Flat towing a new Wrangler behind a pusher: base plate, tow bar, brake system, and the dead battery problem

Blue Ox plate and an Avail bar here behind a Grand Cherokee for eight years, no complaints, the bar folds up on the coach when it's not hooked. on the brake, i've run both. the box on the floor works but you're lifting a heavy box into the driver footwell at every hookup and you will forget it once. the air one lives in the Jeep and you stop thinking about it. on a coach with air brakes i'd spend the money.

the Jeep needs one thing more: follow the flat tow steps in the owner's manual every single time, in order. Jeep has the manual on jeep.com if yours didn't come with the paper one. people skip a step after the fiftieth hookup and that's when the transfer case gets hurt.

Roadmaster plate on ours, an older JK. whatever plate you get, have the shop wire the lights through a separate harness with diodes rather than tapping the Jeep's own bulbs. the kits that tap into the factory wiring on the newer Jeeps cause more trouble than they're worth.

Moved here from the New Aire thread by mod_carol_h.

So the brake box. Our Wrangler is a 2021 and we have the kind that sits on the floor and pushes the pedal. It works. What doesn't work is that every time we tow more than about a day, the Jeep battery is dead or close to it when we unhook. Twice now. Once at Lake Havasu, once in a parking lot in Kingman with me sitting in a dead Jeep in August. Ted thinks the answer is a new brake system for 1,650 dollars. I think the answer is a wire.

Moved here from the New Aire thread by mod_carol_h.

she's half right, which in our house is a win for me. the Wrangler has a bunch of electronics that stay awake when it's set up to tow, so the battery drains no matter what brake we use. the fix for the dead battery is a charge line from the coach to the Jeep battery. Roadmaster and others sell kits. the reason i want the air system is the New Aire has air brakes, and the shop here quoted the SMI Air Force One installed at 1,650. the box we have now came from the Bounder, which had hydraulic brakes, and lifting it into the footwell at every stop is Linda's job.

Moved here from the New Aire thread by mod_carol_h.

do both. the charge line first, it's a couple hundred bucks and a Saturday, and it ends the dead battery problem whatever else you do. then the air brake system when the budget says so. and Linda, if you're lifting that box every stop, that alone pays for the air system in my book.