Trailer HItch Installation - 1994 Ford F150

Installation of a Trailer Hitch on a 1994 Ford F150

All right, today we are going to install part number 75038 on a 1994 Ford F-150 pickup truck. All right, the hitch gets mounted to the frame right here. There is actually a dent in the hitch where it mounts against this rivet right here. And it mounts onto the frame about this far back. And you do have to drill all the holes out in the frame. So the best way to do it is to clamp it up to the frame and then use the hitch as a template and drill out all the holes. All right, one other thing you want to do before you install is lower the spare tire as far as possible to give you some working room to get up in there.

All right, why do we not go ahead and install our hitch. We are going to clamp it in place. And it is a good idea to have an extra set of hands. All right, once you have your hitch installed, when you clamp it into place, make sure that this rivet here is going toward this side of the dent on the hitch. Push it all the way forward and push the hitch against the rivet, and you will be set and it will be squared on the frame. After that, you will not have to worry about it left and right. Now we can go ahead and drill out our holes. What we are going to do is drill out everything with our 1/4 inch bit first to mark our holes, for a pilot hole for our larger bit, and then before we use our larger bit we will take down the hitch and finish drilling out the holes to a little over 1/2 inch. For the pilot holes, then, we can go ahead and take down the hitch and finish drilling out the holes. What we are going to do is actually go up to a 1/2 inch bit and then after that we are going to run it out to about 9/16. That way, that will give us a little extra wiggle room for the bolts to move around to get into the hitch. Also, you might not get them exactly perfect and aligned, so a little extra wiggle room will help. Again, we will go ahead and repeat the same process on the other side.

Next we will go ahead and install our hardware. The bolt with the black anodized finish goes toward the end of the frame. And the plate you want to have kind of like matching the end of the frame, too. Not sticking out - kind of like matching the frame itself. And then the rest of the hardware, the bolts and plates go in just like so. If you can get the plate to fit in like this, great. If you cannot, it is no big deal to leave it on the outside. It usually never does. Repeat the process for the other side. Now we can go ahead and reinstall the hitch and we will use a couple of nuts to hold it in place while we guide the rest of the other bolts in. Now we can go ahead and reinstall some bolts - if any of them came out, we can push those back into the hitch. Now we can install the rest of our fasteners: the lock washers and the nuts, in their proper sequence. And the bolt on the end gets a flange nut - and it is a locking one, so you only get like two or three threads in before it will stop. And then you have to crank it down after that. Again, repeat for the other side. At this point we can go ahead and snug down our bolts. On the bolt on the end of the frame you will have to have a wrench to hold down the bolt while you tighten it down. And again, it is a lock nut, so you will have a lot of resistance tightening it down. Go ahead and snug up the rest of the bolts. At this point we will give them their final torque. All right, that is all it takes to install our hitch, part number 75038, on a 1994 Ford pickup truck.