Project Ford E350 Tow Rig: Part 4 – Calling for backup!

The reason for this is that you’ll need to drill a hole in the license plate holder on the vehicle for the video cable to pass through. Edge includes a little rubber grommet to go in the hole, but I had a problem where, at least on the van, the camera couldn’t articulate enough with the hole being small enough for the grommet to fit. I ended up needing a bigger hole than would work for the grommet in order for the camera to be able to articulate on its shaft.

I’m not super concerned because this is behind the plate and frame and also shielded from the elements by the fact that the license plate is recessed into this assembly.

You can see the cord for the camera in the picture as well. It uses a small bullet-style connector so that the hole you drill can be pretty small-ish.

Interestingly, the head of the bolt they give you fits exactly into the machined recess in the frame, which is nice. However the bolts are a little long, so you end up having to tighten them with the vehicle’s license plate holder detached from the vehicle. It might take you an extra five minutes to remove the door latch assembly to be able to do this completely off the vehicle, but it will be worth it. I tried to do it while keeping the latch assembly attached and it turned into five-dimensional calculus and I ended up having to re-attach one of the door latch cables anyway.

Here you’ll see that, while the bolts that Edge supplies are long, the bolts don’t get stuck on anything. But you can see why it’d be extremely frustrating to try to tighten the bolts with the frame holder in place. One of them is completely obscured by the door.

This isn’t a race car, so I didn’t want to drill an extra hole in the door just to clearance a bolt for fastening.