etrailer | Roadmaster Direct-Connect Base Plate Kit Installation - 2016 Kia Soul

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Full transcript: www.etrailer.com/tv-install-r...
Hi, John with etrailer. Listen, if you're ready to hit the road, but you wanna take your Kia with you, then you need a base plate. And check out the one that we installed. This is the Roadmaster Direct-Connect Base Plate that we installed on our 2016 Kia Soul. Your base plate is gonna be the physical connection that's actually mounted on your Kia and it's just a part of all the other components that you need for flat towing. You're also gonna need a tow bar.
You're gonna need diode wiring, supplemental braking system, and safety cables. Right now we're gonna be focusing on the base plate and how does it operate. Well, going down the road, of course it's gonna tie directly in right here with these arms. When you get to wherever you're going, you're gonna disconnect these. So we'll pull the safety chains off, your electric, all of this stuff and you'll pop the pins from your tow bar.
And then just get it out of the way, just for the demonstration purposes here. Now you can ride around town with these arms on. Or if you just want a more of a stock factory look, you can pull the pin and these rotate out and you can store these in your trunk until you need them again. This Roadmaster base plate is a nice option I think for this Kia. As far as the looks of it, you know it keeps everything pretty well hidden.
So you have mostly a factory lookup here. It came with some dowels on here to mount up your diode wiring, which is also what you need. We we're able to tie in on the bar itself for our breakaway switch. So all in all, it has everything that you need to tow your Kia down the road. Now as far as installation goes, this is one of the more involved things that you're gonna do.
But with everything that comes with flat towing if you have diode wiring, and a supplemental braking system that you need to install, all of this should be done at the same time, in my opinion. There's just a lot of work. So you're gonna be pulling the front fascia off. There is some drilling that you need to do. So if you're wondering if you can do this in your driveway or if you just wanna see what it takes for a shop to install this on your Kia, stick around and I'll show you step by step. So to begin our installation we're gonna wanna raise the hood and the very first piece that we wanna remove is gonna be this upper plastic portion on the core support. You're gonna have some plastic fasteners and could be 10 millimeter bolts. On ours today we have a Phillips head fasteners here, so we're gonna get these removed. For these push pin fasteners, you wanna lift the center first. You don't have to come all the way out, but enough that you'll be able to pull the bottom portion out as well. So start in the middle, then pull up the outside. Keep in mind if these do break, a lot of these are now available at auto parts stores. They used to be kind of hard to find, but you can pick these up at the auto parts store. Once you get all your fasteners removed, this should be loose and the air box should pop right off. There's no other fasteners holding this on, so we will be reinstalling this later so set this off to the side. Keep your Phillips head screwdriver. You're gonna come to both wheel wells and you're gonna have a Phillips head screw that's holding these two panels together. So we're gonna remove this. Now if you can't get just your screwdriver in here, it looks like this can also be a 10 millimeter. If you have a socket set you can probably use that to separate these. So a 10 millimeter or Phillips head. Do this on both sides. Now you can come underneath the Kia here. We need to remove this large splash shield here. There's gonna be a combination of 10 millimeter and push pin fasteners. So you probably want a 10 millimeter socket and your pick or your flathead screwdriver. It's gonna be the fasteners just like earlier when we took the the core support off. (drill motor revving) (drill motor revving) So you're going to have some plastic fasteners along the front as well. Our vehicle today was missing some, that's why it's down right now. But you can use a trim panel tool or the pick. It depends on whatever fastener your vehicle's gonna have. It's not a big deal, but you just don't know what to expect. So the the main goal here is just to get this pan out of the way and disconnected from our front fascia, and that's what we've done. And if you follow the fascia around and tug on it you're gonna see over here we're gonna have a push pin fastener that we need to remove 'cause this is attaching it to the fender well. So we need to d