etrailer | Setting Up Your Blue Ox Base Plate Kit - 2024 Ford Escape

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Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-install-b...
Hey everyone, Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2024 Ford Escape hybrid plug-in, we're gonna be showing you how to install the Blue Ox base plate kit with removable arms. Before we do that though, let's just take a minute, we'll check this out, and make sure it's gonna work for you. Before we jump right in, I'd want to address one of the main questions that we get asked all the time in regards to setting up a flat tow. And that's, "What parts am I gonna need for my Escape to be able to flat tow it down the road safely" And there's a total of five main components. You'll have your base plate, your tow bar, your safety cables, your tow bar wiring, and your supplemental braking system.

With the Escape too, I always like to recommend what's called a towed vehicle battery charge line kit. This is what the front of your Escape can look like whenever you're not hooked up and flat towing, which I think is important 'cause you're not always gonna be pulling this behind your motor home, right And as far as the appearance goes, I don't really think it can get a whole lot better to be honest with you. The base plate attachment points and safety chain openings come right out, easy to get to, but they do a pretty good job of blending in. It has this matte black finish on it. I think it matches the plastic on the bumper really well.

And I also like the fact too that they give you a couple of brackets: one for your breakaway switch, and then one for your wiring connector down here. It's just convenient that with those being included, you're not gonna have to try to worry about making something or just trying to make do. Whenever you are ready to hook up, it's pretty straightforward. You just take the removable arms here, and you can pull the little plugs out of the base plate openings, which is a nice touch. It keeps them clean and everything.

You'll just take the arms, put them into the base plate, rotate it about a quarter turn, and it'll lock into place. Same deal over here on this side. With that said though, here's what the Escape can look like whenever you're all hooked up to your motor home and getting ready to pull it down the road. And I like it. It's organized, everything's easy to see and get to, which is good.

Anything that can help streamline the process of hooking everything up is a no brainer to me. And with that in mind too, when it comes to these Escapes, it's important to use our fit guide and make sure you put in your appropriate sub model, meaning with ours today, this particular base plate is going to work with the hybrid plug-in models. If you happen to have the standard hybrid model, not a big deal. There's base plates available for that that are extremely similar to this but just customized for that particular model. These removable arms are gonna give us the attachment points that we need to allow us to hook up our tow bar. And when you're ready to do that, you just line up the two ends, take your pin, put it through the tow bar end through the base plate, pin it down. The safety cable openings are gonna be big enough to let you use pretty much any size hook that might be on the end of your cables. That's really all there is to it. The base plate is gonna be compatible with Blue Ox tow bars as well as a lot of others to be honest. A lot of the etrailer and Demco tow bars will be directly compatible, among others, and even if not, chances are pretty good there's adapter ends available that allow you to switch everything over. For example, this is a Roadmaster Nighthawk tow bar. They make a version that has Blue Ox ends to make it pair up. But let's say if you had an older Roadmaster tow bar that had the regular Roadmaster ends, chances are pretty good this will hold true for a lot of them that there will be adapters that allow to change them out and pair everything up together. As far as how high the base plate is going to sit off the ground where you would pin the tow bar to, from that opening to the ground, it's gonna be about 15 inches. And you can use that to help figure out if your setup will need what's called a high low adapter or not. In our case, we're using one. It's this piece right here. And the whole reason behind it is to make sure that your tow bar is level. And usually a good safe bet is within three inches, right