Those tiedowns sound like a good idea. You can use the ratchets to lift the bar into place. I slid ours under the coach on the box it came in and was able to get it in place. But I was REALLY lucky with the front bolts. I had removed a damaged trailer hitch from an F150 and kept those plates and bolts you fish up into the frame rails. The plates have square holes in them for the 1/2" carriage bolts. It was easy to poke the bolts through the frame rail and the plates jammed against each other when I torqued the nuts. Easy install. Problem I had was the OEM bracket bolts were stuck in the welded nuts on the axle brackets. I spent most of the total project time on one bolt.