Trailer Hitch Installation - 2001 Ford E-350 Van

Installation of a Trailer Hitch on a 2001Ford E-350 Van

Today on this 2001 Ford E-350 Van we are going to be installing Curt hitch part number 14055. We are underneath the vehicle and we are looking at the driver side frame rail. We want to go ahead and point out our mounting holes that we are going to be using to attach our hitch to the vehicle. If you look at the end of the frame rail, we have two existing round holes just rearward of the oblong hole. Those are going to be our two rearmost attaching points. And if you follow forward, you will see that there are two more holes just forward of the oblong hole. The forward most one is the one that we are going to be using as our third attaching point. And that is going to be the same on both the driver and passenger sides. 0:32

Into each one of these mounting holes, we are going to be using the carriage bolt and 1-1/2 by 2 inch block that is provided with our hardware kit. We just want to go ahead and merge the two together. Lay them inside the frame, over the mounting hole. And again, that is going to be the same at all of the mounting locations. Over here on the driver side, we do have a carbon canister that may interfere with placing the hardware in the frame at the forward most attaching point. And if this is the case, you can go ahead and lower this down and get it out of the way. If you go to the outboard side of the frame here, you will see that there are two mounting studs that are holding the carbon canister in place. You just need to remove the nuts and the carbon canister will move out of the way and you can put your hardware in place. And on this particular vehicle, we are not going to have that problem. We can go ahead and put the hardware directly into position. 1:16

Once we have all of the hardware in place, we can go ahead and put our hitch up in position. At the middle attaching point here, we are going to need to add this flat washer in between the hitch and the frame so that it mounts in like so. That will even out the mounting surface for the hitch. And that is going to be the same on both the driver and passenger sides. We will be attaching the hitch to the frame using the 1/2 inch flange nuts. With the hitch up in position and the nuts in place, we can go ahead and start torquing our bolts down. You want to verify with the directions the specific torque rating for each of the bolts. With all of our bolts torqued down, we just want to make sure we put our carbon canister back up if we had lowered it earlier and our installation will be complete. 2:09

And now that we have our hitch installed, we want to go ahead and give you a couple of final dimensions that will help make choosing your hitch accessories a little bit easier. From the top of the receiver tube opening to the ground is going to measure 16-7/ 8 inches. And from the center of the pin hole to clear the rear edge of the bumper is going to measure approximately 6 inches. This will conclude the installation of Curt hitch part number 14055 on a 2001 Ford E-350 Van.