etrailer Trailer Hitch Receiver - Custom Fit - Matte Black Finish - Class III - 2"

Video Transcript for etrailer Class III Trailer Hitch Installation - 2016 Jeep Cherokee e38AR

Hello neighbors it's Brad here at etrailer, and today we're taking a look and installing the etrailer trailer hitch receiver, on a 2016 Jeep Cherokee. Now this is what the hitch is gonna look like when it's installed and you'll see pretty quickly that this is an exposed cross tube. So you are able to see the hitch while it's on the vehicle. But really as you stand back it does stay kind of hidden because it is a little bit lower. Now this is a two inch by two inch receiver opening, so that's gonna be great for a number of different accessories. So whether you're towing, or if you're just using a bike rack or cargo carrier.

You're gonna have plenty of options with that two inch opening. Now when putting accessories in place, it's gonna use a five eighth pin and clip here. And now the hitch doesn't come with it, a lot of your accessories will come with one. So that's something to look at, when you are choosing what accessory to get. But you can also pick up locking ones available here at etrailer.

That way when you load your accessories, you can lock in place and know that they're gonna stay on the vehicle. Now the plate style safety chain loop opening is quite large so it's gonna be great for just your standard hook, or even a larger clevis style. It's gonna be no problem to be able to hook that up when pulling a trailer. Now speaking of pulling a trailer, you're gonna want to talk about weight capacities on this and what it can do. It's rated pretty high, and you're gonna have a gross trailer weight rating of 5,000 pounds.

And that's gonna be the weight of the trailer, plus the accessories loaded onto it. Now there's also gonna be a tongue weight rating of 750 pounds, which is the downward pressure that's put on the receiver tube opening. So that's gonna be a lot of your suspended accessories like your cargo carrier or bike racks. And at 750 you really don't have to worry too much about overloading it. Now this can be used with weight distribution, it's gonna bump our gross trailer weight rating up to 6,000 pounds.

Our tongue weight gonna stay the same at 750, but before hooking up to that weight, you're gonna wanna actually check what the vehicle's capable of, and compare that with the hitch. Take the lower of those two numbers just so you stay safe. A few quick measurements here. We're gonna go from the center of the hitchpin hole to the furthest point on the rear fascia. We're looking about four inches, and that's gonna be important for some of your folding accessories. You wanna make sure that it's not gonna make contact with the rear fascia so, something to look at when choosing that accessory. Another thing we're gonna look at is our ground clearance. So from the top of the receiver tube opening to the ground, it's gonna come in at 11 inches. So I really don't worry too much about the hitch making contact, but as you have those accessories out, and you go up inclines, those are gonna dip down. So it is something to keep in mind especially with only an 11 inch ground clearance on its large incline or rough terrain you might make contact. So just keep that in mind when driving. Now as far as the insulation goes, this one's actually pretty easy. You have to scrape off a little bit of some sealant. But really then other than that, you're just gonna feed some hardware in, raise the hitch up in place and bolt it in. So you should be able to be doing this, in about I'd say 30 to 45 minutes. You can definitely do this in your garage or on your driveway. You might want an extra set of hands to get that hitch up in place, but really with just a basic set of hand tools you should be able to get this accomplished. Now I'm gonna walk you through all the steps to get your hitch installed. So let's take a look at that. Now at this point you're gonna want to examine your frame rails, and reason being is our hitch is gonna bolt up in this area but we do have this wire that's in the way. So we're gonna want to separate this and get it loose by. There's a clip up here, I'm just using a trim panel tool. You can use probably a flathead screwdriver, kind of pry on that. There's also gonna be a clip here that we're gonna need to remove and as well as one more over here. So just kind of get that separated, and we can let our wire hang loose. We're also gonna be using this portion here to put our hardware in place. So you're gonna wanna get your rubber plug taken out, and there's gonna be one more on the other side. So now we're gonna go ahead and get our hardware in place and this is just gonna create a stud for our hitch to mount up to. And the way we're doing this is using a fish wire technique with our carriage bolt and our spacer blocks. Make sure you have these handy. And if you've never done this technique before, it's not as scary as it may seem. And I'm gonna walk you through it here. So I'm gonna start, we have a side bolt that we're gonna be using. We'll do this one first and we're trying to get this two feet out. So, what we're gonna do is take our coiled end, feed that in and go back towards that where we had our rubber plug, and just have this slide out. Now at this point we'll go ahead and we'll take our spacer block, and we can go ahead and feed this in the frame rail. You just slide that in. And then with your carriage bolt, it'll just go ahead on that coiled portion here, and we're just gonna thread that on there. So now we'll grab the end that we've fed through here and we're just gonna pull this in, and you may need to kind of jostle it around a little bit but we should be able to get this to pull through. Now leave your wire on here, because you're gonna want to feed this through the hitch. It's gonna keep this in place and that way if this falls back in the frame, it's no problem to just pull this back. Now these ones are gonna be pretty, this is gonna be identical. So we're just gonna feed that same fish wire back, and get that one in place. Now when feeding this one in, since we are kind of going this way it might help to put a little bit of a bend in the wire. That way it feeds towards that access hole. It'll be a little bit easier to get, so you can see it pops right out there. We'll go ahead and do the same thing with our spacer block first. And then our carriage bolt. Now for this one, we also need to have this pass through. It's gonna be a little bit different, but nothing too tricky here. So what I'm gonna do is go ahead and feed my spacer block on our coiled wire. And then take our carriage bolt, thread this on. And we're just gonna feed this up in the frame rail. And then pull that through. And that's gonna create our mounting point. So now we're gonna go ahead and repeat the same process on the other side. Now to make clearance for our hitch, we're gonna want to trim back this seam foam here. So just using a razor knife, I'm just gonna kind of cut along our bracket and then cut flush with the frame rail. And that way our hitch isn't gonna be hindered by that. Now you're gonna have some on the other side, as well as the other side of the vehicle. So just make sure that this is all cleared out. Now we got those notched out, but also our hitch is getting kind of bolt up on the side here. So we're gonna wanna take off the outside edge here on both sides of the vehicle. So I'm just using a putty knife, I'm just gonna kind of run alongside it and kind of get this all cleared off. So you're gonna wanna just make sure that this edge, you can see where the seam is. This is nice and clean for that hitch to go up in place. Make sure you do both sides of the vehicle, just on the outside. Now, to make this a little bit easier to get our hitch in place, we're gonna just push this in the frame rail and that way when we raise our hitch up, we can pull this through. And that's gonna hold our hitch up while we put the hardware on. So, go ahead get an extra set of hands, and we'll get ready to put the hitch up. So with your extra set of hands, what we're gonna do is we're gonna prefeed our wires through the corresponding holes. So just make sure that you're using the correct ones. There's a center circle one that we're not gonna be using, but this is gonna help kind of guide this up. And when we get this lifted up in place, we're gonna have our side one, we're gonna pull that out and that studs gonna hold the hitch in. So, in order to get this in place we are gonna be sliding this kind of around the exhaust pipe here. So, I can see my fish wire, I might need to run this back here, no problem now. And then we'll just slide this up, and as I get closer I can go ahead and put my wire from that side hole through here. And I'm just gonna kind of pull this wire to make sure that I have enough to kind of feed this up. And then as we slide this up, might take a little force here. But we should be able to get this aligned to where we can pull this stud through. So once we have that fed through and lifted up into place, we're gonna want to align it to where that stud is. So, you may have to move the hitch around a little bit, but once you get that aligned with the hole, we should be able to pull this out and it's gonna hold our hitch up. Just like that. So now this portion, we're going to take our fish wire off. And you can pull the wire off, just be careful if it'll snap or you can just uncoil it. But the main thing is, you're gonna wanna make sure that bolt doesn't fall in the frame rail. So, the best way that I've found to do this, you can push up on the hitch and it's gonna put tension against that bolt. Or just kind of keep downward or upward pressure to where that's going to go against the frame rail. And that way you can take your flare nut, and just get it hand started. That way, we at least have the hardware in, it's gonna be secure. And then we're just gonna do the same thing for the rest of our hardware. Just getting these hand tightened on. So now with all of our hardware hand tightened in place. We're gonna go back and tighten it down. Now you don't have to get too crazy because we're gonna be going back with our torque wrench, using the torque setting in the instruction manual to make sure that they're properly torqued. To make sure that they're not too tight, putting stress on the threads but also that they're not gonna become loose over time. So once you have them tightened down, you'll grab your torque wrench and go through and torque them. Now if you do need a torque wrench we have these available here at etrailer, or generally you could rent them at an auto parts store but this is gonna be an important step. Now once you have everything tightened and torqued down properly. You're ready to start using your hitch. That was a look and installation of the etrailer trailer hitch receiver, on a 2016 Jeep Cherokee..