Trailer Hitch Installation - 2002 Pontiac Grand Am

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1999 - 2004 Oldsmobile Alero
1999 - 2005 Pontiac Grand Am All Models

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Installation of a Trailer Hitch on a 2002 Pontiac Grand Am

Today we are going to be installing hitch part number 36288 on a 2002 Pontiac Grand Am. All right, we are under the vehicle, and the first thing we are going to do is locate the two 8-mm bumper bolts on the inboard side. There is one on each side. And we want to go ahead and remove the nut from each one of those. And now that we have got the nut removed, we want to go ahead and cut off the bottom portion of this plastic flange that is attached to the front side of the bolt. This is going to allow us to unthread the bolt out of this hole here. And we want to go ahead and do that on both sides. And with the bolt extracted, we want to go ahead and kind of open up this gap here in between the two pieces of metal where we removed the bolt. There is still a little clip in there that was kind of holding the bolt in place, and we need to get that out of the way. So we kind of pry this open and the clip will fall right out for you. And, again, we need to make sure we do that on both sides.

At this point we want to go ahead and put the hitch up into position. We need to attach the hitch to get it up into position, with these holes. And we are going to use these fasteners here, which are the 1-inch and 3/4-inch carriage bolt and the carriage block as well. And we just want to slide these in through the hole that we just drilled on both sides. And we want to put the hitch up into position and just kind of loosely install the nuts onto these fasteners here. As you can see now, we went ahead and put the hitch up into position and we mounted it, like I said, onto the carriage bolt that was going through the hole that we just drilled. And we want to go ahead and fasten these bolts. Just hand tighten with the conical-teeth washer and the nut provided. You want to do that on both sides.

Well, with the nut in place, we can go ahead and pan back to the arms of the hitch onto the frame. And if you look underneath there, you can see that the hole aligns with the existing holes that are in the frame, as well. And at this time we want to go ahead and use the provided fasteners and put the arms up into position mounted to the frame itself. And next we want to use the combination of a regular 1 x 2 inch block and the handle nut as well. Now these two components, this goes in first, sitting on top of that C-block we just put in the frame, and then the handle nut goes on top of it. A lot of times when you get this inside the frame it wants to slide around when you try to run a bolt up into the handle nut, so what we are going to go ahead and do is go ahead and just tape the two together. And that will keep them together so we do not have to worry about them sliding around. And we want to feed this into the frame through the access hole. And we want to get it right over the top of the hole in the hitch, and then we are going to run the bolt up and through and then tighten it into this threaded piece here. It may require some manipulation of the handle nut to get the threads into position.

OK, we have got the passengers side attached, and we want to go ahead and do the same thing on the drivers side. OK, now that we have all four fasteners up into place, we want to go ahead and hand tighten them down - hand tighten all four of them them down before we actually torque them. And we are going to go ahead and start with the ones that are mounted to the frame, and then we will go to the ones that are mounted at the bumper mounting position. For the bumper-mounted bolt on the drivers side over the exhaust, you may require an extension or two to get the ratchet around it. OK, with all four fasteners hand tightened we are going to go ahead and torque them down into their specific torque ratings. With all the bolts torqued down, your installation is now complete. And this will conclude the installation of hitch part number 36288 on a 2002 Pontiac Grand Am.

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