etrailer | Installing the Blue Ox Base Plate Kit on your 2010 Mini Cooper

Click for more info and reviews of this Blue Ox Tow Bar Base Plate: https://www.etrailer.com/Tow-Bar-Base... Check out some similar Tow Bar Base Plate options: https://www.etrailer.com/base-plates.htm Search for other popular Mini Cooper parts and accessories: https://www.etrailer.com/vehicle/2010... https://www.etrailer.com Don’t forget to subscribe!    / etrailertv   Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-install-b... Today on our 2010 MINI Cooper, we're going to be doing an installation of the Blue Ox Base Plate Kit with removable arms, part number BX1307. Now that we've got our fascia all put back in place all of our fasteners reconnected, you'll get a good idea of what the base plate's going to look like. You've just got a few things sticking out here in the front, not too noticeable, with the removable arms. As you can see it kind of blends in, rather than the permanent fixture arms, they kind of stick out a little bit further, a little bit easier to see. You'll notice we trimmed out up here on the grill area for our breakaway switch as well. Depending on your application that may be something you need to do, it just depends on where you're going to be putting it and what different parts you're going to be using. The great part about the base plate, it allows you to pull your car behind your RV safely. You're not going to have to worry about it being on a trailer and the brakes to the trailer functioning, wiring on the trailer, different stuff like that. Now when it's time to hook up to our RV, very simple operation here. We're just going to slide our arm in, as you can see it's a T-slot in there. You slide it in so we can press our pin. Press that in and just rotate it around. Our pin's going to click into position and then we can easily hook on to our tow bar, get connected to the RV and head down the road. In addition to that we're going to have the loop that sticks out here, that's for our safety chain. So we can hook our car to our RV via the base plate here. The base plate is also going to be secured by permanent safety straps that are going to go around the frame of the vehicle to make sure that doesn't come off as well. You're going to have convenient connections down here to hook up any kind of wiring that you're going to need to connect in. Our customer's gone wireless with this set-up so we don't have our box sticking out of there. If you're going to be wired you will have your connection there. First thing we need to do is open our hood up, that's going to allow us to get to the four pushpin fasteners here holding our grill in place. I'll just use a small screwdriver or a pick. You want to pull on them at center core, then by grabbing that center core you'll be able to pull the larger core, that goes in, out. Now, since this particular Cooper is equipped with lights there's going to be a nut here and a small screw here that we need to remove on both sides. That's going to release the bracket that holds our light in place. Now, the screw in here requires a torque bit. I'm using just a little right angle driver to do it with. As you can see, that loosens our light up so it will come off with our grill. We do want to keep in mind be want to pull the plug, so we don't want to stretch that wire out. Slide that apart there, now that light's going to be completely free to come off with the grill. Let's head over here to the driver's side and do the same thing. With both of our fog lights loose here, we're now going to pull out and press down slightly on the grill and allow it to slide out. We'll want to work from one side over to the other. Just take your time with it and kind of ease it out of there. Now we'll set this aside to be put back in after we're done. Now the next step would typically be to remove the T25 fastener located here on both of our tabs, but since the fog lights we're installed that bolt was actually holding those in place. So with fog lights, that step you won't have to do again, without fog lights you will need to remove those two bolts. Here in the wheel well we're going to remove the two pushpin fasteners, one located up here, one located down here. As you can see I've turned the tires quite a bit just to give us a little bit of room to get in here and work. This one down here spun on me so what I'm going to do is just put a little screwdriver or a pick in behind it and kind of pull out as we turn here. There you see it will thread out of there okay. Pull that one out, now let's do the top one. With these you just kind of un-thread the core and then you can pull them right out. Now over here on the passenger side we're just going to repeat that same process. We'll set all four of those aside to reuse later. Now we're going to push back the wheel well cover here. As you can see it's a nice foldable material. I like to kind of tuck it up beh