Installing the Blue Ox Patriot Portable Flat Tow Brake System on your 2018 Jeep JL Wrangler

Click for more info and reviews of this Blue Ox Flat Tow Brake System: https://www.etrailer.com/Flat-Tow-Bra... Check out some similar Flat Tow Brake System options: https://www.etrailer.com/tow-bar-brak... Search for other popular Jeep JL Wrangler parts and accessories: https://www.etrailer.com/vehicle/2018... https://www.etrailer.com Don’t forget to subscribe!    / etrailertv   Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-install-b... How we doing today neighbors Ian with etrailer here. Today we're looking at the Blue Ox Patriot portable braking system on our 2018 Jeep Wrangler JL. Let's get into a couple features and then that install. A couple good reasons you may want a portable braking system over a permanent system that's stuck in the vehicle is if you had two or more vehicles that you planned to flat tow, say you've got one that you'd prefer on your camping trip where you're gonna be going out and maybe driving over some rockier roads, you'd want to take the Jeep. And then if maybe you've got a sedan that you'd use for city driving this portable option's really gonna make it to where you don't have to pay as much for the two systems 'cause they're pretty expensive when you get into the permanent systems. And also this is just gonna allow you that ability to switch between those vehicles pretty rapidly in comparison to trying to set up a second vehicle. And I will say the setup and installation of this really isn't that bad as long as you've got that good 12 volt power source. Once you're flat towing, some vehicles, you will have to disconnect the battery. So that's something to keep in mind with the portables is that you will need a constant source of 12 volt power for it. And with this portable system, once you've packed everything up, you're ready to hop back on the road. It's as simple as just plugging in the breakaway switch, plugging in our 12 volt power, sending power to the unit, allowing it to set up. And then once we've got our good confirmation, we're ready to hop back on the road. And then this portable system is going to feature a breakaway switch just like a permanent system would where if we have a catastrophic disconnect, that switch will be pulled, thus supplying the brake to the vehicle and slowing it down to a complete stop. Now normally this controller box would be mounted up in your RV, but I wanted to be able to show this while we're looking at the brake system here and you're gonna see where it's got force. And then this number five here in the top left corner, what that's indicating is the maximum amount of force that can be applied to the brakes by the system. So that can be changed in the settings if you needed a higher amount of force. Of course that is something that can be adjusted. Additionally, here at the bottom you're gonna see our large brake button and when that is applied, that will work as our manual brake. So that way if you needed to apply more pressure to your towed vehicle opposed to your RV, this is how you would do so. And then the controller does feature a backlit option, so if you didn't want that glaring at you in the middle of the night, you can always turn that light off. As I had showed earlier with the breakaway switch, not only when that's pulled will it activate the brake in the system, but it's gonna give you this nice tone and immediately tell you to pull over. So you've got lots of warning here if something was to catastrophically fail. So I've mentioned that you are able to change the force and if we go into the menu option here, that's gonna bring up another list of adjustable items. You'll see also there is sensitivity which is going to match whatever you happen to be pushing on the pedal with. Since this is a proportional braking system, the amount of pressure you apply to your pedal up in the RV is going to be the same at the portable braking system in your towed vehicle. And while we're talking about it of course, you'll wanna make sure you've got that 12 volt system already hooked up in your vehicle. If not, we've got some great kit options that'll help get that squared away. But let's hop into that install and kind of go through how to get this set up. We will need to run our 12 volt wires through the firewall. What I've found is there's a good grommet up to the right of our brake booster here. So we could just take a pair of needle nose and grab one of the tabs on that grommet and we'll give that a good pull and that'll come out. With the grommet removed, we will need to pass through the two wires for the 12 volt outlet. So we'll just drill a nice big hole dead center of those for that to pass through. (drill whirring) And with the grommet still removed, we will run ei