Were going to start off with this example here which is a class I hitch. Class I means this hitch is good for trailers up to 2000 pounds. What were going to show you over here is the sticker which shows the different weights and capacities involved. Well show you what those mean. As you can see by the sticker here, were going to show you some notes on it, these stickers will apply to any class hitch that you come across. Once you figure out what this means, you are home free. Starting here at max gross trailer weight which shows 2000 pounds. So that means the total weight you can pull with your trailer, for example if your load on your trailer is 500 pounds, you have 1500 pounds of weight to put on it so it remains at a safe capacity for this hitch. Moving on to this next number which is max gross tongue weight, it shows 200 pounds there.
That means the force that actually pushes down on the hitch ball itself from the vertical force. That limits it to about 200 pounds which is traditionally about 10 percent of the trailer weight. Just those two notes apply to any hitch that is out there. The only thing that changes is the capacity of the hitch and the weight of the trailer itself. Now well go into detail with the receiver tube of the class I hitch. You may think its not a big deal, actually there are a few distinguishing marks about them. One is aesthetics and the other is technical safety feature. As you can see on the front of the hitch here, there is nothing around it, its just plain steel. All manufacturers will build them just like that. That will always show its a class I receiver hitch just by glancing at it. The next detail is for safety, it looks minor but its there for a reason. If you can see this there is a little dent-in here or a punch. This forces the steel to go inside the receiver tube. The reason is lets say you have a ballmount lying around, and you want to use this on your brand new hitch. That ballmount may be from a class II receiver hitch. Basically that is a ballmount of a higher capacity, the idea is you do not want to forget that you have a lower capacity hitch when you try to install a higher capacity draw bar. What happens is that dent-in prevents you from putting that draw bar into it. Well show you how that happens. As you can see we installed it all the way and you can only see a sliver of the original ballmount hole, which means you can put the pin and clip through the hole. Ultimately that is what keeps you from putting an over-sized draw bar into an undersized hitch. Its there for you protection. This also applies in bicycle racks and cargo carriers too. Also with the class I hitches, you mainly find those on smaller vehicles and some compact vehicles. That pretty much covers the details of a class I receiver hitch.
FAQ Trailer Hitch Exhaust Rattle
Today on our 2010 Lincoln MKX were going to address the exhaust rattle issue. There are a couple of reasons for occasional contact between hitch and exhaust. One, the manufacturers have loose tolerances from mounting the hangers that suspend exhaust systems. Final placement of the exhaust can vary slightly from vehicle to vehicle. The flexibility of rubber isolator connecting exhaust hanger to the vehicle frame allows for more movement of the exhaust system relative to other vehicle components. An isolator can also stretch over time.
Weld Nut Removal and Replacement Review
So you are in the middle of doing your hitch installation and you are in the process of taking out one of your existing factory bolts. In the process you find that the bolt is not coming out due to the fact that the weld nut inside the frame has broken. We are just going to go ahead and show you a couple of things you can do to not only get the bolt out of the way but to also go ahead and continue on to be able to put your hitch in position without the weld nut welded inside the frame. The first thing that we obviously need to do is go ahead and get the bolt out of here. There are a couple of different ways you can do this. You can take a chisel, is you have one large and strong enough to do so, and possible grind the head of the bolt off. Or you can actually take a torch and torch it off. And that is actually what we are going to do on this application here. I am going to try to get most or as much of the head of the bolt off as I can. And we will take and push the remaining section of the bolt-weld nut combination up inside the frame. 0:49
A common problem that we run into with a lot of our vehicles that have existing weld nuts in the bottom of the frame is that when you go to try to put a bolt in them you have an excessive amount of road grime or rust built up in there and when you go to put your bolt inside the weld nuts you find not only does it not want to thread but it also appears that the bolt is too big for the weld nut. The first thing that typically comes to mind is that the bolts that I received are too big and 99.9 percent of the time this is not the case. What we have actually got here is an excessive amount of rust and debris built up in the weld nuts that are preventing the bolt from starting. We are going to show you how to get those thoroughly cleaned out so that we can not only get our bolt started but to get it threaded completely into the weld nut. 00:41
Today we are going to show you a cheat. In some cases you are going to have a hitch that uses threaded holes in the bottom of the frame. Those holes are going to be probably corroded up within a few years of the vehicle being on the road with dirt, grime, salt corrosion, you name it is probably in there inside the fine thread. What you want to do is clean out the threads probably with an existing hitch bolt if it is lightly corroded and you can probably work it in and out a few times and do that. 00:20
Today we are going to review the components needed to pull a trailer. Basically, this video is designed for somebody who just decided they have a need for a trailer, so we will cover all the components in the most basic form, so you know exactly how to update your vehicle. What we are going to do is start from the truck and work our way back to the trailer. First off, we are going to show you the hitch itself. All vehicles require a hitch to pull a trailer. What this device does is makes an attaching point on the frame of the vehicle, or body components, and transmits the forces from the trailer to this one point here. This point here is the receiver part. Consequently this hitch is called a receiver hitch because this hitch can receive a draw bar, or also called a ball mount. It is held in place by this pin which we just ed, and this clip holds it in place. There are more fancier pins, like locking pins, but that is the basic thing you need right there to get the job done. 1:12
Cleaning Weld Nuts for Trailer Hitch Installation
Okay as you can see here on the drivers side, our weld nut has a lot of corrosion built up in there. And when we try to install our 10 millimeter bolt is not wanting to start at all, in fact it almost seems like the bolt is too big for the weld nut. It is a common misconception, again when the weld nuts got a lot of build up in there.
