EcoHitch Invisi Trailer Hitch Receiver - Custom Fit - Class III - 2"

Video Transcript for EcoHitch Invisi Trailer Hitch Installation - 2019 Subaru WRX

Rob: Rob here at etrailer.com and today you're gonna be taking a look at the EcoHitch Class III Custom Fit Invisi Hitch on our 2019 Subaru WRX STI. It's gonna be completely hidden behind the bumper until we want to use it. Then we're gonna remove the factory knockout and we're gonna see the receiver tube sticking out. Once we're not using our hitch, we can put the factory knockout in, and it looks like it's not there and it's a completely stock Subaru WRX. The nice thing about that not only does it make it look nice, but it's also gonna save us a lot of ground clearance because our STI sits a little bit lower to the ground, so we're not going to have to worry about anything hanging below the bumper. And since our hitch is going to have a 2" by 2" receiver tube opening, we're going to have a really wide variety of options of what we can mount up.We want to go on a bike ride, throw a couple bikes on a bike rack, put a cargo carrier on there to keep all that dirty, nasty gear out of our Subaru, or we can put a ball mount in if we want to tow a trailer.

Now, the way we're going to mount any of our accessories is through the hitch pin hole here on the side of the receiver tube. It is going to accept a standard 5/8" pin and clip. These are not included in the kit, but you can pick them up here at Etrailer.com. Now, you might be wondering, "Well, how am I supposed to get in there, and put the clip in, and put my accessories in," and I'll tell you to be honest, it is a little difficult, but you reach underneath the fascia, just pull outwards slightly, and we can get our pin and clip into position, but the whole point is that the hitch is going to be hidden behind the bumper and it's not going to be distracting.Now, if you are going to be towing a trailer, you're probably wondering, "Well, if the receiver tube's up here, where are my safety hooks It'll be almost impossible to hook up your safety hooks by the receiver tube." Well, EcoHitch went ahead and put them down here below the bumper, so now we should have plenty of room to get those hooks connected, and where again, it's tucked up high enough that it's not seen, but it's easily accessible. Now, obviously, if you're looking for a hitch, the weight capacity is going to be a big concern of yours.

You want to make sure that it's going to be up for the task in what we're going to use it for. Well, their hitch is going to have a 350 lb tongue weight, which is the maximum downward force of the receiver tube. It would be great for some of those larger bike racks, even up to four or five bikes, or some of the smaller cargo carriers so we can maximize the amount of gear that we put on it.As far as the gross trailer weight rating goes, our hitch is going to have a 3,500 lb rating. That's how much our hitch can pull, including the trailer and everything we have loaded on it, but you always want to double check your WRX's owner's manual because you don't want to exceed the manufacturer's recommended weight. So, if you're comparing this hitch to the other ones available for your WRX, this is going to be the only one that has a 2" receiver tube and the only one that's going to be hidden behind the bumper.

The other are going to have an 1-1/4" receiver tube opening, which has less options for accessories, and we're going to lose some ground clearance because they're going to be hanging down below the bumper.One thing I do want to mention about the hitch here is if you look through the receiver tube, you can see the back of the back of the trunk pan there. So, we are going to be limited on what accessories we can use. We're limited by the hitch pin hole. It can only have 2-1/2" that extends past that, otherwise it is going to come in contact with the car and the pin holes will not line up. Let's give you a few measurements, and these are going to help you when you're looking at accessories for your new hitch, like a ball mount, a bike rack, or even a cargo carrier.

From the center of the hitch pin holes to the outermost edge of the bumper is right about 3-1/2", and that measurement's going to come in handy when you're looking at folding accessories to make sure you have enough room and they're not going to come in contact with the rear bumper.And from the ground to the inside top edge of the receiver tube opening is right about 17". That measurement's going to help you when you're looking for a ball mount to match up to your trailer so you can find the appropriate rise or drop. But now that we've seen what our hitch looks like and gone over some of the features, let's put it on together. To begin our installation, we want open up our rear trunk. We're going to remove all the floor coverings so we can have access to the rear threshold here. On the inside, we're going to have a few fasteners holding it in place. We're going to need to pull those out. So, there's going to be a total of three of these. So, you want to grab a flat blade screwdriver or a trim panel tool, there's a very small notch on the side, we want to pry out on that notch so the center comes out, and then we're going to pop the outer part out, and the whole clip will come out.Once all the clips are removed, we want to grab the bottom of the panel, and we're going to lift straight up, and we'll set this aside. Now, if you move to the outside edge right by our taillight, in the inside of the trunk here, we're going to have a push pin, that's going to be holding that felt material. We need to get that out so we can get behind the felt and get access to our taillight. So, I'm going to take a trim panel tool, I'm going to pop that clip out. I'm going to pry the center section out first, it's going to the the gray section. There's going to be a white section underneath it, and then we pull that out as well. So, we're going to grab that carpet, and we're just going to pull it back a little bit, and that will give us access to all the wires and nuts that are holding our taillight assembly in place.Now, we got these little white clips that are over the studs on the nuts that are holding our taillight in, you want to slide those off so we can get access to them. Going to have a total of three bolts that are holding our taillight in, and two of them are going to have these clips on it. If you're having a little bit of trouble, you can grab a flat blade screwdriver or a trim panel tool and pop them off. We're going to want to unplug the wires or this white connector, just press down on the tab, and pull towards the front of the car. Then we get ready to pull these three bolts out. So, you're going to want to grab an 8 mm socket, and we'll pull all those nuts out. And whenever you remove these, you want to be careful. You don't want to drop them because it will roll under the carpet, it makes it really difficult to find them.Now, we'll grab our taillight and you want to pull straight back. It will be a little tight. You may have to work at it a little bit, but it should come loose. Once it does, we'll go ahead and set it aside, and we can remove our other taillight assembly. We're going to move to the rear wheel well now. Right behind our tire at the edge here, you may have a couple push pins. We're missing one of ours down here at the bottom, but if we come right where the fender meets the fascia, we're going to have another push pin that we're going to need to remove. This is going to be a little different. If we grab a flat edge screwdriver, we're going to want to push in on the center, and that's going to take the tension off, and then we come underneath the outer ring, and we'll pry it out. You just want to be careful because these push pins can get pretty brittle.We'll go ahead and pull that push pin out. I'll remove the other one on the other side as well. If we move underneath the bottom of our Subaru on the edge on each side, we're going to have three push pins. They are attaching the fascia to the bottom of the car. We're going to remove those as well. We'll take a flat edge screwdriver, come into the notch, we're going to pry out the center section, and once that's out, we'll pry out the outer ring, and pull the push pin out. We want to pull all three of these out on each side. Now, if we move in just a little bit right by where our exhaust is, we're going to have a push pin that's actually underneath the lip of the fascia here. Then more towards the center, we're going to have one that's on the outside. We're going to pull both of those off and these are going to be in the same location on both sides.Now, on each side of the trunk right by our taillight, we're going to have this bolt. So, we're going to grab a 10 mm socket so we can pull it out. I'm getting ready to take our fascia off and it's a good idea to get an extra set of hands so we don't have to worry about picking it up and being so cumbersome. Well, we're going to start at the edge where our fascia meets the fender. We'll grab the corner and we're going to want to pull outward. You're going to work your way towards the center. We're releasing all the clips. Now, once you get to about the taillight area, you kind of want to grab underneath, lift up while you're pulling it away, and that'll release the clips over here. And once we have it loose, make sure that there's no electrical connectors that we need to disconnect, and we'll set the fascia aside where it won't get damaged.With the fascia removed, it's going to expose our crash bumper or the bumper beam. It's going to be held on by three fasteners, two on each side and one on the bottom. We're going to want to remove those. So, we have a 14 mm socket and a long extension so we can go through the access holes to pull the hardware out. And with these three removed, we'll remove the other three on the other side as well. Now, your bumper beam, if you haven't ever had it off before, it may be a little tight. So, you just kind of want to work it loose, and then we can pull it off, and set it aside for right now. We're going to move underneath now because we need the lower exhaust. Before we lower it, I'm going to put a support strap up that way it won't hang down too far and cause any damage. You just want to find a solid point on the frame or anywhere that's not going to be moving.I'm going to tighten the strap up so that it'll support it and we can lower it down. Now, we move to the inside of the muffler. On each side, we're going to have an exhaust hanger. We're going to slide these off. So, you just take a little bit of a spray lubricant, spray them down, and if you have an exhaust hanger removal tool, you can use that, or you can just grab a pry bar, and the main goal here is just to slide that isolator off the post just like that. Then we'll move to the outside of the muffler, and it's gonna be a little difficult to see and reach, but we're going to have another one that's at the . towards the front of the car on the outside of the muffler. So, again, we'll spray it down with some lubricant. We'll get our pry bar in there and slide that hanger off.And with this muffler down, we're going to repeat that on the other side. So, we're going to lower our exhaust down to give us a little bit more room to work with, but if you find that you don't have enough room, right forward just of the rear axil, we're going to have another hanger here, and we're going to remove that one as well to give a little bit more headroom. Above our muffler, we'll have our heat shield. We need to pull this out. There's going to be a total of four bolts holding it in place. So, we'll grab a 10 mm socket and we'll pull all those out. We're going to hold onto all the hardware. And with all of it removed, we're going to pull our heat shield out, we're going to set it aside, and we'll pull out the other side as well.With the heat shield out of way, it'll expose the bottom of the frame here. We're going to have several plastic or rubber type plugs in the bottom. We're going to want to remove the one at the very back and the one at the very front. So, just grab a flat head screwdriver. We'll pop those plugs out. And we'll do the same thing on the other side of the frame in the same locations. So, we're going to take our pull wire, we're going to feed the coiled end into the furthest hole towards the front, and we're going to start feeding it towards the back until we can get it to come out the large opening that our bumper structure was covering up here. Now, you want to make sure you have the coiled end sticking out, as well as the tail end on the bottom of the frame.Once everything's coming through, we're going to grab the plate spacer. We'll slide it over the coiled end of our wire. We're going to put it on top so it doesn't drop. We'll grab a star washer and our bolt. Slide the star washer over the bolt. Then we're going to thread on the end of the bolt to the wire. We'll grab the tail end. We're going to pull on our pull wire until everything can start going through the frame rail, until it drops down and that bolt goes through that spacer block. You're going to very carefully remove the pull wire from the bolt because we are going to have to reuse it. But we'll just uncoil it. Don't want to pull on it because it will damage the coil and it won't thread on anymore. And then we're going to repeat that whole process with all three remaining holes that we unplugged.So, we have both our heat shields here, and I went ahead and marked out the areas that needs to be trimmed. And if we find the forward most mounting location that's going to be on the frame rail, it'll have this little section at the back here where it kind of curves, it has a little half moon shape, we're going to want to cut that rectangle out of the heat shield, and it's going to the same location on both sides. Whenever you're cutting it, you can use whatever you have available. I'm going to use a pair of tin snips that way I can make it pretty quick. But again, you just want to trim out that rectangle section right at the end by that last mounting location. And with this heat shield trimmed out, we're going to go ahead and trim out this section on the other one as well.So, with our heat shield trimmed, we'll raise it back up into position, and we're going to re-secure it using only two of the pieces of hardware. You want to make sure you leave the bolts out of the bottom of the frame because our heat shield is actually going to get sandwiched between our hitch and the frame. So, we want to leave these two bolts out and only put in the two outer bolts. And we'll repeat that for the other heat shield as well. With everything back in place now, we'll get ready to put up our hitch. Before we do, I want to go over the combination of hardware that's going to hold it up.We're going to have two flat washers that will slide over the bolt, we'll follow it up with a lock washer, and then finally, secure it down with a hex nut. That's going to be the same combination for all four bolts that are coming down through the frame. Now, with an extra set of hands, we're going to lift our hitch into position. You kind of want to come underneath until you get to about where the cutouts are here, and then we're gonna lift the center section up, and then rotate the side place so they line up with the bolts. You just want to be careful not to push the bolts back into the frame and make sure they do come through the hitch. Once we have it up, we can grab our hardware. We'll slide each piece on. And we'll secure it using at least one nut on each side that way the hitch will hold itself up and we don't have to worry about it falling.And with the two in place holding it, I can get the rest of our hardware in. And if you're having trouble keeping the hardware still to get the nuts started, what I like to do is I like to put the washers on, kind of push against the bolt, it'll trap it, and I will be able to thread on a nut a lot easier, it won't be spinning on us. I'm gonna come back with a 19 mm socket, you can also use a 3/4" socket, and I'm just going to snug up my hardware. You don't want to really crank on these yet. You just want to snug them up so that the frame rail and the plate are really close and it kind of sucks everything up. And we're going to repeat that for all of our remaining hardware.Now, we'll move to the fascia where we have it removed. That center section here is going to have a knockout in it. There's going to be two tabs on the top. You're going to press in on those tabs and the knockout should fall forward. We're going to hold onto this because we are going to have to do a little bit of trimming. Now, we're going to need to trim off the little wings here on the side of the center of the fascia and we're going to go across, but that little tab here that the knockout was sitting in, you want to keep that section so it still holds it in place. So, you want to get really close to that opening, but you don't want to cut it completely off. I'm going to use a Dremel tool just so I can make a nice, clean cut, and be very careful when you're cutting it. And with this side trimmed, I'm going to repeat the same thing for the other side.We're going to grab our bumper beam or the impact structure, we're going to line it back up. Then I'm going to loosely reinstall the nuts on the studs that way we don't have to worry about it falling off and we can get the rest of the hardware in place. I'm going to come back with the same 14 mm socket and extension and we'll tighten up all our hardware. Now, at this point, we're going to get ready to put our fascia back on, and you may be wondering why we haven't torqued our hitch down and put our exhaust back or anything, and that's because we want to make sure that the receiver tube opening sticks out and is in centered in that knockout hole. So, if we need to make any kind of side to side adjustments, we still can, but that way we can do it and make sure it fits with the fascia well.So, we can take our fascia, we're going to get it real close to lined up, and I'm gonna start getting it lined up, and check our hitch and the knockout section, and if it is lined up well, you can start pushing the fascia in, re-securing all the clips and we'll put all the fasteners back in place. Once you have your fascia back in place, and you can verify that the hitch opening is in the center of that knockout, and it's in the position you want, we can come back and we'll torque everything down to the specified amount in the instructions. You want to make sure you repeat that for any remaining hardware you have. With our hitch inaudible 00:19:17 down, we can lift our exhaust back up and we're going to slide all the hangers back onto the rubber isolator. It may help to slide them back on if you have a little bit some more spray lubricant on there, it'll just slide a little bit easier.And finally, we can remove the support strap from the exhaust. With everything torqued down, that'll finish up your installation. However, I do recommend leaving at least these two push pins at the bottom out. That'll give us enough room to pull out on the fascia just a bit so we can reach our hand in and we can pull the knockout out. That'll finish up your look at the EcoHitch Class III Custom Fit Invisi Hitch on our 2019 Subaru WRX STI.