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This fully welded, corrosion-resistant vehicle trailer hitch receiver is perfect for your light-duty towing needs. Draw-Tite's Tested Tough guarantee ensures that this hitch exceeds industry standards. Drawbar sold separately.
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Draw-Tite's Tested Tough program provides testing standards far superior to those outlined by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the go-to source for engineering professionals.
Each Draw-Tite trailer hitch receiver undergoes extensive fatigue testing and static testing with the ball mount that is either supplied or recommended for use with that particular hitch, thus ensuring results that are applicable to real life use. Fatigue testing is also conducted on hitches rated for use with weight-distribution systems.
In addition, Draw-Tite performs static testing on a simulated automobile, as opposed to the rigid fixture used for SAE testing, resulting in a more true-to-life scenario.
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Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Today, on our 2017 Subaru Outback wagon, we're going to take a look at and also show you how to install the Draw-Tite Custom-Fit Class II Trailer Hitch Receiver, offering the inch-and-a-quarter by inch-and-a-quarter opening. It's part number is 36493. This is what our hitch is going to look like installed. We're going to have a square crosstube, pretty much visible across the rear of the vehicle until it meets the side plates there. In the middle, we've got our inch-and-a-quarter by inch-and-a-quarter receiver tube opening. This is a Class II hitch, so this is going to work out really good. You can carry four bike racks, cargo carriers, ball mounts for small trailers.
Anything like that will work out fine. Got that reinforcement collar around the end that's going to help give it some structural rigidity. You can see our rolled steel style safety chain connection points, gives us plenty of room to get those chains connected. There on the side, you'll see the 1/2-inch diameter pin hole. That's going to work out really well for pins and clips, anti-rattle bolts, locking hitch pin clips, whatever you want to use there. You just want to be sure it's rated for Class II accessories. When it comes to the weight ratings for our hitch, it offers a 300-pound ton weight rating.
That's the maximum downward force that we can put down here at the receiver tube opening. We've got a 3500-pound gross trailer weight rating. That's going to be the total weight of our trailer and then also anything that we would load on top of it. It is a good idea to look into the owners' manual of your Outback to see what it's rated for, and then you'll just use whichever of those numbers are the lowest. A few measurements that are going to be helpful when it comes to selecting ball mounts, bike racks or hitch cargo carriers will be from the ground to the inside top edge of our receiver tube opening. We're going to have about 14 and 1/4 inches.
Then, from the center of our hitch pin hole to the outermost edge of our bumper, it's about 4 and 1/4". The first thing we need to do is get our exhaust lowered down and out of the way. This is a single outlet exhaust, so we're just going to have three hangers. We've got one that's located right here at the rear corner, to the inside of the car, and then right caddy-corner, there's going to be one right up here. If we'll follow the pipe forward a little bit, there's one right in front of this rear differential. Before we start pulling those, what I like to do is just put a strap underneath the exhaust here.
That's going to offer us some support so as we remove those hangers, this will support it. Then we can gently lower it down as much as we want. The next thing we're going to do is start pulling those hangers down. I like to use some spray lubricant on them. This is just going to help them slide off a little bit easier, and then a large screwdriver or a pry bar's really what you're going to need. We just slide those off. Do that for our other two locations. If you have a dual exhaust, you're just going to repeat this same process, but it'll be over on the passenger side. Give it a little slack there. Then we can move that exhaust over a little bit. It's going to give us the room we need to work. Now we've got four bolts. We've got one, two, three, and four that we're going to need to remove. All right. We can set these aside for reinstallation later. Now we're going to pull the plugs out of the bottom of the frame rail. That's going to expose one of the holes here that we're going to enlarge, and then the one here in the rear is going to be one of our attachment points once we get our bolt fish wired down through. to get our hardware in place, we're going to be creating an access hole here. It's going to be an inch and 1/8 in diameter. I'm going to start with a small drill bit to create a pilot hole, 1/8-inch, whatever you've got. Once we've got this drilled through, we'll then switch over to our larger bit. Once our bolts will clear through there without any problems, then we're ready to go do the same thing over on our driver's side. Now we're going to take one of our fish wires and we're going to put it in our rear attachment point there. We want it to come out the access hole that we created. We're going to use one of our smaller spacer blocks, and slide that up on. Then we're going to thread on one of our 7/16's carriage bolts. Now we'll feed our spacer block up into the hole, follow that with our carriage bolt, and pull it down in place. We'll do that for our forward attachment point as well. In some applications, this hole's going to be a little bit smaller, so keep that in mind. It is where you removed that forward rubber plug. Here, we're going to be using the larger spacer block, like that. Now, we'll head over to the driver's side and repeat the same process there. It's a good idea before raising our hitch into position just to use some rust-proof paint there to just touch up that bare metal so we don't have any corrosion issues down the road. At our forward attachment points here, what we need to do is tape on one of the flat washers provided. I like to tape it up to the frame and then raise my hitch up into position. That'll sandwich it in there, and we can get our hardware in place. With an extra set of hands, we'll get our hitch lifted up into position. I like to remove the pull wire that we had installed on the rear-most fastener. I'll leave the one attached on the front to help guide it into position. We're going to lift our hitch right up over those 7/16's carriage bolts. Now onto these, we're going to add one of our conical tooth washers. The teeth need to be facing up toward the hitch. Then we can thread on our hex nut. Once we've got that started, we'll just allow our hitch to rest there, and we can get the rest of our hardware in place. Now we'll snug down our hardware here. We can grab our torque wrench. We'll want to look in the instructions. There will be our torque specifications, and we can torque all of our hardware down properly. Now we're going to grab our heat shield. This would be the forward area. We want to trim off this little edge here that's in front of that forward attachment point towards the inside of the car. We can just follow those ridges down, go on the high side of that one, and just get rid of that area there. Now we'll want to realign the bolts that go up into our heat shield. Typically, we'd be using four here. There's holes in the hitches that allow it. This heat shield had been previously modified for a different installation, so we'll just be using the three that are left. Now we'll just place it back up in place. A little spray lubricant's going to ease that job for us. All right. We can pull down our strap, and our hitch is going to be ready for use. That will complete our installation the Draw-Tite Custom-Fit Class II Trailer Hitch Receiver, Part #36493, on our 2017 Subaru Outback wagon.
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (194 Customer Reviews)
This fully welded, corrosion-resistant vehicle trailer hitch receiver is perfect for your light-duty towing needs. Draw-Tite's Tested Tough guarantee ensures that this hitch exceeds industry standards. Drawbar sold separately.Had a local tire shop install the hitch, much easier with a lift. No problem, just about 1.25 hours including the wiring, so very reasonable. Looks great, and everything fit well. Added caulk at the gasket to help seal the trunk. This is a Class II hitch, so adequate for my small utility trailer. Ordered the Hitch and the Wiring Harness, plus the bracket, then found I needed a "Universal Adapter" to mount it, but it was shipped fast and the shipping refunded, so I am quite happy with the customer service and instructions. 656763
Solid construction and good fit and finish. The box it arrived in was pretty beat up. And the arms that reach forward along the frame were pushed together a bit. So I got one side bolted up and wedged a screwdriver handle between the spare tire well and the other arm to clear the bolt and assemble. Other than that, the installation went fine. To install the bolts, I removed the cargo area carpet and related parts, then enlarged holes that are directly above the hitch mounting holes. Primed the bare metal after I was done, and covered the holes with duct tape. The pull wires are a very helpful thing to have for getting the mounting bolts into place. Thanks for including them. And the trailer wiring adapter fit perfectly. Its kit did not include the double sided tape referenced in the instructions, but I have some in my stash of home repair stuff. 498291
Over all I could not be any happier with my hitch / cargo basket buying and install experience. A huge thank you to Chris and George on the etrailer team. All of my pre-order questions were answered promptly, and everything arrived as scheduled. The boxes were a little banged up, but after reading the reviews, that was to be expected. The install of the Class III hitch on my 2012 Legacy 3.6 could not have gone smoother. The videos really help to set expectations, and lets you know exactly what you need to do. My Legacy 3.6 has a dual exhaust set-up so there was a little more work involved with dropping the exhaust and another heat shield needed to be trimmed, but other than that the instal is exactly the same as the video that shows you how to instal the larger Class II hitch. A few tips, when dropping the exhaust, you will need remove the rubber hangers that support each muffler and the next rubber hanger located right before the exhaust splits from one pipe into two. This will allow you to lower the exhaust far enough out of the way. I had the car supported by jack stands and used a small jack to support the exhaust (see picture). As for drilling the access holes, I did it from under the car and had zero problems. All said and done from the time the car was put on jack stands to the time it was ready to be lowered was exactly two hours. Again, zero complaints! Thank you etrailer! -Sean 191719
The Product identification on the website was easy and clear for my car. The order process was super easy. We received the order very quickly, and it was delivered complete and in great shape. My Dad helped me install it, and we were both impressed at how good the customer service is with the access to fantastic video instructions for installation. The little bolt threading aids were brilliant! We used the floor Jack to lift the hitch in to place so that we didn't have to struggle with the weight while lining up the bolts. Lucky for us we had the hole saw in our shop. Had we not, it would have been a 30 mile trip to town and back......We had fun, and now I can haul and carry Stuff. Thanks etrailer! 275948
Kate S - 01/06/2018my wife's 2011 subaru outback. very fast shipping, and the parts are as described. installed it on the floor with the car jacked up on the driver side in 1 hour. very easy install after watching video on etrailers site. the coolest thing on the install was having my wife under the car with me to put it in place at least for 5 min. she might be sophisticated, but i got that extra set of hands to line it up. lol. 16891
The hitch was shipped and received in an expedite manner. The box as always was manhandled by UPS but the hitch itself was safe. Hint to shipping (bubble wrapping the hitch would help avoid scratch damage). I opted to enlarge the front hole present in the trunck area from within as the easiest way to pull the bolts through. Least amount of body damage without pulling the bumper off. The top sheet metal is much thinner than the bottom rail and there is a hole already directly above the front hole the bolt will travel through. In fact there is a hole directly above the rear bottom bolt hole as well but I opted to leave it alone and use the bolt threaders for these. A simple rat tail file and half moon rasp and about ten minutes was all that was needed to enlarge these two holes. Gorilla tape sealed them back over after it was finished. I noted that the 3 inch front bolt spacer fit perfectly perpendicular to the rail but the rear one did not so it sits parallel with the rail. This should not be an issue however because the rail at this point is double walled. I installed this hitch by myself in about 2 hours taking my time. I would also like to point out that instead of cutting the heat shield I decided to mark the position of the rear trailer bolt to the shield with a little grease on the bolt and drill a 1 1/4 inch hole in the heat shield over the marked spot with my hole saw. This worked out much cleaner than cutting the entire shield and was much easier than using snips. Over all quite an easy job. The only regret I had was not buying some undercoat while I had the heat shield off to add to what Subaru does not coat bit If the weather warms up the muffler will come off with just as much ease as before. The real test will be attaching the bike hitch and bikes. 120912
I've bought two of these hitches: one for a 2014 Subaru Forester, and now a 2018 Subaru Outback. A local automotive dealer had no problem installing either hitch as etrailer provided an excellent online video of the installation. I tow a 12' kayak on a small trailer (note photos) and never had a problem. etrailer ships promptly with no hassle and have always got it right.z 438085
Douglas D - 10/01/2018First off I'd like to thank the previous reviewers that mentioned that they had gotten the wrong size nuts in the bag of installation hardware. On inspection PRIOR TO BEGINNING I too had the wrong size nuts so it was simply a matter of a quick run to the hardware store beforehand. So, CHECK YOUR NUTS BEFORE YOU START!! This is the 2nd time I've bought a hitch from trailer.com & as usual the parts arrived quickly & with little to no damage in transport. The installation went exactly as shown in the great video only I chose to drill the access hole from the inside the trunk area rather than underneath as another reviewer mentioned. I feel there will be less of a chance of rust developing in the frame using this method. I happened to have a couple of plastic plugs left over from something & used them to plug the 1 1/8" holes after a little touch-up paint on the bare metal. BTW, save those rubber plugs!! You may need them for a future job! Go the Mrs on a creeper to help me get it in place. The funniest part was watching her get up & off that wheeled beast. Did the job in the garage with just the rear end on jack-stands in 2 hours taking me time. 179581
Great hitch easy installation highly re commend 794327
the trailer hitch works great, I just use it for a bike rack to carry bikes. I had it professionally installed as I really don't have the tools or know how to attempt installation. 778181
It came quickly. I took it to a local muffler shop and they installed in an hour for $110. Job done! 771355
UPS beats them up pretty good, but nothing was damaged. I had my mechanic (who can fix anything) install it and with us doing a lot of chatting and catching up, it took about an hour fifteen. Install was straight forward. I'm very happy with the results. 739347
Good product and a little bit of work installing. All went together per video. Good outfit to work with. Thanks! 733550
Hitch is used several times a week with bicycle carrier. Mounted on VW Jetta station wagon. The bike carrier tongue that inserts in hitch can drag on upward inclined driveways. 733331
I ordered this hitch for my bike rack. I had it installed at the Subaru dealer. It fit perfectly, looks good on my car (barley visible), and it works great. It serves the purpose I bought it for wonderfully. 714606
The trailer hitch was easy to install. i would recommend having two people as holding the hitch up against the frame is not too easy. I'm 59 and i did it myself so it can be done but to make it easier have someone there to help or use a jack to help with the installation. Instructions were clear and easy to follow - Subaru makes it even easier by having the holes in the trunk already pre-drilled, I just had to enlarge the holes a little. The hitch woks great, i've used it countless times - i have a trailer, a cargo carrier and a bike hitch so i use it all the time. You can barely see the hitch under the car and it has no effect on the ground clearance. 703461
Was very easy to install. The fishing cables for the bolts were very helpful. Quality product at a reasonable price. Would definitely buy again. 692289
Fourth hitch from E trailer. Shipping fast. Hitch as described. All is well and all is good. When I buy my next car I will order from etrailer again. I like to stick with what works. 686900
Shipped quickly. Fairly easy to install - works great! 654207
Draw-Tite Trailer Hitch Receiver - Custom Fit - Class II - 1-1/4": Product arrived well packaged and is easy to fit. We haven's had much of a chance to use it yet, but it looks neat and sturdy on the car. We mainly need the hitch for a bike carrier and hope to use it often. 643216
Hitch was as described and attached to vehicle without any glitches. 642138
Easy installation. Not real noticeable when not in use after I removed all the stickers and added a receiver cover. The electrical pigtail was a simple plug-in after finding the vehicle plug. 639579
This hitch has worked well for me. We use to for transporting our bicycles. We moved across the country from Washington, DC to Tacoma, Washington. The hitch fits well. I added some reflective tape for added visibility. 588821
Used this on my 2015 Subaru outback to haul a 5x8 utility trailer. Worked great. All parts came as expected and in good shape. 588442
Installation was carefully planned and clearly presented. No ambiguity or surprises. 580044
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