Installation Guide for the etrailer Invisible Base Plate Kit on a 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee

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Hello neighbors, it's Brad here at etrailer. And today, we're taking a look and installing the etrailer base plate on a 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Now, your base plate is gonna be one of five main components required for flat towing your vehicle. And the baseplate creates a structural support that mounts to the frame of the vehicle, allowing you to hook up to your tow bar. And your tow bar is the connection point between the towed vehicle and the RV. Now, there's also gonna be your safety cables which are gonna attach to that base plate, and they're integrated into it, and that's also going to attach to the hitch on the RV.
So, in case we do have a disconnect, we still have those cables holding everything together. Now, you're also gonna need a braking system which is gonna allow you to slow and stop and have that towed vehicle do the same thing as you apply those brakes on the RV. There's also diode wiring which is gonna transmit your light sequence from the RV to the towed vehicle, letting people behind you know when you are braking, turning or have your running lights on. You do have removable arms that you're gonna put in place when you're ready to tow. And this is how you clip in using a pin and clip to your tow bar.
Now, this tow bar, we have the etrailer SD, has our specific ends which is gonna work with Demco and etrailer base plates. But not to worry, if you get a different brand tow bar, there's adapters available that you can put onto the ends, and that way you can still attach to your base plate. Now, as far as the installation goes, this is one of the easier base plates that I've done on a vehicle as it does kinda just replace the factory tow hook spots, and you do have a crossbar that goes across. But really, it bolts in directly where your tow hooks would be and there's minimal trimming required to allow this to be installed. Now, a lot of times, you do have to cut out to make sure that there's openings for your base plate to pop through.
But this one, we just removed these covers here where your tow hooks would be, so it made it nice and easy. And depending on your braking system, where you mount that up, you will have to trim out a little bit of the grill. Now, our Grand Cherokee today actually didn't have the factory tow hooks and that made it pretty easy actually to install. So, if you have a version with the hooks or without, doesn't matter, those weld nuts are still on the chassis and so it's gonna bolt up all the same. Overall, this installation's pretty easy, so let's take a look at that now.
That way, you can get your base plate installed. We're gonna begin our installation here on our wheel well. Now, in order to get to our rivets, we're gonna be drilling these out. You might wanna turn the steering wheel to open that up and you may have to do that for each side. So, our plastic rivets here, there's two of those, we're gonna drill them out. So, I'm using a fairly small drill bit. Basically, if you can get that center drilled out, it should pop out fairly easily. Just drill straight in here. (drilling tool whirring) And once you kinda drill straight through, a lot of times, when you bring your bit back out, this should be loose enough to where it'll come with it. So, go ahead and do that for both of these and then we'll repeat on the other side. And not to worry, the kit does come with replacement rivets. So, just 'cause we're drilling these out, we'll be able to replace these and it'll be back to OEM once we're done with the installation. (drilling tool whirring continues) Now, you'll find here, kind of where the fascia meets the front quarter, we're gonna go ahead, there's a 10 millimeter screw, we're gonna take that out. (driver tool roaring) And throughout the process, any hardware that we take off, I recommend having a nice, organized spot to keep it. It's gonna make reinstallation a lot easier. So, with that out, we should be able to pop this trim out. There's gonna be some clips here, so just work your way from the bottom up. (trim piece pops) And as long as you get past this little seam here, that's kinda what we're looking at. Now, be careful, this is plastic, and if you pry it too much, it's gonna cause a crease. And unfortunately, that's probably not gonna come out. So, once you're at this point, what I'm gonna do is just take some painters tape and put it on our plastic tabs here. Because as we pull the fascia off and put it back on later, we don't want that scratching against the clear coat, so just a little added protection. Now, we're gonna open up our hood and we're gonna have