How to Flat Tow a Jeep Wrangler Behind an RV
We're the Russos:
This is our 2015 Jeep Wrangler Sport Unlimited.
Now there are all kinds of cars on the market
that you can tow behind a motorhome.
The Jeep for us was our preference
because it's very simple to do
and there are a lot of aftermarket accessories
for the Jeep to be flat towed behind a motorhome.
We love this thing and we've towed it
over 15,000 miles miles behind our motorhome.
Today, I'm going to tell you all about how we do that.
First thing is, starting off with the motorhome, truck
any type of vehicle that actually has the
capacity to tow something this large.
Our Jeep weighs in at just around 4,500 pounds
fully-loaded in the back with the tank of fuel
and our motorhome has a 5,000 pound tow capacity
and it tows this just fine.
Now the weight of your Jeep is going to differ between
whether you have the Sport, the Rubicon,
what kind of accessories you put on it.
We actually got a aluminum bumper
to help keep the weight down.
This weighs just about as much as the stock bumper.
The steel bumpers away a lot more.
So that's something to take into consideration.
After you figured out your motorhome's tow capacity
the next component you need to start
looking into is a tow bar.
There are all sorts of tow bars on the market.
We went with the Ready Brute Elite
for a number of reasons that I'll touch on in this video.
But there are a number of other companies
that produce tow bars like Roadmaster, Blue Ox, etc...
You need to find one that has the amount of capacity
to tow a vehicle like this.
The Ready Brute Elite can tow up to 8,000 pounds.
So for us that was perfect.
Now you're tow bar will connect to the motorhome
via the motorhomes hitch receiver
and then you'll have two arms that will
come back to the Jeep
and connect to the Jeep via these brackets.
A lot of people will use base plates for their Jeep.
We chose to go with a fully integrated bumper
from Rock Hard 4x4.
If you want to review on that bumper
or the tow bar were using, we'll link to those videos here.
The bumper is all aluminum.
It has the brackets that are bolted directly
into the frame of the Jeep, which we prefer.
The next thing is to figure out how to stop your Jeep.
For us, with the Ready Brute Elite tow bar,
it's an inertia driven braking system.
Which means when we break the motorhome,
the Jeep will push up against the motorhome and
activate a lever that pulls a cable,
that pulls our break.
So this is directly tied into our brake.
There's no electronics or anything to really go wrong.
There are electronic systems on the market
that you can consider,
but we prefer to go with the inertia driven
mechanical system.
The other thing is, when you're braking,
you need the brake lights and the turn signals to work.
So this cable here is tied into our
light system in the back.
This is a Cool Tech wire harness
and we connect it to the RV via an umbilical cord
that goes from here directly into the
7 pin adapter on the RV.
The final thing on the list is to make sure you have a
heavy-duty set of safety cables that
could hook on to your bumper.
As well as a breakaway system.
That's this little guy down here.
Now, this is really in case something
happens with your tow bar
or the hitch receiver breaks away from the motorhome.
You don't want your Jeep going down the road
without any brakes.
So, the safety cable keeps it connected to the RV,
but if the hitch receiver breaks off
and the safety cables are no longer of any use.
This cable is actually tied into the frame of the RV
and as the jeep is moving away from the RV
it'll pull the brakes, lock those in place
and the Jeep will stop in the middle of the road.
This is a lot better than having your Jeep
going careening down a highway.
There are plenty of stories on the internet
about things like this happening.
And we actually met a couple who were
driving down the road, started to slow down,
and they saw their Jeep passing them on the highway.
Luckily the Jeep went off into the dirt
and they were able to go get it,
but sometimes people aren't that lucky
and the car will go incoming traffic.
You do not want that to happen because you are
responsible for anything that happens with your Jeep.
It's very quick to hook the Jeep up to the tow bar.
Just make sure that once it's hooked up,
you go through all the components and have a checklist
to make sure you haven't forgotten any pins,
all your cables are hooked in right places, etc...
The final part is to put your Jeep in tow mode.
Different Jeeps have different ways of doing this.
So we suggest going through your manual
and reading step-by-step how to do it
as you put your Jeep into mode.
It's very simple to do, but there is a specific sequence
that you have to follow in order to do it correctly.
In closing, once you have a vehicle that can
adequately flat tow your Jeep behind,
it's really about finding the right components
that work for your vehicle in your situation.
We will link to everything we've used to flat tow
our Jeep in the description below.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
If you enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up.
Subscribe! And let us know in the comments
what kind of vehicle you tow and how you do it.
Thanks for watching guys. Bye!
How to Flat Tow: Expedition | Ford How-To | Ford
Ford Motor Company:
Review of Towing a Vehicle Behind an RV - etrailer.com
etrailer.com:
etrailer | Roadmaster Tow Bar Wiring Kit Installation - 2014 Ford Edge
etrailer.com:
TrailerMate Tail Light Wiring Kit for Towed Vehicles Installation - 2013 Chevrolet Equinox
etrailer.com:
Why we Flat Tow with our RV
Where the Streets Wander - Bryan & Luann Street:
- Hi, and welcome to this
week's RV table talk.
We're going to be talking today
about flat towing behind a motorhome.
But before we get started,
let us introduce ourselves.
- Hi, we're Brian and Luann Street
and we're Streets Wander.
That's an RV lifestyle website
that offers education,
inspiration, and encouragement
for the RV life.
- In this episode is brought to you by
The Complete RV Travel Planner.
It's an RV travel planner that's designed
just for RVers and the
way that they travel.
You can find it at RVtravelplanner.com.
So, flat towing behind a motorhome.
What are we going to tell 'em today?
- Well let's talk about
different ways you can do it.
- Okay.
- First of all,
flat towing is referred
to as towing a car,
all four wheels flat on the ground.
- Right, and your car can be called a car,
a truck, a dingy, a toad.
- Right.
Different names for it.
We just call ours a car.
(laughs)
- And toad, they spell it T-O-A-D,
like T-O-W-E-D behind a motorhome.
- And you got dolly,
where you can actually,
a lot of cars can't be flat towed.
You can put the front wheels of your car,
drive up on a dolly.
- I considered that for about,
well I wanted to do it, honestly,
'cause I didn't know any
better in the beginning.
We had a Prius and I
wanted to dolly our Prius
'cause we couldn't flat tow it,
for the gas mileage, because
the Prius was amazing
on gas mileage, and I thought
that would save us money.
I considered it until Brian vetoed it.
- Yeah, we didn't want anything
extra to pull behind us.
Another thing I've seen is a lot of people
can bring trailers.
They put their cars on them.
They put motorcycles on them--
- Right, so.
A flat bed trailer.
- Flat bed,
or even an enclosed one.
- Oh yeah, right, I've seen
those being pulled, yeah.
Double-decker ones sometimes,
with all their toys.
- If you have a lot of
things you want to bring,
a trailer might be an option.
- Let's talk a little bit,
Brian, tell them why we chose to flat tow.
- I think the main reason
about flat towing is we knew
that we have the motorhome.
First of all, we wanted a car
to get out and explore and make our,
we parked an RV in our campsite.
We got our freedom built into that car,
which we love and we do that all the time.
The reason we chose flat towing
is that when we are ready to
go to the next campground,
I didn't want a lot of
packing or hooking up to do.
I wanted something that
we could actually do
in a couple of minutes and be on the road.
- So something that was simpler.
- Simple.
- So flat towing is simpler.
- It is so simple.
I actually, I would like
to do a little video
on how long it actually
takes us to hook up our car,
'cause I really think it
takes us about five minutes.
It could take us a few minutes longer,
I don't know, but it's very fast.
I mean, you drive it up, we hook it up,
and we're going on the road.
- Well, and I think the other
reason we chose to flat tow
was that we didn't want to
have a trailer or a dolly
that once we arrived at a destination,
that you actually have
to store that somewhere,
either in the campsite with you,
and sometimes campsites
aren't all that big.
- No, a lot of campgrounds
you can't even store 'em on your site.
You have to put 'em in a
different parking area.
- Right, and so that would require you
taking your car off, and
then backing that trailer in
using your motorhome to do that,
and then going to your campsite.
We see it done all the time.
There is nothing wrong
with any of those methods.
It's all depends on what you want to do
and how you want to pull
your vehicles with you.
But for us, flat towing was our solution
and we have really enjoyed
having that as an option.
The thing is is that it does
require you to have a car
that you can flat tow.
- Yeah, we talk about
cars for a minute, is that
there are just maybe I
call it a handful of cars
that can be flat towed,
and out of that handful
there's a few that are
probably more fit for it.
There's a list, we'll put that link below.
- There is, in the blog post
that is associated with this video,
there are links in there to
the MotorHome Magazine's
guide to flat towing.
They put one out every year
for the current year's vehicles
that tells you exactly which cars
can and cannot be towed
in that model year,
and you can buy back issues
if you're buying a used car,
you can buy those back
issues for the years
to be able to check out which models
are able to be flat towed.
But I think what you really wanted to say
and what you just said was that
the ones that can be flat towed,
out of those are probably not
ones that are your dream car.
- Well, I was going to mention it.
Obviously most of the cars
you're going to flat tow
are not dream cars, but
they're not meant to be.
They're meant to be something you use
when you get to the campground.
- Right.
- Out of that, I also
referred to the fact that
there are certain cars that require you
to do certain things before you tow them.
- Right, so even if
they can be flat towed,
they may not be as simple as just
hooking up and going.
- As simple as hooking up
and going.
Some, you may have to, after
you pull 'em for so long,
you have to run the car, run the trailer,
whatever is required.
- Right, when you stop
at a rest stop.
- When I are looking
for a flat-towable car,
I veto anything I have to do anything to.
I simply want something I can plug up.
If I want to pull it for three days
and unhook it, that's all I want.
- And then you know that
from the manufacturer
they have determined that you can do this.
It doesn't void your warranty.
It's setup to do it and it has a process
in which you put it into that
mode to be able to tow it.
- Right.
You can find these in the owner's manual.
Most, I'd say probably most
salesmen at a dealership
won't even really know
what we're talking about.
- No, and that's the thing
is they're salesmen, right?
And so you may be looking for a car
that you can flat tow,
and that's why these guides are so great.
And get the link on our blog post
because those guides can really help you
narrow down your search.
In fact, the last time we
went shopping for a car,
we went to CarMax,
because they have a variety
of cars all in one place,
and we were looking used.
We didn't want to buy a new one
to pull behind the motorhome.
So we went there and we picked
out three models to drive,
so we could test drive them all,
and that was really helpful.
We quickly narrowed it
down to what we have today.
And so we're going to talk about that.
So how do we flat tow?
- When we went shopping, we
found the 2015 Jeep Cherokee.
Not the four-wheel drive version.
- It is the four-wheel drive version.
- It's called the Trail Hog.
- Trail Hog, yep.
- And the reason we chose this one,
because it has the transfer case
where you can push a button
and it puts everything in neutral.
- Right, super easy.
It really, really is.
This is our third flat tow
vehicle that we've had.
This one is super easy to
put into the right mode.
It's just a little habit of sequences
that we have to do to get ready to go.
- It has one fault in it that was not,
we didn't know about
actually when we bought it.
- Well we did but, well maybe not.
- We didn't know about it.
- Okay.
- Until after we had the car.
It's got a thing where you have to do
something to the steering to--
- Avoid a death wobble.
- Death wobble.
- They call it that.
Nobody dies when it happens,
but it looks like the car may die
when it actually happens
to you going down the road.
In fact, some other
bloggers that we know about,
actually wrote about theirs.
They didn't know about it either,
and they had to get the extra,
what did we have to put in it?
- There's a special
wiring harness you put in
that actually adds power
back to your steering box
and it eliminates this problem.
We've never had the
problem since we've been--
- Right, we have never
experienced a death wobble.
We don't want to.
- We don't want to.
But, had I had known that
when I had bought the car
I probably wouldn't have bought it.
- Right, so that goes back to--
- It goes back to knowing
more about what you're buying
because I know there's
only one that is really
good out there and
that's the Jeep Wrangler
is really probably one of the best
as far as flat towing, for two reasons.
It tows simple.
And the second reason
is a lot of these cars,
when you're flat towing 'em,
puts a drain on the battery.
And if you have that
drain on your battery,
that can run your battery down very fast.
That happened to us because
our tow harness had a problem.
And we didn't realize that our battery
wasn't charging properly,
and we get there and it's dead.
That's what happened.
Flat towing, get the right vehicle,
is actually, it's simple to hook up.
We won't go back to
doing it any other way.
- No.
- Of course.
- But then what do we hook it to?
What do we have for towing?
- Well, we've used a Blue Ox system.
The reason we choose Blue Ox,
we got Roadmaster's out there,
there's a couple other
manufacturers out there
but I went with Blue Ox
for the reason is that
it's a big company and
I like the baseplate
that you put on the car
that it has the removable pins,
which you can't even
see that it's on the car
once we remove the pins.
- Right, so your car doesn't look like--
- It doesn't look like
it's a flat towed car.
I really like the clean
look of the Blue Ox.
This is a great system,
Roadmaster's a great system,
but I would say if any system
you're thinking of buying,
like, if you later think,
ever think you may possible trade
to a different car, make sure you get one
that builds base plates
for a lot of different cars.
- Yeah, 'cause you do
have to buy a base plate
that's unique to your car,
to your model in your car.
- Right.
- They're not interchangeable.
You can't take the plate
off your current car
and go buy a different
car and put it on there.
So there is an expense to that,
of the whole towing thing,
so be sure that when you're
picking out your car,
of course you can't be sure
that you want it forever.
Clearly, we've had three,
and we've experienced the
cost of it every time.
Don't recommend it.
But if you can try to figure out
which car you want and then
buy all the things for it,
then maybe future models,
when you upgrade to 'em,
to a newer model, it
still may work on that
depending on the model styles and stuff.
- When we went to our Jeep,
we had the Blue Ox tow bar
so basically all I had to
do was buy a base plate
and put it on the car,
and wire it up, we were ready to go.
One other thing, the next
thing we talk about is
you got to have a braking disk,
a supplemented system--
- Supplemental braking system.
- System in that car.
It is required by law
in they say 49 of the 50 states,
but if you're going to
do any type of RVing,
you've got to have it.
And what we're using is the RVibreak.
We've tried Air Gear.
We've tried different breaking systems.
- We've only had two.
Three, no, we've had three.
- We've had three.
- We wrote about that in a blog post, too.
- We wrote about that in a blog post
and I will say that
we've learned from 'em.
Our first one was a big box.
It was very hard to put in.
Matter of fact, she didn't
even want to mess with it
'cause it was so big.
- Well it was very hard
to position, 'cause it was very large.
- Yeah, and we won't
make that mistake again.
And the second one we had in our truck,
we had one that was installed into it.
And we won't make that
mistake again either because
once we sold the truck, obviously,
the system that was in
there wouldn't interchange.
- Right, because if you do
have a baseplate on a car
and you take it off to sell it,
you can sell that baseplate, right?
- Yeah, you could resell it.
- You could resell it,
or it may be a value in your price point
selling that car to another
RVer who wants to flat tow it.
- But your breaking
system, if you choose one
that is small, compact, and
quick and simple to put up,
you can put it in any car you want,
you can take it with you.
It's easy to store.
That's why we chose the RVibrake.
Take a look at that company,
it's a great company.
- And we talk about their
accessories and stuff in our post.
So in the link above, you can find that,
and find out even more information
about everything that we
talked about here today.
So let's recap.
We're towing behind a motorhome.
Today we're talking about flat towing,
and that was the choice that we made
that we didn't want anything
else to part at the campsite.
- We wanted to make sure we
had a simple, quick hookup
and be ready to go.
- Right.
Easy.
- Easy.
We like easy.
- Easy under five minutes.
And then the last thing is
that we have a Blue Ox system,
and we have an RVibrake
and we have a Jeep Cherokee 2015,
and that's how we flat tow.
If you have any questions,
please leave them below
in the comments and let us know
how you tow or the different things
that you've experienced
in your flat towing,
and if you have any other questions,
like maybe you're new to flat towing
and maybe we can help you answer them,
we'd love to communicate
with you that way.
Leave your comments and questions below,
and be sure to check out the blog post
associated with this for all the links
about the equipment that
we used, as well as the--
- There's a whole lot more
information in that post.
- There is, there is.
So thanks for joining us today
for our RV table talk, and
we'll see you next week.
- Take care.
- Bye.
The Corvette Got Towed
OgerVision:
hey guys how's it going I'm sitting here
in the 1990 Corvette ZR-1.
A few weeks ago I took it into a shop to get a routine oil change done it did not go as planned.
Usually I do these things myself and on
this particular day I just was getting
a little bit lazy so I decided to
let somebody else do it figuring gosh
what takes me 45 minutes might take a
shop that knows what they're doing and
has all the tools and doesn't have to
put the car up on jack stands it might
take them you know like 20 minutes.
Things didn't go well. When we went to
pull the car out of the shop it sits
pretty low to the ground and it tore the
exhaust off of the car.
The guy tried to put it back
together and says "hey you're good to go..."
Let's see how that went.
So as you guys can see, that didn't go
exactly to plan. That's okay.
I guess there's some truth to the old saying if you want something done right,
you have to do it yourself. At the end of the day the repairs to the exhaust system
wound up costing $120. The guy who runs the oil change place took care of the
bill, no problem. It just took a little extra
time and it was kind of an inconvenience.
Anyhow the car is all back together now,
and it's running great.
So that's it for this video and I guess I will see you guys on the next one. Bye bye!
2014-2018 Silverado 1500 Power Stop Z36 Extreme Truck & Tow Brake Rotor & Pad Kit Review & Install
AmericanTrucks Chevy & GMC:
Hey, guys.
Sarah from americantrucks.com, and today we
have a review and install of the Power Stop
Extreme Truck & Tow brake pad and rotor kit
for the front and rear.
This fits your '14 through '18 Chevy Silverado
1500s.
This kit features drilled, slotted, and OEE-compliant
rotors made from G3000 cast iron.
In addition, this kit includes heavy duty
ceramic carbon pads to deliver superior braking
with minimal dust and noise.
Coming in at around $450 for this entire kit,
this is an excellent upgrade option if you
do some towing with your truck, or if you've
larger wheels and tires and you're looking
for some extra stopping power.
I'm giving this install a two out of three
wrenches on the difficulty meter, it can be
done in approximately two hours, and is a
simple bolt-up installation with no modifications
required.
All right.
So, let's see how we install this on our truck.
For this install we used a caliper tool, a
rubber mallet, small pry bar, needle-nose
pliers, flat-head screwdriver, a pick tool,
cutters, a T30 Torx socket, 13, 18, and 19-millimeter
sockets, a swivel, a 3/8 ratchet, a caliper
hanger tool, a skinny 19-millimeter wrench,
a 13/16 wrench, and some optional but helpful
tools include impact guns.
All right.
So, the first step in our install is to remove
this caliper, we're gonna do so with a 19-millimeter
socket.
So ours came off nicely, but if for some reason
yours are spinning, you can get a skinny 19-millimeter
wrench on right here, and hold that still
while you take this bolt out.
At this point, we can remove our caliper.
Now, if it doesn't wanna come off nicely,
you can certainly use a small pry bar, and
just get between the caliper and the bracket
and pry it off.
Or if you don't wanna do something like that,
you can remove the entire bracket at this
point, but, since ours is cooperating, let's
pull it off.
At this point grab your caliper hanger, or
if you don't have this, you can use a bungee
cord, I'm just hang it out of the way so there's
no tension on this brake line.
At this point, we can remove our brake pads.
You can slide your brake pad out up top here.
If it starts getting hung up, press down on
the small tab up in the top of the bracket,
and you should be able to slide it past.
Using an 18-millimeter socket, remove the
bolt holding the caliper bracket to your knuckle.
All right.
So, with our Torx-head bolt removed, our rotor
may come off nicely.
But if yours doesn't, you can certainly hit
it right on the back here where our caliper
was with a rubber mallet.
And if that still does not work, you can drive
a bolt in either one of these bolt holes here,
and it should work the rotor loose.
Let's remove our rotor.
All right.
Now that we have our stock rotors uninstalled
from our truck, we can put them side-by-side
with our Power Stop rotors, really check out
some of the differences.
You may have already noticed, these are drilled
and slotted.
This is to aid in cooling, and when combined
with the ceramic compound of our brake pads,
give you a little more stopping power.
So, if you're like us and we have larger wheels
and tires on our truck, or if you do some
towing, this is a great upgrade option to
your OEM.
So, at this point, we can prep our caliper
bracket to go back on our truck.
We are going to remove and replace these metal
brackets that hold your brake pad in here,
Power Stop has included some nice new ones.
They've also included this small rubber boot
that keeps dirt and dust out of the inside
of your slider.
Now, ours look really great, they look in
good condition, so we're not gonna replace
these here, but it is nice to know that if
you get into this and you see yours is damaged
or ripped, Power Stop has included some new
ones.
With that said, let's grab our flat-head screwdriver
and remove our brackets.
Now, there are some tabs right here at the
top part of these metal brackets, and it might
help to just get behind there a little bit,
and just release these so that we can remove
them.
Here's Power Stop's boot that they've included,
there is a metal sleeve here, similar to OEM.
And if you wanna remove this, you just have
to get underneath this tab here, maybe a little
bit difficult to do, but you should be able
to replace it with this nice new one once
you have your old one off.
Now, regardless of whether you're gonna replace
this boot or not, I recommend pulling the
slider out, and getting a little bit more
lubricant on the end here to make sure the
slider functions nicely.
Power Stop has included this lubricant to
lube up your brake components.
Grab a little bit of this and just add it
to your slider, just to ensure there's enough
on there, and that you have flawless brake
function when you put this back together.
And then go ahead and reinsert it into your
boot.
And we can repeat that process with the other
side.
Removing the slider, just adding a little
bit more lubricant there, and then reinserting
the slider into the boot.
Moving on to our clips.
At this point, we can release these clips
on either side that hold in our brake pads,
might be helpful to use a flat-head, and get
right behind here to pop this tab, and get
our clips off.
Grabbing the new clip, get it in place, and
press it onto our bracket in the exact same
spot as our other one came off.
Repeat that on the other side.
It is important to note that these brackets
are identical.
So, as long as you're putting them in the
exact same formation as the ones that came
off, it doesn't matter which one that
you get.
You do wanna grab a little bit of lubricant,
and get right in these sliders right here
where the brake pad will sit.
So, you wanna make sure you spray your rotor
down with a little bit of brake clean before
installing it on your truck, front and back.
Also, it is worth noting that, because these
are drilled and slotted, it means that they're
directional.
So you do wanna grab the one that says "Front
driver side" and it's nice that Power Stop
put that on there to make it a little easier
on you.
But once we have our rotor lined up in this
configuration, it's easy to see with our Torx
bolt hole and the threaded hole for getting
these off right next to each other, go ahead
and get these on your truck.
At this point, we can reinstall our Torx bolt,
it will help us keep this rotor on the truck.
Grab your T30 Torx socket and tighten this
down.
At this point, we can reinstall our caliper
bracket, let's get it in place and get the
bolts threaded.
Grab your 18-millimeter socket and tighten
these down.
Go ahead and slide your brake pads in at this
point.
We've already put some lubricant on the inside
here, but if you'd like to put a little extra
on these tabs, you're definitely welcome to.
At this point, we can unhang our caliper,
and then compress the pistons so we can fit
it over our brake pads.
With our piston compression tool, slide it
in there, so that it's even against both pistons.
With our pistons pushed in nearly flush, these
should clear the brake pads now, so let's
get it installed on our truck.
Replace the bolts at the back of your caliper.
Using our skinny 19-millimeter wrench, grab
the backside of the slider here, and using
our 19-millimeter socket, tighten this down.
All right.
With our driver side all buttoned up, you
wanna repeat that process on your passenger
side, but for now, we're gonna jump to the
rears.
All right.
So the first step in our install for the rears
is, we're gonna have to remove these metal
clips here.
If you haven't done brakes already, your truck
will have them, they're just from the factory
in order to keep the rotor on during assembly.
So let's grab a pick and a set of needle-nose
and get these off.
Since we aren't gonna reuse these, if these
don't wanna come off, you can definitely just
cut them, and take them off.
They don't really serve a purpose here, so,
that's what we're going to do.
Using our 13-millimeter socket and our 13/16
wrench, remove the bolt at the back of the
caliper.
This one's sticking a little bit, so we will
grab our gun.
We did put the bolt back in the bottom one
to prevent the caliper moving.
With our bolts out, grab your caliper hanger
tool, or a bungee cord, and we'll hang our
camper out of the way.
At this point, we can remove our brake pads.
You can go ahead and try to slide them out,
but if they do get hung up on this small tab
here, just grab a flat-head and press the
tab up, and you should be able to slide them
out.
Grab your caliper bracket and remove it off
your truck.
At this point, we're ready to remove our brake
rotor, we will need to persuade it off the
truck lightly with our rubber mallet.
And before we do that, we're gonna put a lug
nut in place just for safety.
A couple of hits with this rubber mallet should
it get it to come loose, but if not, you can
run a bolt in either one of these holes to
slowly work it off.
At this point, we just wanna double-check
our boots and double-check our slider function
here.
Make sure there are no tears, and make sure
our sliders are working properly, which they
are.
So we are gonna leave them as is.
If for some reason you see one of your boots
is ripped, or one of your sliders is not moving
like it should, this would be a good time
to take it apart and replace it.
With that said, let's grab our flat-head screwdriver
and remove our brackets that hold in our brake
pads.
You do need to slide it on the inside of your
caliper bracket and release the two tabs.
So, now we can move on to the other side.
Release the two tabs in the center here, and
that should free up your bracket.
Now we can replace these with the included
Power Stop brackets.
We also wanna put a little bit of lubricant
on the inside here where the brake pad sits,
to ensure it slides back and forth with ease.
All right.
Now we can get our rotor installed on our
truck.
It is important to note, you wanna spray this
with brake clean before you install it, and
make sure to get the back portion of this
where your parking brake contacts.
Like our front, these are directional because
they're drilled and slotted.
So ensure you are grabbing the correct one
labeled "Driver side."
At this point, we can reinstall our caliper
bracket.
Grab your 18-millimeter and tighten these
down.
At this point, we can unhang our caliper,
and go ahead and push the piston in so it'll
clear our brake pads.
With the piston pushed in on our caliper,
we can now get it mounted back on our truck.
Grab your 13-millimeter socket and 13/16 wrench
and tighten this down.
All right.
Now that this side is complete, you do wanna
repeat the process on the other side.
But, that's gonna do it for the review and
install of our Power Stop brake pad and rotor
kit.
Remember, for all things Chevy, keep it at
americantrucks.com.
Tesla Model X: Edmunds Tahoe Tow Test | Part 1
Edmunds:
DAN EDMUNDS: Tesla changed the
game for electric vehicles.
But it's not just the
230 something mile range
they came out with initially.
It's also the
supercharger network.
So you can go places
in the CV, something
that you can't do with
other competitors.
The Model X comes
out, and it's got
a tow hitch and a tow rating.
It can tow 5,000 pounds with
20 inch wheels and 3,500 pounds
with the 22 inch
wheels that we have.
What we've got here today is a
happier camper HC1 fiberglass
trailer.
It weighs about 1,500
pounds, a little more
than that with the
stuff we've got in it,
and we're going to tow it using
our Model X on the supercharger
network.
Let's go camping.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
One of the unique features
of the Tesla is the tow mode.
Now you've heard of other
cars having tow modes,
but that's usually something
that changes the shift
points in the transmission.
What tow mode does here is
there's a little blue indicator
light here, and it's
blue, because when
I plugged in the
trailer, it recognized
that I plug-in the trailer,
so it's automatically
checking all your
trailer lights to make
sure they're all working and
that it's all plugged in right.
We're towing a happier
camper HC1, which
is a small single axle trailer.
They've styled it after some
stuff that was sold in the 60s,
but they've really
funkifide it nicely.
The thing I like
about it, though,
is something I didn't really
notice when I first looked
at it is it's got Windows
front and rear that
line up with my mirror, so I
can see cars right behind me.
I can see my bike.
And the other thing
is you may have
noticed it has these
fenders on the side that
give it a little flair.
There's two reasons for that.
One is the fenders
make it a little wider
where somebody's sleeping, so
you got wider sleeping area.
But also the fact
that they're cut
low like that means that I
can see out my mirrors here,
because the trailer body
where I need to see past it
isn't as wide as
it is lower down.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We made it to Mojave, our
first stop on our trip,
and we have 65 miles
of range left, which
is more than I thought
we'd have at this point.
The trip up here was easy.
I mean, there's a lot of hills.
We gained about 2,500
feet in altitude.
I just set the cruise
at 55 miles an hour.
I wasn't really sure what
the range implications
of towing this trailer
were going to be,
so I was taking it easy.
But the thing about towing
with an electric vehicle
is there's no shifting.
There's no real
noise that's produced
if it's working harder.
Going downhill, going
uphill, going flat ground,
it all feels the same.
There's no difference.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We just left Mojave
supercharger,
the first one of the trip.
We stayed there to get
it absolutely full,
because this run to
Lone Pine is 118 miles.
Which doesn't sound
like it should
be a problem, because this
thing has a range of 230, 240,
but we're towing a trailer.
That about cuts
the range in half.
We may decide to peel
off at Inyokern, which is
an intermediate supercharger.
It adds about 30 minutes
to our trip to pull off,
a splash of electricity, if you
can call it that, and go again,
But we may want to do it.
But I'm looking at a graph that
started when we left Mojave,
and the gray line was it's
prediction of my consumption
when we left.
And now that I'm on
the road and it's
kind of seeing
how fast I'm going
and the slope and
headwind or whatever,
it's made this new calculation.
And it shows that I'll make
it, but at 20% battery.
And it's turned
yellow, because it
thinks 20% battery
is a little iffy,
and I'm not in
disagreement with that.
But if I switch to this
consumption map instead,
you can see that it's early
calculation was probably
based on this peak, which was me
getting out of the parking lot
and accelerating up to 55 and,
kind of, climbing a hill out
of town.
And now that we're
cruising, you can
see it's actually really good.
So I think if this keeps up,
I should see these lines come
back to where they were.
And I'm less-- it actually
just went up to 21 right there
and went from yellow to
green, so maybe we're good.
But again, that's the
thing with this car.
It's a little bit
of a math problem.
You have to be comfortable
looking at graphs
and thinking about this stuff
and, kind of, forecasting.
I did a lot of that on
other cross-country trips,
and it looks like this trailer
is forcing me to do it now.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So we stopped in Inyokern,
which wasn't the plan.
We were supposed
to go to Lone Pine
just 118 miles up from Mojave.
The battery that
looked like it was
going to be just fine with 22,
23% charge started to drop.
And when it got to about 16,
15% and it was in the yellow,
I thought, well,
there's a chance
if it keeps dropping like
this that we won't make it.
Decided to peel off, stop
here quick like in Inyokern,
probably only need 20,
25 minutes of charge,
and then we're off.
So the sun is pretty
much directly overhead.
It's noon, and this
windshield/sunroof,
I can feel more radiant heat.
And depending on
which way I turn,
the sun's coming straight down.
So we're going to deploy--
you may be thinking
there must be
some kind of cover
or a sunshade,
and the answer is yes
there is and this--
this is it.
So I'm going to pull this
thing out, and there it is.
Whoa, oh, turn it over.
There we go, and
that's what you get.
So we're here in Lone Pine.
We made it.
It was really no problem
at all, because we had
that top up charge in Inyokern.
Here it's not totally perfect,
because the supercharger
here next to the
film museum, it's
in a really tight parking lot.
Technically, it's
a nose in spot,
and I wouldn't
have to disconnect.
But if I did that, none of
those cars could get out.
I've got to drop the trailer
here, pull the car in, charge,
come back, hook up again, and
then it's off to the campsite.
So we just left Lone Pine where
we had some nice barbecue,
and now we're headed into
the place called the Alabama
Hills where a lot
of Western movies
were filmed back in the day.
Now we didn't have any problems,
but it's not a quick way
to travel, because the
supercharger time is time
that you wouldn't have to
spend in a gasoline car.
We always knew
that with a Tesla.
But when you're
towing with a trailer,
the charge times are just that
much longer because you're
using so much more electricity.
It took us by my quick
reckoning over 6 and 1/2 hours
to go 200 and 12 miles,
including the charges in there.
Tomorrow's leg is probably the
most difficult one of the trip.
We're going to leave
here and go to Mammoth.
It's 95 miles,
which isn't so bad.
But it's almost 4,000
feet in elevation,
so that's a lot of climbing.
So we're just going to have to
take it easy and not freak out,
and we should be fine.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
etrailer | Roadmaster Tow Bar Braking Systems - Brake Systems - RM-9160 Review
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