Video Transcript for DIY 2020 Jeep Cherokee Installation for the Draw-Tite Max-Frame Trailer Hitch Receiver

Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2020 Jeep Cherokee, we're going to be taking a look at and showing you how to install the Draw-Tite Max-Frame trailer hitch receiver. So, many Cherokee owners use their Jeeps to do a little bit of everything and so you're going to want a hitch that can live up to that as well. And this one's going to be able to do exactly that. So, whether you plan on doing some towing or just primarily use it for accessories, it's going to get the job done. Now, the hitch is pretty much visible, you are going to see the receiver tube opening but in my opinion, it goes with the back of the Jeep and matches nicely.

So, this is a class three hitch, so it's going to have that two inch by two inch receiver tube opening, which is a very common size and pretty much endless choices for different types of accessories, which is always nice.It's going to have these standard five-eight pin hole. Now, I want to point out a pin and clip does not come included, but if you need one, you can find it here at etrailer. Right in front of the pin hole, there's also going to be a smaller hole and that's going to be used for a J-pin. So, if you use that J-pin, what it's going to do is eliminate any slop or play here in the connection point when you have your accessory plugged in and it's going to just keep the ride inside of your Jeep a little bit quieter. We do have some pretty neat safety chain openings.

You don't see this style too often where they're actually hanging down below the hitch and in my opinion, I like it. There're really easy to get to. They give us plenty room and we're not going to have to worry about any interference with our pin and clip.As far as the hitches weight capacities go, it's going to have a 500 pound maximum gross tongue weight rating. So, that's going to be the amount of weight pushing down on the hitch. So.

That's a pretty high number. So you should be able to use just about any size bike rack, or cargo carrier, that you want to. As far as the maximum gross trailer weight rating goes, it's going to be 5,000 pounds. That's going to be the amount of weight that's pulling on the hitch. So, that's the weight of your trailer plus anything that you might have on it.

Now, this can be used with the weight distribution system, which is a separate component, but even if you are using that, the weight capacities will remain the same; so just keep that in mind. Now I do always like to point out too, it's never a bad idea to check with your Jeep's owner's manual, to make sure your Cherokee can pull as much weight safely.Now, we'll just take a couple of measurements to figure out which hitch mounted accessories will work best for you. We go from the ground to the top inside edge of the receiver tube opening, it's going to be right at 14 inches. So, if you do plan on doing some towing, chances are pretty good you're going to need to get a ball Mount with a slight rise. We measured from the center of the hitch pin hole to the edge of our rear bumper. Looks like that's going to be about six inches and you can use that measurement to help figure out that if any folding accessories you might have, can be stored in that upright position without contacting your bumper. Now, if you do plan on doing a little bit of towing, I would recommend picking up some trailer wiring.That way the lights on your trailer will sync up with the lights on your Cherokee and you'll be safe and legal. But at the end of the day, a really rugged looking hitch, it's going to be able to handle just about anything you want to throw at it. As far as the installation goes, it's really not too bad. It does take a little bit of time, but everything's relatively easy to get to. Speaking of which let's go ahead and put it on together now.To begin our install, we're going to be underneath the back of our Jeep. And what we're going to need to do is lower down our exhaust to give us some room to work. Now I do recommend taking a strap and just running it from one side to the other. That way when we do lower the exhaust, we'll have a little bit of support and we can kind of control how fast and how far we let it up. So that actually getS the exhaust lowered. If you look right here, we're going to have an aluminum hanger with two bolts. So we need to remove the bolts. We'll use a 13 millimeter socket, pull them out. In the other side set up the same way. We're just going to repeat that over there.Now we're going to need to loosen up the bottom of our facia. We're going to have four bolts here along this edge. So use a 10 millimeter socket to get those removed. You're on the passenger side of our frame rail. We're going to have some wiring that runs along there. Well, that's going to interfere with the hitch. So what we need to do is just kind of push it out of the way. I'm going to use a trim panel tool or Flathead screwdriver to pry underneath those clips. Three here. We can kind of just push this out of the way for now. So on our frame rail, we're going to have a couple of factory bolts that we need to pull out. We're going to have this one right here and this one right here. So I'm going to take them out using a 21 millimeter.And I do want to mention from this point on, anything we do to the side of the Jeep, we're also going to repeat on the other side, it's going to be set up the same way. And you do want to save these bolts because we will be reusing them. If you look at our frame rail here on the outside of it, we're going to have some sealer. Now we don't want this to interfere with our hitch because this is where it's going to rest. So we're going to take a scraper or a Flathead screwdriver, and just remove that sealer until it's nice and flush.So we're going to have a total of three attachment points on each side of our frame rail. That's going to secure our hitch. We're going to use these two factory holes here that we removed the bolts from. And those bolts will be reused to secure the hitch. And then we're going to use this square opening, here as another attachment point. To get our hardware in there. We're going to take a pole wire. I'm going to grab the coil man and a spacer block. We'll go over it and take one of our carriage bolts and thread that onto the pull wire.And then we're just going to reverse fish wire inside of the frame rail. So you're going to take the bolt push it through by the spacer block. You can work It back and forth and get our hardware to drop down just like that. So now what we need to do is trim out an opening here in our facia. So there is a diagram and instructions and I went ahead and marked that out using a pen. And this is relatively, somewhat thin plastic, but what I'm going to use it as a Dremel tool, to cut this out. You could use probably a sharp utility knife or something along those lines to get it cut out.Now we do have this little piece of plastic behind our facia here and now that we cut this out to the correct size, I'm just going to use this as a guide to cut out this little bit of material too. That way our hitch can set up where needs to be properly. Now that piece out of the way, we can come back and just kind of clean up our edges around our facia, just to improve our install. Look, now with an extra set of hands, we can raise our hitch in a position. So we are going to go over our exhaust. You want to take your pull wire and run through the corresponding hole in the hitch and lift it up. You may have to kind of peel your, finish your back a little bit.Once you have it sitting flush against the frame, make sure your bolt drops down through there. And we're going to take one of our factory bolts and get at least one started on each side, hand tight. That way the hitch will support itself. So once you get this bolt in, you want to snug it down a little bit, and then we can move on to our other hardware. You're going to remove that full wire, take a conical tooth washer. Teeth facing up towards the hitch and the hex nut. Once we have this one going, we can then take our other factory bolt and install it there on the side. Now with everything going we come back and tighten everything down.With all of our hardware snugged down, we can now grab a torque wrench and tighten it to the amount specified in our instructions. At this point, we can raise our exhaust back into position and re secure it. Now with the exhaust supporting itself, we can go ahead and get rid of our strap. So we went ahead and used one of Zip ties just to secure our wiring here, along this bracket, to keep it up and out of the way. Now we go ahead, take our four bolts down here, get them started and snug them down. And that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the Draw-Tite Max-Frame trailer hitch receiver on our 2020 Jeep Cherokee.