Kia tow-bar day 1

It was a bit windier than on recent days but the weather forecast said that despite the small possibility of thunderstorms later in the day, this would be a good day to fit the Kia tow-bar. I got myself organised by identifying, labelling and laying out all the parts according to the assembly instruction diagrams, on my kitchen floor.

Then I set the Kia up on a slope at the side of my front lawn for easy access to its rear end with some nice clean plastic sheets to lie on in the hope of keeping the ‘Aoûtats’ at bay.

Following the assembly instruction diagrams was a lot easier than I’d thought it would be. The main reason was that whereas the Astra tow-bar was a ‘custom’ design that needed the boot to be drilled as there were no built-in tow-bar mounting points, the Kia tow-bar uses mounting points that were designed in by the manufacturer. Some of these already had bolts in that were discarded as the kit came with a complete set of bolts and others were covered by small round plastic stickers that I had to remove and throw away. All went pretty well until I got to the main mounting plates for the right-hand end of the tow-bar which used bolt holes that were already being used for the original towing eye. The diagrams were far from explicit about how to deal with this but luckily in my researches before selecting a tow-bar to buy, I’d read ‘how to’ instructions on various manufacturers’ web sites. Some of these had mentioned removing and cutting a chunk off the towing eye, which I hadn’t understood at the time, but as soon as I saw it for real, I did. Out came my trusty ‘meuleuse’ and off came the top part of the towing eye mounting bracket.

Both end mounting plates went on much easier than I’d thought they would do. In fact, one of the most difficult bits was removing the rear exhaust rubber hangers which were pigs to get off even using silicone lubricant spray that I luckily had in my ‘atelier’. Here’s how they looked when fitted.

According to the instructions, I then had to cut a notch in the bottom edge of my plastic bumper measuring 5 cm x 4.5 cm. I found afterwards that the 4.5 cm dimension was a bit excessive and it could have been up to 2 cm less, making for a neater final job. However, with the tow hitch fitted you can’t see it unless you get right down and look for it, so it isn’t too important. Then came the most tricky bit of the whole job – fitting the main bar that holds the swan-neck with the tow-ball on it. Each end had a hole in that was tapped for a large bolt and I took the precaution of running a bolt into each one before offering the bar up to the vehicle for fitting. And lucky I did, because one must have had some over-spray in it because it was very tight and would probably have been impossible to fit if I hadn’t, lying on my back under the car taking the weight of the bar with my legs. It was a pig anyway and the air around Le Bousquet was blue for a while until I’d got the bolts tightened.

Here’s a final shot taken under the car with the main bar and tow hitch in place. You can see the bracket for the electrics socket on the rear securing bolt of the tow hitch swan neck and fitting those will be the final part of the job.

Here’s a ‘selfie’ that I took when I’d finished and had caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror!

The final job (OK, without electrics) looks pretty good I think. There were a couple of scratches on the swan-neck that I had to splash a bit of smooth black Hammerite on but I don’t think that that will be too important in the whole scheme of things.

So what were my conclusions? Overall, very positive. The sheets that came with the kit gave an installation time of 3 hours and I guess that that would be possible for an experienced installer who’d done a few of these before. The instructions could have been more explicit about how to deal with the existing towing eye ie the necessity to cut the bracket, but luckily I’d read about this elsewhere before. I also found that the number of large flat and locking washers was incorrect – there were too many small ones and an equal number too few of the large ones. I worked around it, but it would have been nice if the quantities had been correct.

The main weakness, that I haven’t come onto yet, seems to be the kit’s electrics. Nothing is assembled. I don’t mind connecting the wiring to the electrical socket but the wires themselves have just been supplied in a bundle and not fed through a long plastic sleeve, which is separate. Feeding them all through together is proving to be tricky and it looks as though I shall have to find a length of stiff wire to attach to one end of the bundle and then pass through the plastic sleeve bringing the wires with it.

I’m also a bit concerned that by fitting the car socket to the rear of the hitch under the car, the wiring to my trailer plug might be a bit too short to reach and could require lengthening. But that’s for another day. At least as it is without electrics I can now get across to Brico Depot and pick up some ballast and cement in my trailer and then get on with laying the base for my new wood store. So at the end of the day, I’m a happy bunny 🙂