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

Video Transcript for Mount: etrailer Trailer Hitch Receiver on a 2016 Kia Sedona

Hell neighbors, it's Brad here at etrailer and today we're taking a look and installing the etrailer trailer hitch receiver on a 2016 Kia Sedona. Now this is what it's gonna look like when it's installed and this is an exposed cross tube meaning you can see the cross section that attaches to the frame of the vehicle but overall it's tucked in there pretty well. So I think it gives it a pretty decent look overall. And the great part is this is a two inch by two inch receiver tube opening which is gonna be a great universal size for a ton of different accessories. So whether you're loading up bike racks, cargo carriers or even a ball mount, they're all gonna go in place with a 5/8 pin and clip. Now this does not come with the hitch so a lot of your accessories will come with one.

Something to look for. If you have used accessories, you may need to pick one of these up and I recommend getting a locking one. That way you can put your accessories in, lock it in place and no one can just walk by and take the accessories with them. Now if you do plan on towing a trailer, you are gonna be using this plate style safety chain loop here which a standard S hook will go on to here fairly easy. I'm gonna have to give a little bit of an angle there but a larger clevis style also works here as well.

Now speaking of towing, you're gonna want to adhere to the weight capacities on the hitch. You're also gonna want to check the vehicle's owner's manual and compare that with the hitch ratings and take the lower of those two to stay safe. And this one's rated fairly decent. You have a 4,000 pound gross trailer weight rating so that's gonna be the weight of the trailer plus the accessories loaded up. And going along with that you have a 400 pound tongue weight which is gonna be the downward pressure that's put on the receiver tube opening and that's gonna be really important for your suspended accessories like your bike racks or cargo carriers.

So just make sure you're staying underneath that 400 pounds when fully loaded. Now this can be used with the weight distribution hitch but the numbers are gonna stay exactly the same with that 4,000 and 400. Now you are gonna want to get some measurements when choosing accessories to make sure that their folding accessories are gonna work here. So from the center of the hitch pin hole to the furthest point on the rear fascia we're looking at 5-1/2 inches. So some of your bike racks and cargo carriers will fold up.

That's something you're gonna wanna make sure that it's not making contact with your fascia as this one does sit a little bit recessed. Now if you are towing a trailer you are gonna want to make sure that you can get the adequate riser drop that you need. So from the top of the receiver tube opening to the ground is 11 inches. So that's a good way to measure your trailer and figure out if you need a riser or drop. Now as far as installing the hitch this one's pretty straightforward, pretty easy to do in your driveway or in your garage. Now you will be dropping down the muffler with just two isolators which isn't too terribly hard to do but sometimes getting leverage if you're working on the ground can be tricky especially on the one further up. But really it's just gonna be a removal of a plastic panel and then there's some factory weld nuts that are there. You just bolt it up assuming that those are clear of rust. But I'm gonna walk you through all those steps to make sure that you get your hitch installed. So let's take a look. To begin our installation we're gonna go underneath to the driver's side and we have this plastic panel and this is gonna need to come off. That way we can gain access to our frame rail where we'll bolt our hitch up. And we're not going to be reinstalling this because the hitch is gonna live up here. Also, if you're doing wiring, now is a good chance to have that wiring handy because it's gonna plug in here as well. Now to get your plastic push pins out, you can simply go into one of the slots, there's four of 'em just gonna pry that center part out and then you should be able to get the whole thing to kind of come out, just go along this outside edge. There's also gonna be one that's kind of tucked up in the wheel, well just get those out and then we'll move our panel and get it outta the way. And that back one is kind of tucked up here on the frame rail so you should be able to reach up and get that one popped out. Now we can pull our panel off and set this aside. We're gonna be bolting this up to the weld nuts that are in the frame rail but we do need to open this up a little bit because we have our exhaust right in the way. So we're gonna need to drop this down and it's pretty easy. You have rubber isolators that your arms kind of go into here. Now, to get that to knock loose sometimes it's gonna get coated up with some road grime, little penetrating oil or even a little spray lubricant of any type. Even soapy water can work really well here to kind of knock those loose. You can then take a pry bar or even a long flat head and just kind of push back on that isolator. They're pretty durable so don't be afraid that you're gonna rip it or anything like that but just kind of find a point of leverage to where you can get this separated. And it also doesn't matter if you're struggling with one you can pry it from the top one or the bottom, it does not matter. So we'll have this one that we dropped out that we are gonna work our way to this other one that's right in front of the crossmember. Same thing, this one's actually a little bit easier to pry. Now granted, you're probably doing this in your driveway or garage, so you might kind of have to sneak under here or raise up the vehicle if you're doing that, make sure you chock the front tires but you can kind of just put it on the bracket and then kind of push this and we should be able to get this to pop off. And if you need to, you can kind of push on the exhaust to give you a little more leverage too. Now you do have another isolator further up that's gonna support the rest of the exhaust. The main thing right now is we can move this to get it out of the way. So we'll go ahead and take a look at our weld nuts. And depending on the mileage on your vehicle you can see these ones have some rust forming around them. That's where we're gonna need to thread our bolts. And so what I recommend doing is with penetrating oil spray those down if you do have rust and I'm gonna use a tube brush to kind of clean those out. Now we have tube brushes here at etrailer and these are kind of nice to be able to get in there and kind of knock some of that loose. Again, feel free to go heavy on that penetrating oil. Ours definitely has rust in there. Now the driver's side, because of that plastic panel there those should be a little bit better. But on the passenger side here you're gonna want to hand thread these bolts in that came with our hitch just to make sure that they're gonna thread before getting our hitch up 'cause you don't wanna be lifting your hitch in place and then fumbling with these. So now these did give me a little bit of trouble as far as clearing out that rust to get these started. So I found a bolt that we had around here that's the same thread pitch and you can take a cutting tool and just make some slots in here and that becomes a tap. Just obviously make sure that it's the same pitch and thread. Now you may not have something like this but again you can get a tap that's gonna be the same one kind of clear that out. But the main thing is as long as you can get a few of these threads started a lot of times you can kind of power through, run it in and out a few times. But make sure, again, you can at least get these started when putting the hitch up. You're gonna wanna grab an extra set of hands to get your hitch in place. But before doing that you can go ahead and pop off these rubber plugs. You can probably use your fingernail, but just take these out and this is gonna allow that hitch to just sit a little bit more flush on our frame rail so we get a little bit tighter fit. Mine's kind of covered up here with some penetrating oil so it's a little slick, but these do come out fairly easy. Now there's one on the other side as well. So go ahead and get these taken out. Now with our extra set of hands we're gonna go ahead and get our hitch in place. Now the trick is to slide it up over the exhaust first. Driver's side's gonna be nice and open. You're gonna want to have your hardware ready. So we have our bolts with the conical tooth washer. Your conical tooth should face with those teeth biting into the metal of the hitch. So just kind of get this aligned up with those holes. And we're just gonna get one started on each side and that's gonna allow us to hold our hitch up in place allowing it to be a lot easier to get the other hardware. So you may have to kind of bump this along to line it up. But take your hardware, get a few threads started on each side and then we should be good. So with those started our hitch will support itself. We can go ahead, get the rest of our hardware in place. With our hardware all in place we'll go ahead and snug these down with a 19 millimeter socket. We are gonna be coming back with a torque wrench to make sure that we have the proper settings. So you don't have to get crazy here you just want everything nice and snug. (drill grinding) So now at this point we're gonna torque our hardware down to the indicated torque setting in the instruction manual. And we'll just go through make sure that they're all torqued down properly Everything's tightened and torqued so we can go ahead and get our isolators put back on our exhaust. And again, you got a little bit of mobility here so if you need to move the muffler to get this to pop in that's not a bad way to do it. Now for our panel, you don't have to reinstall it but I'll be putting some trailer wiring on here which is gonna live in this area. So I wanna protect it from the elements. And I was able to make this fit by trimming out a portion. You can kind of get a rough idea if you kind of follow along this ridge. Main thing is leave this one here so it'll still attach but this should allow us to get this back in place. So again, it's up to you. I just used a dremel and just kind of cut this out pretty easily but that way we still have that protection. And that was a look and installation of the etrailer trailer hitch receiver on a 2016 Kia Sedona.