umbilical, four-pole lens, with a six-pole, there's different ways that you can build out that kit and really tie everything together. Yeah, and we actually even make available for any customer that may not wanna run their umbilical cord through their tow bar, we have a full coiled umbilical cord as well. So that way if you don't wanna run it through, you can just go either over or under the tow bar. Awesome, so for you flat towers at home or potential flat towers, highly recommend looking at Roadmaster products. Probably at some point in your flat tow build, you're gonna have a Roadmaster product, and you'll see the difference. You know, the care and just the thought that goes into each product is definitely there. So huge thanks to Jeff, from Roadmaster, for taking the time to kind of break that all down for us. All right, thank you. Thank you.