Towbar removal question

[Andrew Prince]

I have been removing my standard towbar in preparation for the fitment of a receiver bar. The various bolts have been fun to get off so far - years of salt and mud in an exposed position and you can guess the rest. The bolts on the chassis were a combination of captive nuts and normal nuts - getting access to the nuts inside the chassis rails were fun too the N/S chassis rail had captive nuts for all 3 bolts whereas the O/S had 1 captive and 2 normal/loose nuts.. Is this normal?

Anyway, my question is a bit more dull - is there an easy way of disconnecting the towing electrics? Without simply cutting the cable I traced the cable back into the body behind the O/S rear wheel but it then disappears up the pillar without any plugs or connectors. I do not want to fiddle around disconnecting the individual wires in the back of the plug next to the towball if at all possible - very finicky connecting them all up again and there is plenty of Lincomb mud clogging the plug up. The plug is mounted on a rusty & bent plate clamped between the towball and drop-plate - no easy way that I can see of separating the plug from the towbar...

Advice and suggestions please!

Cheers,

 

[Andy]

my wiring was plugged into a spare plug in the loom in behind the nearside rear panel / light, I just unplugged it!

 

[Andrew Prince]

Did your cable feed down through the N/S sill and on to the towbar then, Andy? I am wondering whether the cable on the O/S on mine feeds over to the N/S via the roof over the upper boot door But feeding a connector plug back via the roof etc might be a challenge. The wiring on mine "looks" OEM but perhaps was the work of an aftermarket outfit and is thus unique?

 

[Andy]

As far as I can remember it came out behind the ns rear wheel at the bottom through a 'grommeted' hole, definately a toyota plug on the end and def nearside

 

[Jon Wildsmith]

Why can't you just unbolt the drop plate it's clamped by and it will be free then To get it off the plate, in the past I have undone the little bolts holding the socket to the plate so I could seperate them and then cut through the plate to the hole in the middle and bent it enough to slip the wire through.

 

[Andrew Prince]

Why can't you just unbolt the drop plate it's clamped by and it will be free then

Cos the plate is bent and rusty - alot of work to free up a piece of scrap Them's big bolts holding it on and the threads are corroded

To get it off the plate, in the past I have undone the little bolts holding the socket to the plate so I could seperate them and then cut through the plate to the hole in the middle and bent it enough to slip the wire through.

I am thinking this might be my best option - I was hoping there'd be an easier solution first, like a nice neat plug to unclip... Looking at the little bolts, they look good candidates for snapping, not that that would be a disaster. I need to get a new electrics mounting plate for the receiver bar, so it's simply a case of getting the plug and cable off intact.

 

[Andrew Prince]

Ended up snapping 2 of the 3 little bolts holding the plug on but the got the plug off, cut a slot in the mounting plate and got the cable off The old towbar is now decorating the front lawn!

I managed to "free" off a couple of the captive nuts on the cross-member... Wondering if I should strip the rest of the bumper and spotweld the nuts back on or simply use new hex nuts. I guess either way, I am stripping down the rest of the bumper because there isn't much access to hold new nuts securely while I wolt the towbar on

What seemed like a simple job has been one of the biggest b@llaches I've had on my 80. Fortunately everything that snapped was fairly accessible.

 

[Jon Wildsmith]

Pretty good chance more bolts will snap taking the bumper corners off but it would make it much easier to put the new bar on. I used a strip of steel drilled oversize with nuts tack welded one side and slide it into the chassis rail.

 

[AndyCook]

"I used a strip of steel drilled oversize with nuts tack welded one side and slide it into the chassis rail."

now thats cunning!

had right pain trying to do same thing a few years ago on the 4runner.
nuts glued and blu-tacked into ring spanner etc as they kept falling out trying to get them in place

but your solution much more elegant