Trailer Hitch Installation - 2011 Ford F-150

Installation of a Trailer Hitch on a 2011 Ford F-150

Today on this 2011 Ford F-150 we are going to be installing Curt hitch part number 13368. Before we get started with our installation, we are going to go ahead and show you a couple of the final install dimensions which 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 21-1/2 inches. And from the center of the pin hole to clear the rear edge of the bumper is going to measure approximately 4 inches. And now we will go ahead and move on to our installation. 0:25

Alright, we are up underneath the vehicle and the first thing we have done is to go ahead and lower the spare tire down to give us a little bit more working room. We are going to start off over here on the driver side of the vehicle and go ahead and point out the attaching points that we are going to be using to put our hitch on our vehicle. If you look towards the end of the frame, attaching the frame to the bumper are these large bumper brackets here. These bumper brackets have a couple of holes in them. The first one at the rear side of the bumper bracket is an oblong hole and this will be our rearmost attaching point for our trailer hitch. And then if you follow forward on the vehicle, on the side of the bracket there is a large round hole there. And that will be our second and final attaching point over here on the driver side of the vehicle. And that setup is going to be the same on the passenger side as well. 1:14

We are going to start by attaching to the rearmost attaching point on the bumper bracket. And we will through there the 1/2 inch hex bolt along with the flat washer. And then we will attach on the back side with the 1/2 inch flange nut. So with that, we can actually go ahead and put our hitch up in position now. We are just going to leave that just a little loose until we get the other set of hardware in. And with the two rearmost bolts put in on the driver and passenger sides we will go to the forward side of the bracket now and the hardware for the larger hole. We will be using the same size hex bolt along with the flat washer. And we are actually going to it in from the outboard side of the bracket towards the middle of the vehicle. Take two of the flat washers, go ahead and inset them onto the bolt. And that is actually going to go in between the bracket and the hitch to kind of help shim up some of the excess space. Next we will take the provided block and the hex nut. You will probably notice that we have a fairly large gap in between the hitch and the bracket. But when we tighten the bolt down it will pull the two together. Go ahead and repeat that for the passenger side and then we are ready to tighten our bolts down. 2:55

And then with our bolts tightened down we are just going to go back through and torque each one of the bolts down. You want to verify with the directions the specific torque rating for each one of the bolts. And then with the bolts torqued down, we just want to make sure we put our spare tire back up into place and our installation will be complete. That will conclude the installation of Curt hitch part number 13368 on a 2011 Ford F-150.