Today we are going to be installing hitch part number 87554 on a 2002 Dodge Dakota. Alright, the first thing we want to do is go ahead and lower the spare tire and remove it and get it out of the way. Looking under the vehicle now, at the frame rails, the attaching points for the hitch are going to be here at the bottom of the frame. This existing hole, as well as this one here. There is a vertical attaching point as well, which is going to be where this bolt is here. So we need to actually remove the nut from the outboard side and pull this piece off. As you can see, there is an extra flange here that kind of holds the bolt in place while you are putting the nut on. If that happens to be pinched in between this particular set of bolts here, you might need to loosen these to allow this to be removed. So you will want to go ahead and remove this bolt and that assembly from both sides of the frame. As you can see I had to loosen these bolts here to get this top bolt out, the flange. You will want to make sure that you re tighten these as soon as you are able to get the top bolt out. Now that we have the bolt removed from the side of the frame, we will go ahead and put the hitch up into position.
We are going to use the existing 7/16 bolt and we want to use the flat washer on there. We are going to put the bolt from the outside of the frame inward like so. The hitch flanges are actually going to be on the end board as well. With the vertical bolts now loosely installed on both sides, we are going to go back down to the bottom of the frame here. Then you want to fasten those with the hardened flat washer, lock washer, and nut. Proceeding 1997, your frame may not have the holes already existing in the frame. I believe the 1996 models have 1 hole and the 1995 and older actually have no holes, so both of them are going to need to be drilled. On this 2002 model, both holes are there. So we are going to go ahead and put the carriage bolts and blocks into place, in the top of the frame down through the holes in the hitch. We want to make sure we use the proper block alignment because there are 2 different ones that come with the hitch here. The one with the offset hole needs to go in the front.
Now that we have all the bolts in place, we want to go ahead and tighten them down. We want to start with the vertical attachment point up on the side of the frame. We just want to kind of tighten it down, get it good and hand tightened on both sides. Then we want to come back and hand tighten these on both sides of the frame. After we have everything hand tightened down, we will go ahead and torque them down after that. Now that we have all of them hand tightened down, we want to go ahead and torque them down to their specified ratings. With all the bolts torqued down your installation is complete.
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