Video Transcript for How to Install the Blue Ox Class III Trailer Hitch - 2026 Subaru Crosstrek

Hi, this is Scott with etrailer, and today we're taking a look at and installing our Blue Ox Class III hitch on our 2026 Subaru Crosstrek. Our Blue Ox hitch we have on our Crosstrek today is going to be a good option for people that want to add some versatility to their Crosstrek. Now, what this is going to allow you to do is put a bike rack on there and haul your bikes around or throw a cargo carrier on and haul around some extra gear or even pull a small trailer. Now, a couple things that I like about this one is the hitch itself, the receiver tucks in almost right level with the bumper. So with that, say you get in and out of the back of your vehicle a lot, you're not going to be running into that with your shins all the time, so it's kind of tucked away. Another thing is, I kind of like the color of this one.

It's more of a flat color, so it blends in really well with our trim package of our Subaru. And another nice thing is, especially if you plan on getting wiring, which I also recommend going ahead and doing at the same time, if you're doing a hitch, go ahead and get that done as well. If you do plan on pulling a trailer, is this one's going to have a welded on tab that's going to allow you to mount up your wiring, whichever type you get. You either mount up your 7-pole wiring or your 4-pole wiring right here on your installed bracket. Now this hitch is going to have a 5/8 pinhole opening and that's going to hold in any of the accessories that you put into the receiver itself.

Now, keep in mind, this won't come with a pin and clip, so you may want to pick one up here at etrailer. We do have some of those available. Now another thing is a lot of your bike racks and your cargo carriers may come with an anti-rattle pin. This hitch has heavy duty welded-on chain loops, so it's going to accept either your S-style hooks or your clevis style hooks. So if you plan on pulling a trailer, that's going to work for you well.

As far as measurements go from the center of our pinhole out to the edge of our bumper, we're looking at three inches. Now with that measurement, that'll help you decide on if you have any accessories that fold up or stow away, if they'll make any contact with the back of your Crosstrek. Now for the measurement for the top inside lip of our receiver down to the ground, we're looking at a measurement of right around 15 inches. Now that measurement's going to help you decide on what type of a ball mount you may need if you plan on pulling a trailer, but it will also help you figure out if you need any rise in the shank of either your bike racks or your cargo carriers for clearance. Now, as far as weights go for this hitch, we're looking at a tongue weight rating of 675 pounds.

That's going to be the weight of your bike rack loaded down with your bikes or your cargo carrier loaded down with your gear, pushing down on the lower portion of the hitch itself. Now for our gross trailer weight rating, we're at 4,500 pounds. That's going to be the weight of your trailer and everything that you have loaded on that. Now keep in mind, it's always a good idea to take a look in your owner's manual and make sure that you're not exceeding any of the maximum towing capabilities listed in there. If you have any questions about this hitch for your Subaru, you can always get ahold of us here at etrailer. We'd be glad to answer any of your questions. As far as installation goes, this one's pretty straightforward and definitely something you can handle doing yourself. But if you don't have the time or the tools or the place to do this one, you can always take a look at our installer locator and get something done for you locally. If it's something you feel like tackling yourself, stick around, watch our video, and we'll help you get it installed. To start our installation, we have our Crosstrek up in the air. Now you can do this on the ground on yours fairly simply. We just have it lifted up, make it a little bit easier for you guys to see. Now underneath of our vehicle, we're going to have our mounting locations, and right here on each side rail on both sides, we're going to have these rubber plugs. Now on ours, we're going to have one in this bigger hole, more towards the front. We're going to remove that one, and we're going to move this one right here towards the back and we'll leave in this center plug. Now back here towards our forward mounting hole, which is our larger one, we're going to have a little bit of body sealant right here. What I want to do is just get some of this out of here, that way my hardware and my hitch will come up and sit flush. So I'm just going to take my multitool and on each side, I'm just going to take some of this out. For our hardware, we're going to need to get that up into our frame. We have our carriage bolt and we're going to have our spacer block that needs to go up inside of our frame in both of these locations. Now, obviously, those won't fit, so we're going to need to open up this hole a little bit to get our hardware to go. So there's a couple different ways we can do this. We can either notch it over to the side here and over here and then get it in that way. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to do it a different way. I'm going to take a step bit and I'm going to go ahead and just open this up until I get our hardware to fit. I'm going to do that on both sides. With that enlarged just a little bit, as we can see, our carriage bolt goes right through and our spacer goes through. What I'll do now is I'll come back through with some paint and just shoot some paint on this to prevent any rust. While my paint's drying on our passenger side, I'll jump over to our other side and I'll get that opened up and painted as well. Now in your kit, you're going to have these coiled wires and they're what we call fish wires. What we do with these, we're going to use these to get our hardware into our frame. So we have our smaller hole towards the rear. And what I want to do is just put a slight bend in that and I'm going to run that through the hole with our coiled end first and bring that forward. And we're just going to feel for the coiled end to come out. And once we get that, we'll pull that down through the hole. Once we have that through, we'll take a spacer block from our kit, put that on the coiled end, followed by our carriage bolt. Just want to thread that onto our coiled end, bring that down just right to where the end of the coil stops and we'll push our spacer block in through our access hole, followed by our carriage bolt, pull that down to our frame, the hole in our frame. We'll let that hang there and we'll leave our fish wire on. We'll use that to help guide that through our hitch. For the hole we enlarged, we're going to do it a little bit different and it's going to be what we call reverse fish wire. So what we'll do here is we'll take our coiled end and we'll put that onto our spacer block, then we'll thread on our carriage bolt, thread that on right up to right where it wants to stop. And we'll take our carriage bolt, push that up into the hole, followed by our spacer block. Then we'll just pull that down through and we'll leave our fish wire attached. Now in your kit, you're going to have these round hole square spacer blocks. Now if you get your hitch up and it looks like it's not quite level, you can always insert one of these in your forward most hole. And what that's going to do is get your hitch leveled out where you want it. On ours today, it doesn't look like we're going to need that. So what we're going to end up doing is just lift our hitch into position. To an extra set of hands, I'm going to have my friend Joe help me lift it up into position. So what we want to do is get our fish wires put down into their corresponding holes and we'll just lift that up over our exhaust. We won't have to go past our isolator, unthread our fish wire. Now you can either pull these off or unthread them and we need to take our flange nut that comes in our kit and start that on there. And I like to get one on each side ran up as far as I can. That'll hold our hitch in place so we can install the rest of our hardware. With all of our hardware in its place, what I like to do is pull my hitch back and just check the centering, make sure everything looks nice and level and in the center, then I'll come back through with my 19 millimeter socket and we'll snug down all of our hardware. After we have all of our hardware snug down, we'll come back through with our torque wrench and torque down all of our hardware to the specifications listed in our instruction manual. Now if you don't have a torque wrench, you can always pick one up here at etrailer. We do have some options available or you can take a look at your local auto parts store. You should be able to rent one there. With everything torqued down, that'll do it for our look at and our installation of our Blue Ox hitch on our 2026 Subaru Crosstrek. I'm Scott with etrailer and thanks for watching.