Today, on the 1999 Mazda Protege, we'll be installing Hidden Hitch part number 60927. Here are few measurements to help you in selecting your accessories. From the center of the hitch pin hole to the outermost part of the bumper is three and a quarter inches. And from the top of the receiver tube to the ground is 11-1/4 inches. These will help you in selecting accessories such as a cargo carrier or a bike rack. Now, we'll go ahead with our install.
Now, this is a 1999 model, so Hidden Hitch actually recommends you bend the exhaust hanger gusset over 75 to 90 degrees towards the muffler to prevent the possibility of exhaust rattle. But this particular vehicle, that has already been done. We've already sprayed down the exhaust hanger insulators with the spray lubricant, so we'll go ahead and remove the insulators and lower our exhaust. Next. we'll go ahead and remove the two six millimeter bolts that connect the pressure release solenoid bracket to the rear of the frame on the driver's side.
Now, the two six millimeter bolts that we removed from the bracket, we will not be reusing. Now that we have our exhaust down and our pressure release solenoid bracket loose, we'll go ahead and locate our mounting bolt holes. On the driver's side, we'll be using this hole here as well as this hole here. And this will be the same on the passenger side of the vehicle as well. After locating our mounting bolt holes, we're going to use our carriage bolt and spacer washer.
We'll thread our Leader up through our mounting bolt hole, or 7/16" Leader and bring it up the access hole where we can put our--the spacer washer on and then thread our carriage bolt in. Once we thread on our carriage bolt, we'll simply push the spacer block in the carriage bolt through our access point and bring it back to our mounting location. We can then remove our Bolt Leader. And we'll repeat this process for the remaining three fasteners. We're now ready to put our hitch into place.
It'd be a good idea to get an extra set of hands to help you hold the hitch in place while we install the fasteners. You'll need to be careful. We'll go up over the exhaust on the passenger side as well as over the valve on the driver's side. When we put the hitch into place, you'll need to be careful not to push your hardware up into the frame. We use our conical-tooth washer and hex nut for each of the four fasteners. Now, when you install the conical-tooth washer, you want to make sure that the teeth of the washer face the hitch. With all our fasteners loosely installed, we'll go ahead and tighten them down and torque to speicification as indicated in the instructions. Now that our hitch is tight and torqued to specification, we can reinstall the bracket here on the driver's side. We use the new M6 bolts provided with the install kit. With our bracket installed, we'll put our exhaust back up which will complete our install. And there you have it for the installation of Hidden Hitch part number 60927 on our 1999 Mazda Protege.
