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

Video Transcript for How to Set Up Your Draw-Tite Max-Frame Trailer Hitch Receiver on a 2024 Kia Carnival

Hello neighbors, it's Brad here at etrailer and today we're taking a look at installing the Draw-Tite Trailer Hitch Receiver on a 2024 Kia Carnival. Now this is what your hitch is gonna look like when it's installed on your Kia and it is gonna be an exposed cross-tube. So you're gonna see pretty much the whole majority of the hitch that goes across the bottom, which doesn't necessarily take away from the look too much. And overall this one sits really well with a receiver tube opening, just being slightly behind the rear fascia so you don't have to worry about knocking your shins as you walk past it. Now this is a two inch by two inch receiver tube opening, which is kind of the standard size for a lot of hitches. And definitely when it comes to accessories, you'll have tons of options available, whether it be a bike rack, cargo carrier, or even a ball mount.

Just make sure you're looking for that two inch by two inch and you'll have tons of options to pick from. Now all of those are gonna stay in place with a 5/8 pin and clip that's not included with the hitch. A lot of times when you pick up those accessories, they'll have the pin and clip included. If you're planning on leaving your accessories on the back for an extended period of time, I would maybe consider getting a locking pin and clip. That way you can lock that in place and know that no one's just gonna be able to come by and grab those accessories.

We have a nice plate-style safety chain loop that's nice and open here, it's gonna make it super easy if you plan on towing a trailer, to hook up your standard S-hook or even a larger clevis style works really well here. Now speaking of towing, this does have some pretty good capacity numbers as far as your gross trailer weight rating and tongue weight. And that's really something that's gonna be important for when you're planning on towing something. But as always, you're gonna want to adhere to the owner's manual to see what it's capable of towing before just going with these numbers. But in this case, our gross trailer weight rating is going to be 4,000 pounds, which is the weight of the trailer plus the accessories loaded onto it.

The tongue weight, which is gonna be the downward pressure on the inside of the receiver tube opening, that translates to a lot of your suspended accessories like your cargo carriers and bike racks. That comes in at 600 pounds, which is pretty good. So if you have a four bike bike rack, you should be able to load that up no problem. Or even a cargo carrier on vacation, 600 pounds is a really good capacity to work with, so I really don't think you're gonna overload it. Now it can be used with weight distribution hitch, but the numbers are gonna stay exactly the same at that 4,000 for gross trailer and 600 for the tongue weight.

Now when choosing accessories, you may pick up a bike rack or cargo carrier that has a folding feature so when it's stowed it's gonna go vertical and you wanna make sure that you're able to actually utilize that and also not damage your fascia in the process. So from the center of our hitch pin hole to the furthest point of the rear fascia coming in at about three and 1/2 inches. So I really don't worry too much that even in a stowed position it's gonna cause any issue. Just keep in mind, you're not gonna be able to open up the rear hatch with those folded up, but you can just simply drop those down and that's not gonna be an issue. We have some ground clearance here from the top of our receiver tube opening to the ground, it's gonna be right at 12 inches. And I don't ever worry about the hitch bottoming out, but just know that with those suspended accessories it's gonna extend the length of the vehicle. So as you go up inclines or over rocky or rough terrain, maybe large speed bumps, they do have the potential to bottom out. So that's something to keep in mind when you have those loaded up. Or you might wanna look at a few accessories that have a raised shank that's gonna lift that up a little bit more. Now something else that's kind of unique with this hitch in particular is Draw-Tite welds on tabs here. So if you are planning on pulling a trailer, you might wanna pick up a pull trailer wiring harness. Ours had a factory tow package, so we used the Tekonsha kit, which is a real easy installation and we picked up a four-pole bracket to be able to utilize that bracket for a nice secure mounting location for our plug. Now as far as the installation goes, this one's actually really easy to do. There's some weld nuts that are already in the frame that allows you to just simply bolt this up. But to give ourselves clearance to be able to do that, there's gonna be a plastic panel located on the driver's side. It's super easy to remove and that will give us access to the frame. And we'll also need to remove a rubber isolator on our exhaust to be able to give us a little bit of space to bolt that up. Now it's pretty tight as it goes up and there's some caulking that they put on the seams. You may have to scrape some of that off, but overall, this is a really easy installation to do at home, with minimal amounts of tools. I would imagine you could probably get this done in half hour or less. But if this is something that's maybe beyond your scope, you maybe don't have the tools or place to do it, not to worry, I totally get it, you can use etrailer's dealer network locator and that way you can find someone close to your house to be able to get this installed for you. But for you DIYers at home that are gonna be installing this yourself, follow along, I'll make sure you get your hitch installed. So let's take a look at that. Now looking at the frame rails where we're gonna be bolting up, on the passenger side, we have our exhaust tip and that's gonna kind of get in the way of where we need to access to bolt that up. So we are gonna be dropping this down and it's pretty easy to do, it's just rubber isolators, but something that you're gonna want to take in consideration before doing that is supporting the exhaust. Now being up on a lift, I can't just put a block of wood or a box to support this while it droops down, so I'm gonna be using a cam buckle strap. But for those of you at home, if you're doing this in your garage or driveway, you can simply just use something to rest that exhaust on. And the main reason is you just don't want downstream for it to be hanging, you can put stress on the exhaust system. So once that's cradled like that, we'll just go ahead and go to our isolator and you'll see this one is pretty easy to get to and you can pry it off on the side or the top, I would recommend doing the top. And you can just wedge a pry bar or a long flathead screwdriver up and use that hanger here to kind of get leverage to pry this. Now depending on where you're doing this, you can kind of choose two different paths. With this isolator off, you can pull this down and that will give you enough room to be able to get your hardware in place. It might get a little bit tricky if you're doing this by yourself to kind of feed everything up. So if you need to or want to, if you can gain access to this isolator, that's aways up here. There's actually one here and one here, so just off the muffler, you can remove those and it'll drop the exhaust down a little bit further. But I think we can get away with just going and pulling this down. So up to you if you have the space to be able to get under your vehicle and get those to drop down, it will make it a little bit easier to get that hitch up. But if not, no worries. Now we're gonna get ready to raise our hitch up, but something that we need to do to make clearance for it is you'll see this caulk here from the factory and this is to cover up the seams, but unfortunately, it is gonna cause just a little bit of clearance issue as we raise it up. You don't have to trim it off, but you are gonna be using either a dead blow or something, a lot of force to raise that up. So to make it easier, if you want to, you can scrape some of this off. Now it's on both sides, so just kind of take a look at where it sticks out the most. And I mocked my hitch up and it's roughly about this area where we need to scuff away, but really, I'm just gonna run along all of it with a putty knife and it should come off fairly easily. If you don't have a putty knife, you can use a utility knife or something along those lines. We're gonna get ready to put the hitch up. But something you may want to do, especially on the passenger side, is make sure that our hardware's gonna feed into the weld nuts that are on the frame. On this side, I'm not too concerned because the panel keeps it all pretty well protected from elements, but what can happen is long term you can get rust and corrosion buildup and that makes it really tricky for these to start. So I recommend taking the bolt, and just one of 'em, and run it through all the weld nuts, make sure that you can get it started. Because there's really nothing worse than raising a hitch up and then trying to get a bolt to start and it just won't. So as I mentioned, it's more crucial on the passenger side where the frame is exposed, but it's a fairly new vehicle at the time of shooting this, so you shouldn't have any issues. If you do, you can use this to kind of clear that out a little bit and if it's really seriously bad you can use a tap and die set, but I really don't think you'll have too many issues. Just kind of something to keep in mind if your vehicle is a little bit older. So at this point this is a pretty big hitch, it's fairly heavy and awkward, so to have an extra set of hands to do this is definitely gonna help. And I would recommend having a bolt ready on each side with a conical tooth washer, you're gonna want the teeth facing towards the metal on the hitch when it bolts up. So I have Jake here helping and we're gonna raise this up and get one bolt started on each side, just hand thread it in, that way it'll support itself up. So as we raise this up, we'll go over the exhaust side first and then we should be able to slide this up and get our bolts in place. Now even with that caulk trimmed out, it's a fairly tight squeeze here, it's not too bad, but if it's fighting me a little bit, just give it a little bit more pressure and it should go. And I'll just get one of these started. And once you have that on both sides, if you have the other hardware ready, you can just go ahead and get those started as well. And once you have all the hardware started by hand, we're gonna snug it down using a 19 millimeter socket. So you can just use a ratchet. I have an electric ratchet here, we don't need to get too crazy here, just snug it to where it's all gonna be in place because we're gonna come back with a torque wrench shortly after to make sure that it's properly torqued down. So at this point, just go ahead and get all your hardware snug. We're gonna use that same socket and our torque wrench. The torque settings are found in the instruction manual and depending on which torque wrench you go with, it's kind of at a torque setting that's right at the threshold. Generally where 3/8s won't work, you may have to go to 1/2 inch depending on which one you're using. My digital one here will do that torque setting. So we'll just go through, get these all torqued down properly. And this is gonna be important, obviously, it's gonna make sure that it's tight enough for the hitch to be able to tow long term, but also, especially when dealing with weld nuts, you wanna make sure that you don't go too tight because you can cause damage to those and cause those welds to break. So the torque wrench is a great way to make sure we have it perfectly done. So with those torqued down, we'll go to the other side, pull our exhaust down and get these torqued as well. So with everything torqued down, the hitch is officially installed, we just need to make sure we get our exhaust isolators put back up and whatever you're using to support the exhaust out of the way. From there, you're just gonna wanna load up any accessories you have with that pin and clip and then you're ready to hit the road. Now that panel that's on the driver's side that we removed, looking at the way that the hitch mounts up, it is possible for you to trim that out if you're feeling crafty to get that back in place. That's completely up to you, it's not required, but if you really want that back, you can make that work. And that was a look and installation of the Draw-Tite Trailer Hitch Receiver on a 2024 Kia Carnival. My name's Brad and I hope this video helped you get your hitch installed.