- Recreational & Commercial Flat Towing | Blue Ox | Blue Ox
- Blue Ox Avail Tow Bar - Motorhome Mount - 10,000 lbs
- Blue Ox Tow Bar Features
- Jeep Wrangler Unlimited - Blue Ox Avail Tow Bar - Motorhome Mount - 10,000 lbs
- Blue Ox Brackets to Connect Blue Ox Tow Bar to Body Armor Bumper on Jeep Wrangler
Now, the Avail's designed to work in a two-inch by two-inch receiver tube. Now, you can replace this with a locking hitch pin or anti-rattle device if you choose. Now, another big benefit you're gonna get with the Avail tow bar comes after you've reached your destination. With older style tow bars there's a tendency for them to bind. Essentially, what that means is if your RV isn't dead in line with the towed vehicle, the arms are gonna have a little bit of pressure on them one way or another. Older styles, you just kind of have like a push-button release, there's even a whole lever arm that you had to buy to try to release those.
With the non-binding levers that we have here, simply a matter of pushing them down until they release on both sides. That cam action allows for releasing even under pressure.
Recreational & Commercial Flat Towing | Blue Ox | Blue Ox
Now when you're done using your tow bar you're gonna take it from the use position, you just want to raise it straight up just like this. You can see the pocket right here. As we tilt it down, that's gonna go around the rounded part right here, keeping it secure and preventing it from lowering. As you can see, once you have it in that position you won't have to worry about it rotating down towards the ground. Now not only can this be stored towards the driver's side, but if you had something here that was gonna interfere, maybe it's a ladder, water tank, something like that, it can just as easily be stored the other direction.
Now, a lot of people like to store their tow bar in the back of their motor home, also their safety chains, their wiring, your breakaway switch cable, just so you don't have to take it on and off every time. We've got a nice cover from Blue Ox, be able to slide that right over and keep everything out of the weather. Now to attach your tow bar to your vehicle you're just gonna rotate it out of the stored position and bring that straight back.
Here's a good look at the difference between our arms when they're retracted. In the extended position we're gonna be at about 52 inches.
Blue Ox Avail Tow Bar - Motorhome Mount - 10,000 lbs
That gives us about 10 inches of adjustability there to get the vehicle further away from the back of our coach. Now that's gonna do three things for us. Now the first thing that's gonna do is extend the reach. So we're not gonna have to pull our towed vehicle quite as close to the back of our motor home. The second thing it does is adds maneuverability to our setup.
The further away from the rear of the coach the car is, the more we're gonna be able to turn that coach for maneuvering. But I think one of the most important things is the way the car acts as it travels down the road. Since this is one of the longer tow bar setups, it gets our vehicle further away from the back of the RV, and that eliminates some of that side-to-side shifting we get on the front end of our vehicle. So by having the longer tow bar we're gonna have an easier time towing our vehicle, we're not gonna have to worry about getting it near as close to hook up, and it's gonna ride smoother behind the coach.
So a lot of benefits there, just having those longer arms available. Now to hook up to the vehicle, we want to take our clip off, pull our pin, now the pin and clip will be provided for both sides, so makes a really nice connection point. At that point we'll need to separate our arm and extend it to get it connected to the front of the vehicle. Now at the end of the arm we'll just want to make sure that the up arrow is pointing upward, we'll align that with the tabs on our plate, and secure it with our pin.
We'll do the same thing for the passenger side as well. Now our base plate's also gonna come with a coiled cable set. This provides the attachment point from the towed vehicle to the back of the coach in the event of a separation.
They've really provided nice cables. You can see how they're meant to expand and contract. So we can get the length we need out of the cables without having too much or having to buy a couple different ones to try to get the appropriate length. You see our chains will connect very easily, and they're gonna have keepers to hold them in place. We won't have to worry about them coming loose unless we want them to.
We'll then be able to connect that to the back of our motor home and as you can see, we've got the expansion and contraction. So as we make our corners and things like that it's gonna expand. As we turn the other way it's gonna contract, so we never have to worry about these going down and making contact with the ground.
Blue Ox Tow Bar Features
Now the Avail tow bar is designed to work with base plates that have an arm width up to 38 inches. So that's gonna cover just about all of the Blue Ox base plates out there. It's also gonna work with Roadmaster tow bars, you'll just need part number RM to adapt the ends of our arms to a Roadmaster style adapter. Now the tow bar's gonna offer us a 10, pound capacity.
That's gonna cover most of the vehicles you'll be flat towing behind your RV. And to stand up against the elements, the heavy duty steel has a nice bronze powder coat finish to it.
Jeep Wrangler Unlimited - Blue Ox Avail Tow Bar - Motorhome Mount - 10,000 lbs
Also to ensure a long-lasting product that's gonna work very well, the arms, which typically would be exposed to the dirt, the moisture, the grime, have a boot placed over them. As you can see, of course, that's gonna expand and contract with our arm length, it's gonna prevent any of that grime from getting inside, causing issues with sliding those in and out.
Now once you're connected to the vehicle you intend to tow, it offers a self-aligning design. So basically we just need to pull forward with our RV, make a slight left, then a slight right turn to allow our arms to extend, and they're gonna lock in position. Very happy with etrailer for the purchase of a Blue Ox tow bar with needed hook ups for lights, etc and an Air Force One Brake system for my F Crystal did a great job of comparing options and matching pricing from across the web.
She offered free installation. The Installer, Shane was awesome, I wanted all hookups hidden by the front plate on the F when not towing, Shane came through and then some.
Finally, the manager Robert was excellent on follow-up as we had some air leak once we got home. I have towed a 2 door Jeep Wrangler with this tow package in excess of miles behind a 30 ft. Class A motor home Ford V10 chaises. Towing the jeep with the Blue Ox has actually made for a more stable ride. I highly recommend this tow package due to quality craftsmanship, ease of installation and ease of connect and disconnect from the jeep.
I also bought the jeep tow bar and wiring kit. Installation was easy, just look it up on u-tube! The cover keeps things neat and clean. Just what I was looking for to tow my car behind my motor home. As advertised, the release handles work no matter whether you were traveling in a straight line required for my old tow bar or are partway through a turn.
Still no help when the car is facing uphill - it is impossible to pull the pins attaching the arms to the car - fixing that would be quite an accomplishment! For now, I will continue to avoid the situation or have my wife pull the car forward while I hold the release handles down.
Blue Ox Brackets to Connect Blue Ox Tow Bar to Body Armor Bumper on Jeep Wrangler
It is still the best tow bar I have ever used. The release required a little effort and when it released the car jumped about an inch showing the tremendous load on the bar and latch. My old Aventa would have required several blows from a heavy object to get it to release.