Alert PSA: Check your baseplates (and tow bars)

[Neal]

Disaster averted!!! I left Newmar service and at my next stop after disconnecting the TOAD I noticed something caught my eye, movement that shouldn't be! Holy $h*! batman! Okay, probably just a loose baseplate, I have not had it checked since install in Feb 2017, nothing led me to believe anything was wrong.

As I'm not far from Elkhart where I know Dan's service center is located (or Dan's hitch as we all call it) I immediately called them to see if I could come in for a baseplate inspection, tightening, etc. He said sure, come on up between 8 and 10 AM in the morning, this was Wednesday afternoon near closing for them. I decided to go to a local auto shop and see if they could just tighten it for me. He looked on the underside and said it's a broken weld and gave me suggestions where to take it. Nope, I'm going to Dan's who knows baseplates, tow bars, etc.

As you can see in the various videos/pictures in the YouTube video below it was bad. It took two days to repair and thankfully reasonably priced. Had this been my local Chevy dealer it would have been 4X the cost. The baseplate was not the issue, it was secure but the beams which this 2017 style baseplate attached to had welds break. Blue ox has since come out with a different design which is now installed on my toad after the repairs. I asked at pickup what the risk was of a complete separation, he said not really, the aft bolts were still intact. He did thank me for bringing it in as people do not make the right decisions and try to limp home with a dangerous situation.

I asked about getting a new tow bar as I liked what I saw with @Joe Hogan's new Blue Ox Avail. I have the alpha which is perfectly fine. He said Blue ox encourages replacing every few years, of course they do, it's business, but it has merit too as @Neemer recently asked. Blue ox will give around $150 for your old tow bar as a trade-in but I decided to keep my alpha as a spare and probably sell it for more than the $150 I could get on trade-in. I didn't need a new tow bar but I'm very thankful for Dan's hitch that I wanted to give them this business. The newer tow bars have better unlocking mechanisms and also don't have the pin system for stowing I deal with on the Alpha. They are priced at MSRP but that's fine, they are a small shop and I want to support them.

I asked about Avail vs. Ascent but will save that for another discussion as to why I chose what I did.

Dan's hitch did a great job and I'm glad to get my car back as they did offer me a loaner which was very nice of them. Elli likes having her car as she didn't care for the loaner.

If you're in the Nappanee area or Elkhart, consider taking your toad and tow bar to Dan's for inspection or servicing. It's cheap insurance and peace of mind for you as well and may save someone's life.

Dan's hitch
111 Alt Dr
Elkhart, IN 46514
(574) 262-5031

Dan's Service Center -- Elkhart, IN -- Under Construction

 

[Rich W.]

Yes that was fairly ugly. For my jeep I’m using bolt on mounts bolted through the bumper to the front cross member so the cant break away like that, but one tab on the right side broke while I was driving. I don‘t know what caused it and I had only driven about 400 uneventful freeway miles since the last time I checked it, but one of the two tabs the pin goes through was broken and dangling on that side. I rewelded it and then reinforced the whole thing with welded plates top and bottom. Now I feel quite certain it wont fail but the mount was a Blue Ox part that broke - BX88230.

 

[CaptainGizmo]

Holy crap, Neal...glad you caught that!!

Once again, here's ANOTHER example of how these plates can fail. Yet, we continue to hear from those who swear they've been using the same setup since the dawn of time!

This is why more and more of my friends are in the "replace every 3 years" club. Plus, routine inspections are super important. Heck, RoadMaster plates have a caution sticker on them, now, that says inspect every 3,000 miles!!

I think what happened to you should be YET ANOTHER wake-up call for all of us to inspect NOT only the Tow-Bar and Baseplates, but ALSO your frame-member. This is one of a string of cracked frame elements I've seen.

Glad all went well for you!