Trailer Hitch Installation - 2012 Chevrolet Impala - Curt

Installation of a Trailer Hitch on a 2012 Chevrolet Impala

Today in our 2012 Chevrolet Impala, we're going to install a car hitch part number 12252. Here are a couple of measurements that will assist you selecting accessories for your new hitch. From the center of the hitch pin hole to the outer most point of the bumper is 6-1/2 inches. From the top of the receiver tube to the ground is 12-3/4 inches. Now let's go ahead with the installation. Fist we're going to need to lower the exhaust.

But before I do that, I want to put a safety strap under it so it doesn't fall too far and damage any of the exhaust. With our safety strap installed, we have a total of five hangers I'm going to remove. There's two at the back of each muffler and one on the exhaust pipe. To remove them, we'll simply spray each one of the hangers with a little spray lubricant making it easy to remove and reinstall later. Each process we do here on the passenger side, we'll repeat identically on the driver's side.

Now we'll take our pry bar and slide the rubber insulators off the metal hangers. With all the rubber insulators removed from the hangers, we can now go ahead and use our safety strap to lower the exhaust. This will now give us plenty of access to the bottom side of the frame where we'll have two attachment points on each side and two in the center. Next we need to go ahead and install our fasteners in the frame. We'll be using our pull wire, 1-1/4 inches carriage bolt and a 1-inch by 3-inch block.

We're going to go through the attachment point of the frame, out the access hole. Then we take our block and slide it on to our pull wire, and then thread on our 1 inches carriage bolt. It is important that you make sure you have the 1-1/4-inch carriage bolt versus the 1-1/2-inch that is also supplied in the install kit for the center fasteners. Now I'll simple go ahead and install our bolt and block into position and then remove our pull wire. Let's go and repeat the same process for our forward attachment point here on the passenger side.

Now we have our frame fasteners in position, we need to go to the center support fastener. This will be the outer hole, on the center brace, to the outer access hole. Again, we'll be using a 1-inch by 3-inch block, but this time we'll be using the 1-1/2-inch carriage bolt. Here we put our block in the frame, thread on our bolt and then pull our bolt into position. Now we've got all our fasteners installed for the passenger side we'll repeat the same process on the driver's side. Now lower fasteners in position, it's a good time you get an extra set of hands to help you hold the hitch in place while you install your flange nuts. Be careful not to push your hardware back up into the frame when you put your hitch in place. We'll each one of our fasteners finger-tight, until we get all of them in place. Once we get all our fasteners installed we're going to tighten them down. Now that our fasteners are tightened down, we're going to torque to specifications as indicated in the instructions. Now that all our fasteners are torqued to specifications, we can go ahead and reinstall the exhaust. With our exhaust reinstalled, we can go ahead and remove the safety hanger. That will complete the install of our car hitch, part number 12252, on our 2012 Chevrolet Impala.