21st Century Pony
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Martin
- Joined
- May 21, 2022
- Threads
- 31
- Messages
- 1,752
- Reaction score
- 1,812
- Location
- Arlington, Virginia
- Vehicles
- Ford Mustang Mach E 2022 Premium AWD ER
- Thread starter
- #1
Folks,
Having once owned a BMW 318i (1990 - brand new) and using the included tow eyelet for getting my car out of a snowy ditch, I really appreciate bumper screw-in tow eyelet mounts. If they are installed, they might never be used... but even a one-time use solves a significant time- and $$-headache and makes this really simple device worthwhile.
I carefully looked at pictures of European MMEs which have to have these device mounts installed in their front bumpers, and assessed that the plastic bumper cover push-out cover, which for U.S. MMEs gives access to the front hatch release in case of a dead 12-Volt battery, is the same cover in the same position used for the European MMEs. In other words, in European models the MME tow eyelet screw-in mount also lives directly behind this same cover.
After watching pics in another thread here that showed the disassembled front of the MME to fix a body panel after a riding lawn mower crashed into the car, I got a good sense of the layout and construction behind the huge plastic front bumper cover.
I bought two items from Rennline: their universal tow ring screw-in receiver plate for $24, listed here:
https://www.rennline.com/rennline-universal-screw-in-tow-hook-receiver-sku-e82/
and their corresponding Rennline universal tow ring for $125 (ATTENTION - Rennline sells a bunch of different tow rings - you want the "universal folding tow ring" because the others won't work with the receiver plate above) to mate with their universal tow ring receiver, listed here:
https://www.rennline.com/rennline-folding-tow-hook-rev2-sku-e19-209/
As the very 1st action I marked the exact location for the tow eyelet shaft through the push-out access window on the plastic bumper cover, and then I took off the MME front plastic body / bumper cover with guidance from the official Ford instructions, provided by markboris in another thread, attached here. This big front bumper cover removal & re-attachment is the biggest time suck of the entire project. Many bolts and push-pins and disconnects to undo and then reattach. I recommend two people for the actual off & on movement maneuvers.
(I was doing three concurrent projects: the Lighted Pony install, an upgrade of the OEM horn system, and this front tow ring, so taking the big bumper cover off made all three projects easier).
The metal bumper rail is actually made of aluminum, easier to drill thru than steel which I had expected. I marked all three holes on the metal rail, right below its inner centerline strength plate (You'll see it from the side once the plastic cover is off the body), and drilled out the appropriate holes, starting with small drills for accurate locating and ending with 3/8 drill for the Rennline tow ring shaft and the two flange bolts I got from the hardware store.
Because the aluminum metal is softer than steel, I was able to enlarge the drill holes for a precise fit by using a Dremel tool with its hardened steel material-shaving attachment. It's the steel cylinder with sharp ridges all around its cylinder exterior to shave non-ferrous metal stuff away in a controlled manner. Additionally, the three holes I drilled, as you can see from the attached pics, are positioned horizontally inside the junction of the car's frame rail and the bumper rail - this means that when towed by this tow ring, the towing force will pull on the body frame rail and not depend solely on the bumper rail.
The most difficult part, which turned out to be pretty easy, was to get the Rennline backing plate with its welded-on nut and the two flange bolts so positioned inside the bumper rail that the bolt shafts would come through to the front of the bumper rail to receive their flanged nuts and their lock washers. The holes to mount the receiver plate are about one foot inside the bumper rail, and the lower rectangular channel they must go into is too narrow for hands, too long for the usual tools and a bit curved because of the bumper's shape on the car corner. We cut a wooden sled from a short piece of a 2 x 4 with one of those battery-powered vibrating blade tools. The wooden transport sled was about four inches long, and its height was cut to vertically position the Rennline receiver plate central holes exactly in plane with the holes we drilled in the bumper. We placed a much slimmer piece from the same 2 x 4 chunk on top of the sled for a thin support for the bolt heads, to ride on the sled behind the receiver plate. NOTE: for strength when towing, I made sure the welded nut on the receiving plate was pointed to the back, behind the plate, so that the pulling force will pull this welded nut into rather than away from the thick receiving plate, spreading the force onto a much wider area inside the aluminum bumper rail.
This sounds really complicated but it is really, really simple and obvious once you have the stuff in your hands. The bumper rail's inside is very smooth and we just slowly pushed the small wooden sled, the Rennline receiver plate on it sitting on edge, and the two flange bolts with their shafts just inserted into their receiver plate holes, into the bumper cavity until everything lined up - at the 1st try. Then, I used my magnetic screw retrieving wand to grab the end of the right-side bolt and pull it thru... and spun the lock washer and flange nut on which secured the whole thing. Then I repeated with the left bolt (BTW - the existing OEM hole in the front of the bumper rail made it really easy - I just used my finger thru it to help with the 1st bolt). Then, a high-speed application of the electric drill with the appropriate socket spun the flange nuts on hard enough so they grabbed the threads and the bolts quit spinning... then I just snugged everything up with a long ratchet. The slight curvature of the bumper rail's front body at that point helped by inducing just a little tension as I snugged things up. The cutting of the wooden sled, the sliding in of the package and the snugging up of the bolts all took about 15 minutes. We then pushed the wooden sled and its separate wooden back bolt rest piece out using a long piece of thin flexible scrap metal, starting from the other end of the bumper rail.
Once the other two projects were done, we re-mounted the big plastic cover. Everything appears to fit well. I'll store the Rennline tow ring in the glove box for easy access when needed - hopefully never haha.
Final point: after adjusting everything I used the Rennline tow ring without its short extension adapter (you'll get everything incl. this extended adapter as a package) for maximum thread strength of the towing assembly. I also added a large nut with a nylon lock-insert to the Rennline tow ring shaft to provide an appropriate stopping point when I screw the tow ring in... the nylon insert in the nut prevents the big nut from meandering up and down the main shaft's threads. I adjusted this Nylock nut to let the Rennline tow shaft go into the welded mounting nut for the main mounting nut's full thickness, and no more... about seven (7) full revolutions. Finally, I liberally added red Loctite to the threads of the front stainless steel hex-driven bolt - you can see its head in the pictures - which holds the tow ring on the tow shaft to prevent it from unscrewing once I had all the dimensions set, and let it set in place for an hour in the sun to solidly lock everything together..
Hope this is useful. It'll certainly provide a good solution if (when?) the MME contactors weld themselves while the car is parked in some difficult spot. I intend to use my new Euro tow hitch in the rear for towing rearward, in case the contactors go SPLOOEY and the car is parked nose-in somewhere.
Having once owned a BMW 318i (1990 - brand new) and using the included tow eyelet for getting my car out of a snowy ditch, I really appreciate bumper screw-in tow eyelet mounts. If they are installed, they might never be used... but even a one-time use solves a significant time- and $$-headache and makes this really simple device worthwhile.
I carefully looked at pictures of European MMEs which have to have these device mounts installed in their front bumpers, and assessed that the plastic bumper cover push-out cover, which for U.S. MMEs gives access to the front hatch release in case of a dead 12-Volt battery, is the same cover in the same position used for the European MMEs. In other words, in European models the MME tow eyelet screw-in mount also lives directly behind this same cover.
After watching pics in another thread here that showed the disassembled front of the MME to fix a body panel after a riding lawn mower crashed into the car, I got a good sense of the layout and construction behind the huge plastic front bumper cover.
I bought two items from Rennline: their universal tow ring screw-in receiver plate for $24, listed here:
https://www.rennline.com/rennline-universal-screw-in-tow-hook-receiver-sku-e82/
and their corresponding Rennline universal tow ring for $125 (ATTENTION - Rennline sells a bunch of different tow rings - you want the "universal folding tow ring" because the others won't work with the receiver plate above) to mate with their universal tow ring receiver, listed here:
https://www.rennline.com/rennline-folding-tow-hook-rev2-sku-e19-209/
As the very 1st action I marked the exact location for the tow eyelet shaft through the push-out access window on the plastic bumper cover, and then I took off the MME front plastic body / bumper cover with guidance from the official Ford instructions, provided by markboris in another thread, attached here. This big front bumper cover removal & re-attachment is the biggest time suck of the entire project. Many bolts and push-pins and disconnects to undo and then reattach. I recommend two people for the actual off & on movement maneuvers.
(I was doing three concurrent projects: the Lighted Pony install, an upgrade of the OEM horn system, and this front tow ring, so taking the big bumper cover off made all three projects easier).
The metal bumper rail is actually made of aluminum, easier to drill thru than steel which I had expected. I marked all three holes on the metal rail, right below its inner centerline strength plate (You'll see it from the side once the plastic cover is off the body), and drilled out the appropriate holes, starting with small drills for accurate locating and ending with 3/8 drill for the Rennline tow ring shaft and the two flange bolts I got from the hardware store.
Because the aluminum metal is softer than steel, I was able to enlarge the drill holes for a precise fit by using a Dremel tool with its hardened steel material-shaving attachment. It's the steel cylinder with sharp ridges all around its cylinder exterior to shave non-ferrous metal stuff away in a controlled manner. Additionally, the three holes I drilled, as you can see from the attached pics, are positioned horizontally inside the junction of the car's frame rail and the bumper rail - this means that when towed by this tow ring, the towing force will pull on the body frame rail and not depend solely on the bumper rail.
The most difficult part, which turned out to be pretty easy, was to get the Rennline backing plate with its welded-on nut and the two flange bolts so positioned inside the bumper rail that the bolt shafts would come through to the front of the bumper rail to receive their flanged nuts and their lock washers. The holes to mount the receiver plate are about one foot inside the bumper rail, and the lower rectangular channel they must go into is too narrow for hands, too long for the usual tools and a bit curved because of the bumper's shape on the car corner. We cut a wooden sled from a short piece of a 2 x 4 with one of those battery-powered vibrating blade tools. The wooden transport sled was about four inches long, and its height was cut to vertically position the Rennline receiver plate central holes exactly in plane with the holes we drilled in the bumper. We placed a much slimmer piece from the same 2 x 4 chunk on top of the sled for a thin support for the bolt heads, to ride on the sled behind the receiver plate. NOTE: for strength when towing, I made sure the welded nut on the receiving plate was pointed to the back, behind the plate, so that the pulling force will pull this welded nut into rather than away from the thick receiving plate, spreading the force onto a much wider area inside the aluminum bumper rail.
This sounds really complicated but it is really, really simple and obvious once you have the stuff in your hands. The bumper rail's inside is very smooth and we just slowly pushed the small wooden sled, the Rennline receiver plate on it sitting on edge, and the two flange bolts with their shafts just inserted into their receiver plate holes, into the bumper cavity until everything lined up - at the 1st try. Then, I used my magnetic screw retrieving wand to grab the end of the right-side bolt and pull it thru... and spun the lock washer and flange nut on which secured the whole thing. Then I repeated with the left bolt (BTW - the existing OEM hole in the front of the bumper rail made it really easy - I just used my finger thru it to help with the 1st bolt). Then, a high-speed application of the electric drill with the appropriate socket spun the flange nuts on hard enough so they grabbed the threads and the bolts quit spinning... then I just snugged everything up with a long ratchet. The slight curvature of the bumper rail's front body at that point helped by inducing just a little tension as I snugged things up. The cutting of the wooden sled, the sliding in of the package and the snugging up of the bolts all took about 15 minutes. We then pushed the wooden sled and its separate wooden back bolt rest piece out using a long piece of thin flexible scrap metal, starting from the other end of the bumper rail.
Once the other two projects were done, we re-mounted the big plastic cover. Everything appears to fit well. I'll store the Rennline tow ring in the glove box for easy access when needed - hopefully never haha.
Final point: after adjusting everything I used the Rennline tow ring without its short extension adapter (you'll get everything incl. this extended adapter as a package) for maximum thread strength of the towing assembly. I also added a large nut with a nylon lock-insert to the Rennline tow ring shaft to provide an appropriate stopping point when I screw the tow ring in... the nylon insert in the nut prevents the big nut from meandering up and down the main shaft's threads. I adjusted this Nylock nut to let the Rennline tow shaft go into the welded mounting nut for the main mounting nut's full thickness, and no more... about seven (7) full revolutions. Finally, I liberally added red Loctite to the threads of the front stainless steel hex-driven bolt - you can see its head in the pictures - which holds the tow ring on the tow shaft to prevent it from unscrewing once I had all the dimensions set, and let it set in place for an hour in the sun to solidly lock everything together..
Hope this is useful. It'll certainly provide a good solution if (when?) the MME contactors weld themselves while the car is parked in some difficult spot. I intend to use my new Euro tow hitch in the rear for towing rearward, in case the contactors go SPLOOEY and the car is parked nose-in somewhere.
Last edited:
)
