Thor Forums

[bharrisv65]

Finally got everything installed, hooked up and rolling, four down towing. I bought a 2017 Ford Focus hatchback, just decided it was a good, small car with room for some storage and 4 people to fit. I installed a Blue Ox baseplate, hooked to a Blue Ox Avail tow bar. The baseplate was fairly easy to install, had to take the whole front fascia off the car but it wasn't really very hard, just had several screws and those plastic push pins to remove. I like the fit and finish of the baseplate, you can almost not even tell it's on there. There's a bracket to mount the break away switch and also the wiring plug. I did have to trim part of the front plastic grill fins for the pin holders to poke through but that was easy. The instructions mentioned having to trim other areas but the only thing I had to do was to cut off part of the washer reservoir bracket but they have a new mount on the baseplate to take place of that. The worst part was drilling those 1-1/4" holes in each side of the frame. I was lucky enough to have a 1" drill bit which I was able to "wallow" the holes out large enough. For the brake/tail/signal lights, I decided to go with the ones where you drill into the tail light housing and install separate bulbs. Originally, I was going to go with the diodes and tap into my wiring but after a LOT of thought, decided to not have anything electrical going into the car wiring so IF I have any problems with the transmission, the factory cannot say it was energized in some way by the MH. Once I unhook the battery (I unhook the positive cable) there is no juice going into the car except power to one, isolated socket where I plug the RVI brake controller in. I have a battery cable end that I push onto the post where the car positive cable came off with a wire hooked to it running just to the socket inside the car. So far I'm very pleased, can't even tell the car is back there!

Shout out to these vendors - Blue Ox and RVI Brake for making some great products!