Blue Ox Tow Bar

Tow Bar for the coach

I had checked a couple of places and gotten quotes to install a tow bar and base plate on the coach and jeep and both places I checked said about $1,700-$2,000 without a brake system. It looks like I can buy the parts on the internet for about $1,200 so I planned on doing it myself and pocketing the extra money.

After doing the research on tow bars, it appears that most people think that Blue OX is one of the best products out there, so we purchased a Blue OX Acclaim 10,000lb tow bar and a base plate for our 2008 Jeep Liberty. We purchased them on the internet and paid a fair price for the tow bar and base plate. They arrived promptly and had good installation instructions. The instruction indicated that an experienced installer could do it in 4 hours. I have read blogs of people that have done it themselves and they indicated that it is a full day job, so I set aside the whole day for the job.

The job is really 2 parts. First putting on the base plate, then wiring the taillights. First thing in the morning I pulled the jeep into the garage at the lake and started removing the bumper shroud according to the instructions. It was a bit of a task but nothing terrible and soon the bumper shroud was out on the lawn and we were ready to install the new Blue Ox base plate.

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Here is the base plate ready to go onto the frame.

A little drilling is required to get a couple more holes in the frame, but then the bar bolts right in.

Bolted down tight with “Loctite Red” to hold the bolts in place, the base plate is now installed.

Now the bumper shroud just needs to go back on for a completed base plate job.

After two tries ( The first time I forgot an important part.) the jeep is whole again, and true to the advertising from Blue Ox you can not even tell it is on unless you look really close.

It took about 3 hours to put the base plate on, so right after lunch it was on to getting the tail lights hooked up. At first this seems like it should be a fairly simple task, but as it turns out finding a safe path to run the wiring harness from the front of the jeep to that back was a big job on our 2008 Liberty. It ended up taking several hours just to pull the wire through the convoluted path and wire wrap it tightly to the frame.

Finally as the afternoon was about over the job was complete, with only a few swear words and a couple of scraped knuckles.

Dutch Star By Scott

For years Irish and I have gone back and forth between a smaller more fuel efficient rig like a Born Free 32' President and a larger Diesel Pusher however it came down to would we be able to live in a smaller rig for an extended period of time without returning to a home base. While we agreed that the smaller rig would be great for mobility and fuel mileage the cargo carrying capacity was greatly reduced and you could not carry enough of life's necessities to be comfortable without being overloaded.

It seemed that in the long run getting rid of everything but the motor home and what it could contained would allow you more freedom because you would not have to backtrack periodically to a home base to refresh and restore there by saving on fuel and return trips

After much debate I spent the better part of 2007 researching used motor homes on the internet. As you may know there is a large market there and you can find just about what ever you are looking for. We finally selected a 2004 38' Dutch Star Diesel Pusher model 3812 that we found at a Newmar dealer in Minnesota.

We arrived at dealer's lot to picked it up early morning on August 7th 2008 and spent a day going over the motor home and learning about it. Spending the night in the dealers lot we picked up a bottle of wine and celebrated in our new Dutch Star.

After an evening in our new Coach we wrapped up a few things with the dealer and were off on our first drive in the DP without anyone with us.

Currently our DSDP sits on our Lake lot in Northern Minnesota. We have a complete 50 AMP RV hookup there with septic and water for it and it is quite comfortable. It has its own little deck that with a little jocking back and forth we can position the coach next to the deck.