Draw-Tite Max-Frame Trailer Hitch Receiver - Custom Fit - Class IV - 2"

Video Transcript for Trailer Hitch Installation - 2015 Jeep Cherokee - Draw-Tite

Today on this 2015 Jeep Cherokee we're going to review and install the Draw-Tite Max-Frame Trailer Hitch, part number 75998. All right, this is what the hitch looks like when it's installed on our Jeep Cherokee. You'll notice it does sit below down the bumper here, and it does require a cutout in the bumper. It's all on the bottom, so you really can't see the cutout when you're standing up away from the vehicle. Now, our hitch is a class III, which gives us a two-inch receiver opening right here. You also have some nice finished collar that's also reinforcement for the end of the hitch. On the bottom here we have our safety chain loops here.

It's a nice big oval here that'll work with a wide variety of safety chain hooks that are out there. This 5/8 of an inch hole right here is for your favorite locking hitch pin or a regular 5/8 diameter hitch pin. The smaller hole up front here is designed to work with the J-pin stabilization pin. Now, this is sold separately from the hitch. This is great for accessories that do not have their own built in anti-rattle device. Now let's go ahead and cover the weight capacity of our hitch.

It's going to be 500 pounds of tongue weight, which is weight that pushes down on the hitch ball, and then it also has 5,000 pounds of pulling capacity. Now, always double check with your owner's manual to make sure your Jeep can handle these kind of capacities. It can use a weight distribution assembly with this hitch. However, it will not increase the capacity of your hitch. Now, outside towing purposes you can also use it for other accessories such as a cargo carrier. This has got a 500 pound tongue weight, so you can put a lot of weight on your cargo carrier as long as it matches that.

Also, for bike racks this will work great with four or five bike racks. Also, since you've got a nice heavy tongue capacity here this would be great for the bike racks that actually swing off to the side as well since they tend to be a little bit heavier. Now, when we install the hitch this is a no-drill application so all the holes are existing in the frame to install it. The only cuts we had to make we're into the plastic right here. All right, next we'll go ahead and give you some measurements that'll help you out in selecting some accessories. From the center of the hitch pin hole to the outside edge of the bumper will be about four inches.

From the top of the receiver opening down to the ground will be about 13 inches. Now we'll go ahead and show you how we installed the hitch. Now, the first part of our install is we get the vehicle ready to install our hitch. In that case, it means to go ahead and lower the exhaust down. Now for our lower exhaust I'm actually going to use a strap to go around the exhaust to help support it when I lower it down. I'm just using a cam buckle strap, but anything will work, piece of wire, rope, just enough to hold it up in place. Now, next to lower exhaust is going to remove these two bolts right here. We'll be using a 13 millimeter socket. Okay, this is our passenger side. We'll repeat the same process over on our driver side. Now that we have the other side loosened up, we can go ahead and lower it down. It will rest on this support beam right here, so it doesn't really fall down so you don't really need the strap. But I like to take the support bracket down to give us some extra working room to put the hitch up there. To remove this support beam right here to get some working room I'm going to remove these two bolts right here using our 13 millimeter socket. This is hidden behind the exhaust right here, so you have to crawl up underneath and see. To loosen this guy up, we'll need a 13 millimeter socket and a deep well. We don't have to take it completely off, just enough working room to move it out of the way so the exhaust can come down. We have to do this on both sides of the vehicle. Now with the extra slack in it we can go ahead and lower our exhaust. We have a lot more working room. Next up, this bottom edge and the part behind it, this fascia here, has to be removed from the vehicle. To start off we need to remove these four screws using a eight millimeter socket. To unsnap it from the fascia on the bottom here, I'm going to push at one of these tabs with a screwdriver just a little bit and then push towards the front. That helps break it loose. There it goes. Now we have to trim our bumper cover here to make room for the hitch. To make it simple, I just started off the edges. This edge here and here, it's a little bit over sized from what they call for in the instructions, but it does help to have a little bit of wiggle room in there because it's not always perfect. Then from here, I measured up four and a half inches as described in the instructions. We'll make a mark. We'll do it on both sides. Then we just need a straightedge to make our square, and then we'll go ahead and cut it out. Now there's a variety of ways you can cut this. You can use a sharp knife, tin snips like I'm going to use, or you can use a rotary tool to cut it out as well, whichever works best for you. I like using the tin snips because it's very thin and easy to work with. If you're careful, your edges will be relatively smooth. I always like to go to outside of my line because it's just a little bigger. It makes everything work a little bit better when you put the hitch up in there. The top, I'll lightly score it with a knife. We'll just bend it up and out of the way to make a break in it and then cut off the rest. Take a moment to clean up the edges and make sure they're square and get all the rough edges off. All right, next we'll go up in the frame of our vehicle and we'll go ahead and pop out these rubber plugs. All we're doing on the passenger side is repeated over on our driver side. Now, depending on your trim package on your Jeep Cherokee, you may or may not have some wire harnesses right here. If you do, you just pop them loose. You can use a trim panel tool or a screwdriver. You can go ahead and just move them out of the way and your hitch will slide in between the wire harness and the frame. In this case, we don't have to worry about it on this vehicle. We'll go ahead and install some hardware onto the frame using a bolt leader and our block, and then threading on the bolt. We can use this to pull everything through the frame. We're going to install hardware on the holes on the outside of the frame right here. Take your bolt leader and we'll run it out the hole here. We'll take our block, thread it through the bolt leader, push it into the frame, thread on our bolt, and push it up into the frame. Then we'll go ahead and pull it through the hole. Make sure everything fits together properly. Then I'm actually going to push it back into the frame so when we put our hitch up we can pull it back through. Now we'll repeat the same process with these two holes right here. This one will be a little bit different. We'll put everything together first. Get everything together, push it in the frame, pull it back out. We'll go and repeat the same process over on our driver side. Now we're about ready to get the hitch up in position. When we put it into place, it's a little bit easier to show you now, make sure that on our conical tooth washer here, make sure these teeth always stay up towards the hitch and the nut will go on behind it. Also, they give you some of these lock washers here. If you need to, you put them on the bolt here and put your hitch up into place. This takes up the gap between the hitch and the side of the frame here if you need it. You may have to put it up there to test it to make sure that you need it or not. All right, now with an extra set of hands lets go ahead and put the hitch up. We'll lift it up and over the exhaust as close as we can and then we'll take our bolt leaders and run them through. Make sure we get the right ones in the right spot. Run those through, run the bottom ones through, and we'll push it up further up and over the exhaust behind the bumper cover. Push the hitch up all the way and pull your bolt out, and let the hitch rest on the bolt so it traps it. Then we can go ahead and put our hardware on the bottom. We'll take off our bolt leader by unthreading it. Put our conical tooth washer on, and then our nut. There we go. Then we'll go ahead and move on to the one on the side. Even though it's pinched by the hitch, just be careful you don't knock it back into the frame. Now with all our hardware loosely installed, then we go ahead and tighten it down using a 7/8 of an inch socket. Now we'll go ahead and torque down the bolts as specified in the instructions. With our hitch installed, our plastic panel that was behind the bumper cover can go back into place. This will be a tight fit against the hitch, so you may have to push the bumper cover towards the front to get started and pop back into place. Next we'll go ahead and put our hardware back into place. Now at this point we can go ahead and reinstall our exhaust. I'll go ahead and do the hangers first. Put our support bracket back up into place. Now I've got our exhaust and our trim panel all back into place, we can go ahead and remove our safety strap for exhaust and we're finished with our install. That'll finish it for our Draw-Tite Max-Frame Trailer Hitch, part number 75998, on this 2015 Jeep Cherokee.