Curt Trailer Hitch Receiver with Drawbar - Custom Fit - Class I - 1-1/4"

Video Transcript for Trailer Hitch Installation - 2007 Toyota Prius

Today we are going to install part number 11468 from Curt and we are installing this on a 2007 Toyota Prius. First thing we need to do is take down this shield right here. This will come off and the hitch will go in the place where this tie down hook is. Once we take this shield off we can unbolt this hook and there is another hook on the passenger side that we need to take off also. The first thing we need to do is take down this shield here for now. We will end up trimming it when we put the hitch back up. Alright, next we will want to take down the tie down bracket. Now go do the same thing for the other side. Next we can go ahead and install the hitch onto the vehicle and you can actually put the passenger side over the exhaust and let you help hold it up while you do the driver side first. Once you have the hitch held up by a couple bolts, it is a good idea to go ahead and snug down the bolts to help you line up the hitch with the rest of the holes. Alright once you get your holes lined up, you will have to move around the hitch a little bit and get your last bolt on this side started. Go ahead and snug it up and then go back and do the remaining one on the driver side.

Sometimes you run into that situation like this, where you get 3 bolts in and the last one is not lining up. Most of the time it should be this one, but some times it can be this one. What we will do is show you a technique to bring it back in line. It is pretty simple, it will require a piece of 2X4 lumber or anything else you could use for a pry bar basically. What you can do is basically put it up against the trunk pan here and put the bottom part of the wood with the hitch here and simply just lean on it just a little bit. You do not push very hard, just lean in on it and you can actually see it does push the hitch back into alignment. At that point you can go ahead and thread in your bolt. It is a good idea to have an extra set of hands for this but I am just leaning on it so I am just using one hand. Once you have the bolts started you can snug them up. And now we can give our bolts their final torque. The next thing we need to do is this panel right here we took down from below on one of the first steps we did. We need to cut out an access hole so it can wrap around the hitch. All you have to do is simply enlarge this slot to go all the way out to the back here and then the hitch will just slide right into it as we slide this back up. It is pretty easy. If you are looking at it from the inside out this would be facing the ground. So we are looking down towards this way. That is the way the instructions are orientated for our cutting. Basically all we have do is put a straight edge against it and we will scribe a mark. This will get us close and do the same thing on the other side. There you have your 2 marks.

Now you can go ahead and keep scribing more marks through it until you cut to the other side. It is so soft that you can actually just go ahead and use a set of tin snips to cut through it too. It is basically personal preference of how you want to make the cut. You might have to do a couple test fits. You might have to make it a little bit wider. That is pretty much the long and short of it. Now we will go ahead and reinstall it back onto the vehicle. Next we will go ahead and reinstall our panel after making the cuts. You simply slide it from the front towards the back. We can go ahead and install our fasteners. Alright and that covers our install of part number 11468 from Curt on our 2007 Toyota Prius.