towbar fitting
 

Hi, hope your all well, bought a rover 75 saloon [2002] recently and must say im impressed,,just ordered a towbar and wondered if anybody has fitted one? is it easy/quick fit? was going to fit this week
thanks in advance
alanbarker

I fitted one to my Tourer a year or two ago.

Not to bad a job.
If you have parking sensors they will detect a trailer which is a pain but they will not detect a bumper guard
You can get sockets with a micro switch in to disconnect the cars rear fog lights when a trailer is connected and I think that you can also monitor the trailers road lights and get a bulb out warning.

I have a facelift and have changed my instrument cluster. Apparently I need to fit a particular BMW towing relay and not a TEB7AS relay and then add a wire to the light switch module. I have not done this as I have not obtained the BMW relay but it is something I want to do.

My saloon did not need the bumper cutting for the tow bar.

what did you buy and what will you tow?
good luck and welcome to the forum

macafee2

You should use a bypass relay to operate trailer lights (or the oem setup). Having said that, I recently discovered that whoever fitted the towbar on our tourer just wired the tow socket direct to the rear light wires! It works with a basic trailer board and well enough to pass MOT. I don't think I'd trust it with a well lit up trailer or caravan though (not that I'd be towing a van with a 1.8t anyway).

I think the reason for the relay is that the relay has its own live feed and only a small amount of current is taken from the cars lights for the relay to detect that power s required to the trailer lights. The separate live to the relay, I assume is used to provide power to the trailer lights.

macafee2

Exactly. Not only could excessive current draw trigger incorrect bulb warnings but cause issues for the LSM. Luckily I rarely use the trailer board and it doesn't have a lot of lights (typical tealight quality to it). Would be easy enough to insert a bypass relay with it's own power feeds into the wiring though. I'd always suggest to do it properly from the start.