Video Transcript for Install: Curt Trailer Hitch Receiver on a 2016 Dodge Journey

Today on our 2006 Dodge Journey we will be installing a Curt class 2 inch and a quarter trailer hitch receiver. Part number C12134. As you can see, very little that hangs down below our vehicle. Just a little bit of the frame, the class 2 inch and a quarter receiver itself, our safety chain loops which are right at the bottom of it here on this angular plate. Now, these are kind of small, so if you have some large safety chain loops on your trailer you may need to change the hook out to something that's a little bit smaller to fit inside of here. You see our receiver has this nice collar welded around it to give it a nice finished look and give it a little bit more reinforcement. On the side of our receiver we have our industry standard half inch diameter hitch pin hole. Now, this hitch has a 350 pound tongue weight rating, and a 3,500 pound max gross trailer weight rating.

It does not support the use of weight distribution, and if you're using it for a non-trailer application, such as a bike rake or a cargo carrier, Curt does require the use of a stabilization strap to help support the load. We have those stabilization straps available separately on our website. Now for a few measurements to better you in choosing any hitch-mounted accessory you may need - such as a ball mount, bike rack, or a cargo carrier. You are looking at about 14 inches from the ground to the top of the inch and a quarter class 2 opening, and about 4 inches from the center of the half inch diameter hitch pin hole to the rear-most point on our back bumper. Now that we've gone over some of the features of our Curt class 2 hitch, we'll show you how to install it. We're fortunate we don't need to lower our spare tire in order to begin our installation, but we do need to lower our exhaust here. There's two mufflers on either side of the vehicle.

On our passenger side there's a ground strap though, just clipped onto the exhaust hanger. Just grab it, un-clip it, so it's out of the way. With that done, we need to put a strap in to support our exhaust. We'll take a cam-buckle strap here, go around this sway-bar link on the driver's side, come over to the passenger side, do the same thing. Make sure our strap has a little bit of slack in it to catch our exhaust. We have two exhaust hangers on both mufflers. Spray some lubricant on them, help them slide off easier.

Repeat the same process on the other muffler. Now that we have all of our hangers sprayed with lubricant, take a pry-bar here and we'll work our hangers off our muffler. There's one, got three more to go. Now that we have our exhaust all dropped down, we'll take one of our fish wires, one of our small spacer plates here, and one of our carriage bolts. We will 00:02:38 work on the passenger side of the vehicle. Now we'll take our fish wire here, we'll go through this forward-most hole in the frame rail, and we'll come out here at the end of the frame rail, put on a plate, throw on a carriage bolt, stick it inside the frame, pull it on down.

Do the same thing for the rear-most hole in the frame rail. Now we have a large spacer plate. This one's used in our bumper support bar in the rear of the vehicle. We'll still use the same fish wire and the same style carriage bolt though. Go through this hole here. It'll come out the end of our frame rail. Stick a spacer plate on, I'll stick inside the bumper rail, throw it on a carriage bolt, and pull it on through. We'll repeat the same process on the other side of the vehicle. Now, our hitch comes with two of these metal wedges that will go on the rear-most hole between the hitch and the body of the vehicle. These will go onto our bumper support. What we're going to do, in order to make our installation easier, we're going to put them on, a couple pieces of tape like this, so we can tape them in place and don't have to worry about them falling while we install them. Like this, we'll go raise them into position and secure them to the vehicle. Now, the fat part of the wedge will go towards the rear of the vehicle. We'll just raise it up and secure our tape around the bumper support, like so, and we'll do the same on the other side of the vehicle. This way we don't have to worry about them dropping down while we're raising the hitch into position. Now, before we raise our hitch up into position, there's this connector here. Take a trim panel tool and pop it loose of the body on the driver's side. Pop this loose and let it hang out of the way so our hitch does not make contact with it when we raise it up. Now that all of our hardware is in place and we have our plates tapes to the frame we can grab a extra set of hands, raise our hitch into position and hold it in place with our hex plange 00:05:28 nuts. With all of our hardware in place we'll snug it down now. We'll repeat the same process on the other side. We'll torque it to the specifications found in the instructions. We'll do the same on the other side. We'll raise our exhaust back up, and reinstall our hangers. We'll do one on each side first, that way the exhaust goes up even and straight. Now that we have one on each side, we'll work on the second one on both sides. Once we have that on, make sure we reconnect the ground strap, it's on the passenger side. That completes our installation so we can remove our support strap we had to hold our exhaust up. That completes our installation of the Curt class 2 inch and a quarter trailer hitch receiver, part number C 12134 on our 2016 Dodge Journey.