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This fully welded trailer hitch receiver bolts onto your Honda Element's frame with no welding required. Powder coated steel is sturdy and corrosion resistant.
Features:
Specs:
At etrailer.com we're committed to the products we sell, and to our customers. Our experienced and knowledgeable staff are available via both phone and email to address your questions and concerns for the lifetime of your hitch. The technicians at etrailer perform hitch installations on a daily basis, making them a valuable resource for do-it-yourselfers. The one-on-one, personal service you'll receive comes straight from an expert in the towing and automotive field. We've installed it, we've wired it and we've towed with it, so whatever your question, we can answer it.
Tech Tip
Drilling required for installation
Complete Towing Package for 2003 Honda Element
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Average Customer Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars (40 Customer Reviews)
This fully welded trailer hitch receiver bolts onto your vehicle's frame with no welding required. Powder coated steel is sturdy and corrosion resistant.
Fast and affordable, they're my go to company for auto hitches and accessories.
Works just as it should.
Hitch fit perfectly thanks
Nice fit, works well on our element.
The hitch is great once installed. The installation was much more difficult than anticipated from the description online and also watching videos. A few points to consider. Enlarging the existing holes in the frame rails is more difficult than I would have hoped. It took many hours including several trips to the hardware store for drill bits and conical grinding stones. I went through 4 stones and also needed two drill bits. Individual mileage may vary. After all that, the hitch didn't fit, and I was informed via very helpful online staff of Etrailer that some hitch modifications may be required. Those modifications were initially performed using a protective covering and a rubber mallet but eventually descended into a therapeutic session with a 7lb sledgehammer. This removed most of the protective paint on the portion of the rack being hammered, and also no doubt compromised the hitch's integrity- that said it does fit now. Happy the hitch is on, the quality is good, but the "30 minutes for a novice" to install direction on the website is nonsense.
received hitch and installed. cutting the holes took a little time. Hitch went on as directed and look Great
I would have NEVER bought this hitch if I would have known the work it takes to put it in. It says “drilling” required, but that is absolutely not true. I had to use 2 different kinda of drill saws, an hammer, and a grinder and took me HOURS.
What is the point of even having a “custom” hitch to a specific model of car if you have to modify the car to even fit it??
I’m actually really frustrated with the entire process and if I didn’t need the hitch today to move, I would return this product immediately.
Purchased this hitch for a 7k mile road trip I took this past summer. Having a great instructional video to follow made the installation process that much smoother. Installed it by my self but it can be tedious if you’re not use to DIY. After making sure it held up well we ordered another one for our second Element. The second one that arrived was a little more difficult to install. Had to pry one end with a pry bar to line it up where it’s supposed to be. Other than that no issues. We tow our boat with that one and we have no complaints. If we ever buy another Element this hitch will be ordered again. Loaded my hitch with 5 gallons of gas and 5 gallons of water, plus the cooler full of ice and food. Extra weight definitely had the car a lot lower in the rear end and from time to time on low curbs the hitch would scrape or bump hard. Didn’t affect it one bit.
Sturdy and well built . Not the best fit . Took much more persuasion than I would have wanted from a product that cost as much and was as beefy as the one I received
Pros: Excellent finish.
I was a little worried about having to enlarge a few holes in order to get this hitch to fit. It turned out that it was very easy. I used a dremel tool to enlarge the hole, and the fish wire made it easy. (see the attached pics). Dont forget to paint the hole when done.
One other note was that the hitch didn't fit out of the box, I had to 'persuade' the center portion (where the U bolt goes) with a hammer in order to get the mounts to line up. It only took a little hammering and then it fit perfectly.
All in all I am very happy, but I took a star off for the adjustments .
there are several choices when it comes to hitches for the honda element. i chose this one because others need the bumper to be trimmed for correct installation. this one from curt though did not require that. the only difficulty installing this one is that holes in the honda frame needed enlarged on the sides to allow for hardware to be put in place. access isnt great but using a rotary file in my drill seemed to work pretty good. make sure you wear your earplugs though. the hitch fits and looks great. wiring is easy, however instructions dont tell you how to get the wiring from the connection inside by the spare tire to outside where the hitch is at. i chose to remove a plastic cap beneath the spare and under the jack. i bought some plastic insulation and wrapped the wire for a little extra protection and it works great.
So I haven’t exactly worked this thing very hard since it’s bolted to my 4-cylinder Honda Element, but it has worked well for what I ask of it. It’ll pull a trailer of lumber home from the hardware store or a trailer of yard debris to the dump, which is all I really ask of it.
Installation wasn’t too bad. The modifications grinding away the frame weren’t as tough as I feared. Just used my Dremel and a set of cheap grinding burrs for it rather than buying a proper die grinder that I might never use again.
The hardest part was trying to hold it up and get all the bolts in without things twisting or pitching such that the holes didn’t all line up. Would definitely be easier with 2 helpers to hold it up while you bolt, but I managed to rig something up and do it solo.
One potential improvement to the install instructions: put a piece of tape over the nearby holes in the frame that you are *not* using. That way you don’t accidentally put a bolt in the wrong hole and then spend an hour fishing it back out of your frame.
Hitch was bent on arrival. Wish they included two springs to fish the bolts
Awesome hitch, perfect fit and works amazing with my 1up USA bike rack
I've had it a year and used it a lot. Works perfect, rugged, and doesn't move around at all
I have it attached to a Honda Element and use it to haul lightweight dirt bikes.
Highly recommend it
It looked very nice when installed.
Holes in the hitch were not exactly lined up. Had to wedge the side out to get it lined up during install.
You did very good. The product looks good. The video's on the tracking page are great. I have not installed it yet. The box did end up with a whole in it with the hitch popping out.
Bought this to replace the previous Curt class 1 hitch. It came with some scratches in the paint, admittedly from mishandling by etrailer; they said they store them on a shelf and they get banged around which they should work to avoid. I had to clean quite a few spots, prime and paint, which took an extra couple of days of work because I had to wait for the paint to cure.
I also struggled a bit to get this one to line up. The bolts went in rather easily after I made the necessary clearance cuts, but I almost had to pre-bend the frame slightly with a “drift pin” to get the holes to align. My frame is not racked so that didn’t really make much sense. The previous Curt hitch still fit very well.
After a season of use though, it is solid and has not given me any problems. Very reliable and never moves. It feels well made and well attached to the frame.
It's a well made hitch receiver and wiring harness. The installation process was well thought out. I followed the hitch instructions, and thought fishing the bolts was going to be harder than it actually was. The instructions were easy enough to follow. The wiring kit under the dashboard was plug-and-play, with no issues. In my installation, I chose to do something not mentioned in the instructions, and I adjusted the rear tow loop on my Honda Element, so that the center of the hitch could attached a little higher, making it more snug up to the bumper. This variance is unrelated to the quality of the products made by eTailer.
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Peter A.
3/25/2023
well, the hitch works well, but installing it was a job. The upper front connection point did not line up at all. It needs to be bent to more of a 90 degree angel. So after some time bending it to make it work, it fit. This did break the powder coating on this tab.