Trailer Hitch Installation - 2008 Chevrolet Colorado

Installation of a Trailer Hitch on a 2008 Chevrolet Colorado

Today we are going to be installing hitch part number 87458 from Hidden Hitch on a 2008 Chevrolet Colorado. OK, we are underneath the vehicle, and the first thing we want to do is go ahead and remove the spare tire to give you a little more working room to get the hitch up into place. Looking at the passengers side frame rail, we are going to go ahead and point out the mounting locations for the hitch. At the bottom of the frame, there is an existing hole here that is going to be used for the bottom of the frame mounting location. And on the side of the frame we have got two bolts that are existing. So the first thing we want to do is to go ahead and remove these bolts from both sides of the frame.

OK, now that we have got the bolts removed from the outside of the frame, we can go ahead and fish wire the bolt and block assembly through the frame, down through the hole in the bottom of the frame. In order to do this, we want to take the fish wire which is provided with the installation kit and feed it through the hole in the bottom of the frame and out through the side hole. There is actually a secondary side hole here that we are going to pull it out and through. From there, we are going to go ahead and put the block through the fish wire and then wrap the bolt, like so. Then we just want to pull that down and into the frame. We want to go ahead and do that on both sides of the vehicle.

OK, and with the bolts pulled into position we can go ahead and put the hitch up into place. OK, when we put the hitch up into position, we want to go ahead and put the fasteners on the sides of the frame in first before we actually put the fastener on the one at the bottom of the frame. The reason we want to do this is because on some models it may be necessary to use some flat washers to shim up the extra space in between the frame and the hitch. And we will not know exactly how much until we actually get the hitch up into position. So again, you want to make sure that when you put the hitch up into position, that on the side weld nuts here we want make sure we put the 5/8-inch block in between the frame and the hitch, and use the new 14-millimeter bolts that were provided in the installation kit. OK, you see how wide it is? You will notice that once you get the hitch kind of loosely installed up into position with the blocks in place that there is going to be some extra slop in there. That is intended by the manufacturer. When you tighten those bolts down, the hitch will pull in into place and be nice and tight for you. I am going to just kind of loosely install this for the time being. We will come back and torque it down later.

OK, with the bolts installed on the side of the frame, you can kind of get an idea what we are looking for at the bottom of the frame in regard to the washers that we need to put in place. A lot of times the hitch side tab here will hit this on weld on the crossmember, which will provide a bit of a gap here at the bottom of the frame. So it looks like we can use just about one washer in between the frame and the hitch here to even it out. So that is what we are kind of looking for, and that is what you need to gauge for, to see how many washers you need to put in place. And with the washer in place, we want to go ahead and put the conical tooth washer and nut on the bottom here to attach it. The 7/16 bolt here at the bottom of the frame will get torqued to 50 foot-pounds, as stated in the directions. And the 14-millimeter bolts on the side of the frame are going to get torqued down to 115 foot-pounds. And with the bolts torqued down, we just want to make sure we put our spare tire back up into position, and then our installation will be complete. And this will conclude the installation of hitch part number 87458 on a 2008 Chevrolet Colorado.