OK, today we are going to be installing hitch part number 75526 on a 2007 Ford Edge. OK, before we install the hitch, we need to lower the exhaust unit down. And, on the Ford Edge, there are 3 separate exhaust hangers that we are going to have to lower down. There is one here on the passenger side and there is one in the same location over here on the driver side and there is one directly in the middle, between the 2 exhausts. Before we move the third hanger here, we want to go ahead and put some kind of support under the exhaust because, once this hanger has been removed, the exhaust will fall all the way to the ground. So I am going to just use a regular strap here. Pull it tight underneath so it still allows the exhaust to lower but not lower too much. OK, the next step, we are going to need to remove both, the driver and passenger side, heat shields, which are held on by 3 screws. And we are going to need to trim the heat shields to allow access to this hole here and this hole as well. That is going to be the 2 attaching points for the hitch.
So, we are going to need to cut this tab off here and then kind of notch this section here to allow open clearance. Besides from removing the 3 screws, there is also a push thing here, as well, that needs to come out. OK, looking at the passenger side heat shield here, again we need to remove this tab portion here. And again, just notch out kind of a radius cut right above this screw hole. And that just allows again access for the bolt to come down without interference, through the frame. Like so. You want to do that on both sides for both heat shields. We also need to remove the fascia support piece here as well, which is held on by one screw. We need to remove that and we are going to push the fascia support back up, towards the bumper here and out of the way. OK, and with the bolt removed for the fascia support, we just want to go ahead and pop it back up behind the trunk area here near the bumper. And that will allow the cross of the hitch to fit up in here tight without hitting the support.
The next step is going to be installing the hardware into the frames. OK, now we are going to go ahead and put the bolts into the frame. And, it is kind of hard to see here, but if you put your hand up and back behind the bumper, there is actually an opening into the frame where we are going to feed the hardware in through. And we are going to start by running our fish wire through the existing hole here and out through the end of the bumper, or excuse me out through the end of the frame near the bumper. You can see how it comes out and through. OK, we want to feed the block, the fish wire through the block, excuse me. And then, we want to thread the bolt leader onto the bolt as well, like so. And that will hold it in place while we pull it through the frame. OK, kind of hand feed them through to get them into the frame and we just kind of pull the block and bolt combination down into place here. Now, we want to do the same thing for the rearmost hole as well. OK, and with the 2 bolts in place here on the passenger side, you want to go ahead and do the same thing here on the driver side.
OK, with the bolts now pulled down into the frame, into place, we just need to put the hitch up into position. I am going to hold the hitch up and it is going to go on with the conical tooth washer and the nut as well. Be careful, when putting the hitch up in position, not to push the bolts up into the frame. We want to leave the bolts, or excuse me, the nuts loose on the hitch here because we want to put the heat shield back up. And the heat shield is actually going to be pinched in between the hitch and the frame. So, we need to be able to slide that in between the hitch and the frame. OK, looking at the passenger side frame rail, you can see that I have just got the nut barely on here and I have left a gap in between the hitch and the frame. At this point, I am going to go ahead and slide the heat shield back in and we are not going to put the bolts back into the heat shield, into the frame work. We are just going to slide it in between and we can to use the push pin, that was removed earlier, to hold it up into place. And we want to do that on both sides.
And you also want to reinstall the 5-1/2 millimeter bolt that we took out of the fascia portion earlier. We are just going to leave that there basically for storage. In case you ever remove the hitch, you can put the fascia bracket back on. As you can see, I put the bolt back in here. Now, we are going to go back to the hitch bolts and we want to go ahead and tighten all of those down. We do not want to fully tighten at this point because we are going to go back and torque them down to their specified torque rating. And we are going to repeat that for both sides. And, with those tightened down, we want to go back and torque them now. And the torque rating for these bolts is 75 foot pounds. OK, with the bolts torqued down, we want to go ahead and just put the exhaust back up into position. OK, and with the exhaust back up into position, the hitch installation is complete and this will conclude the installation of part number 75526 on a 2007 Ford Edge.
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