Video Transcript for Installing the EcoHitch Stealth Trailer Hitch Receiver on a 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLS

Kevin here with etrailer and today I'm gonna be showing you how to install the EcoHitch trailer hitch receiver here on our 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLS. Typically with a Mercedes-Benz you're not really gonna be towing a trailer. You're mostly gonna be hauling maybe a cargo carrier or what we mostly see here and what our neighbor needs today is a spot for them to haul their bike rack. Now this has a two inch by two inch receiver tube, so if you have a 1-1/4 inch bike rack, you are gonna need to get a reducer so you can drop down and actually fit that in there unless your bike rack already has an adapter. Along with that since this is a nicer car, typically you're not gonna wanna have that receiver tube sitting here every single day. You might wanna hide that.

The great thing about this EcoHitch is there is one bolt holding this receiver tube in place so if you reach up in here, you can take that out. Now it is a little bit of a challenge 'cause this is a tight space and we have pretty low clearance to the ground so you might need to also pick up some ramps as well just so you can get a little bit more room in there so you can get your wrench in. You will also need a torque wrench 'cause every single time you take this out and put it back in you are gonna need to re-torque that bolt down. EcoHitch is a more premium option when it comes to trailer hitch receivers. This is gonna have a hammered metal finish on it and it's made of all recycled metal so that you're still having that green effect when you buy your trailer hitch.

Now this does not come with a hitch pin so if you do need to pick one up you'll want a 5/8 hitch pin and clip which you can also pick up here at etrailer. Typically that is gonna come with your accessory that you're putting in here so you might not actually need to pick one up. If you are planning on towing a small trailer and you don't have extension cables already for the safety chain loops you are gonna need to stick with an S style hook. Now you can pick up some extensions that'll allow you to tow with the safety clevis here, but typically you're not gonna be able to get that in there. These safety chain loops on this are sitting right about here and here up behind the fascia.

Give you a closer look, here is where our safety chain loops are. So like I was saying, you definitely wanna get some extensions. You can get like a couple inch chain with some hooks on it. That way you can easily just pop on your safety chains with no problem. Just to give you some measurements with this.

Now typically we'd be outside, we'd be on flat ground. Since it's raining pretty hard outside we are gonna do this inside so we are gonna have to take a little bit off here 'cause it's about an eight inch height up to the lift. So measuring from the ground up to the inside of the top of our receiver tube, we're looking at right around 20-1/2 inches. So if we subtract that eight inches it's gonna be right around 12-1/2. Now typically we like to recommend some kind of adapter to kind of raise stuff up anytime it's below 12 inches. So you have pretty good ground clearance with the hitch. You might not have any issues with the receiver tube but you might have issues when it comes to your shank spacing from the hitch pin hole out. So like if you have a bike rack that folds up or you have a cargo carrier that folds up, you aren't gonna want that to fold so far in that it's now hitting the back bumper. So from the center of our hitch pin hole out to our fascia, we're looking at right around like 4-1/2, 5 inches. So you might want to look at your hitch pin hole on your accessory and just make sure that when you fold up that accessory you got more than five inches of clearance. Now this is a very sturdy hitch and it has a pretty high capacity when it comes to trailer hitches. It's gonna have an 800 pound tongue weight capacity and an 8,000 pound gross towing weight capacity. Now that doesn't mean you can throw 8,000 pounds on here and just take off. You still need to verify what your vehicle can handle. So you're gonna want to get in there and check out the owner's manual and see exactly what you're rated to haul and then you can go with whichever is lower, which is typically gonna be the vehicle and make sure that you're towing safely. Now one of the other concerning things here is will my kick sensor still work after installing this hitch And there still will be a way to make that work. You're just gonna have to find that sweet spot either on one side or the other of the trailer hitch receiver tube and typically just kind of throwing your foot around a little bit, pop it right open. So you might not be able to stick it right under the center just 'cause of that hitch being in the way but obviously it's still gonna work for you. As far as installation goes, this is a pretty intensive process. There's a lot of little trim pieces that need to pop out. A lot of little plastic bits that you could easily break. So you'll definitely want to check out our dealer locator to find a professional so you can make sure that your hitch is installed correctly so that you're towing safely. Now if you are still gonna do this yourself, maybe you're more of an avid mechanic and have all the tools to get the job done and know what you're doing. Stay tuned for the next part of our video 'cause we're gonna show you how we got it done. Starting off our install, I've gone ahead and put some tape along the seam right here between our fascia and our actual body of our vehicle. We're gonna start by popping out a few push pins on our wheel well liner and that's gonna allow us to pop out this fender flare. And then from there we're gonna be removing a whole bunch of screws under the fascia here. That way we can get the bumper taken off so we can get our hitch on. So the the first three push pins we're gonna take out, there's one right here, one right here, and then another one right up in here. So we'll pop these three out first and then there's also one on the bottom you can pop out too and that's gonna give you some more flexibility with the wheel well liner here. These aren't really too easy to pop out. I've been using a just a tiny flathead screwdriver, kind of get the tip a little bit out so that I can get a pry bar in there a little bit better. With the head of these being so small it's just really not cooperating with the standard pry tools that we would usually use. Tip just popped out. We can pop out the backside of it now and keep working our way up. Now these ones here are pretty hard to get to just 'cause its wheels are in the way. Pretty much are gonna have to come at it from this angle. So like I said, use that real small screwdriver like I got this little tiny flathead one. Use that to kind of work it out to start. So I'm having a hard time getting this out. Really just keeps popping out 'cause like I said, it has a very, very small head on it. So your standard pry tools typically aren't gonna work. So what I'm gonna do, there's one on the bottom here, I'm gonna pop that out first. Then I can get to these other ones 'cause then it'll allow me to get my hand in there and I can kind of press on it, help pop it out. Next we'll take out this fastener right here. This is a little bit harder to get to with our camera so you might not get a super clear shot of it. In the steps they tell you to take out a bolt but there's no way to get to that bolt without removing the fender flare first. So we're gonna pop that out. Now there's three tabs. There's one here, right about here, and another one right up here. And those are gonna have like a U shape to 'em with a centerpiece right in the center of that U and that is what you need to kind of pull back on so that you can pop this out. Now the problem is you can't get to it so you're gonna be doing a lot of kind of prying, working it back and forth. If you can get your hands in there there is metal kind of in the way. There's where they kind of seamed the fascia and then the wheel well all together is like right where you need to get your hands in. So if you got small enough hands you might be able to get in there to press that tab in the center and pop it out. If you don't have enough room to get that in, you're gonna probably be prying on it for just a bit. One thing I would recommend if you do need to kind of pry in from this front, just take some painters tape, put it down that line, that way you're not scratching the paint as you put your tool in. There we go. Alright, that last one actually popped right out real easy. The last time I did this it fought me and I had to sit there for probably about 20 minutes just trying to get to that little clip right there. So here's exactly what I was talking about. These little centerpieces have a lip on 'em and it's just biting right into that. So it's a nightmare train pop out. So right inside here, all the way up against the fascia is our screw that they talk about that's gonna require 8 millimeter socket. I'm just gonna pop that out. Now like I said earlier, we popped out that push pin down here below, but now we're also gonna take out these three bolts as well as this one right here next to our exhaust. So I'll start with that one and work my way back over. These are gonna require a 10 millimeter socket. If you're already down here, go ahead and just do the same thing over on this side. I've already got this out but you're just gonna repeat that same process that we did on the driver's side over on your passengers. Next we'll move anything we have in our cargo area back and then we're gonna lift up our panel here 'cause we're gonna be taking out this threshold plate. We'll lift this up outta here. So if you want you can take this out and then use that hook to kinda help pull it up outta your way. We are gonna have to use a T30 Torx bit to remove two bolts. There's one right here and one right here. So we'll get those popped out. Now I'm gonna get my fingers up under where those bolts were. I'm gonna kind of pry up on here just gently and try to get us a spot. There we go. So typically it's a little bit easier if you kind of grab from the outside and work your way in with these clips. There we go. Now we can set this aside. Next we're gonna pop out our cargo rings, and to do that, this little plastic piece here literally just pops off. It's got a tab here and here. So we'll take our price tool, just gonna get under there and try and pop it out. There we go. And then we will use a T45 Torx bit to pop out that bolt right there. Then once you have that out you can set that aside. Next we're gonna take our taillights out. To start with that I'm gonna pop this trim piece off and then we can kind of see where our bolts are because we're gonna also have to pop this out and get inside of here and get three different eight millimeter nuts off. So I'll pop this out a little bit. There's a push pin here and here that like Christmas tree style. So you gotta kind of pry out but also pry towards the center. That's those push pins I was talking about. And now that we can see that we've got a screw right there. So there'll be a nut on the inside there, there and then there's also one back here. So if you look, once we pry this wall open a little bit, it's kind of easier if you kind of eyeball it here to here. That way you can get in there because this is a super tight space. We're not gonna be able to get the camera in there to show all this. But we do have a little camera stick thing that we can kind of get in there and you can get a little bit of a view. But this is going to be a challenging spot here. All right, I'm gonna start by just kinda slowly prying this out and I'm not gonna fully take this out. We are just gonna get just our in here to get to those screws. So that's why I was saying it's super important to have that out so you can kind of gauge where you're at here. Now the two screws for right up front here, they're in these holes. So what I did was I got 'em down quite a bit and then I used a magnet stick so I could just take the last thread off and then pop it out without dropping the screw down into our fascia and losing it. So to give you a little view, here is our stick camera. So there's that lower nut that we got to remove. And then when we move up to the top, there's another one right there. Now on the driver's side there's also a couple of wire harnesses that are gonna be in the way. So it can be a little bit of a fight. It might differ depending on your model. They may have ran it just a slightly different way, but get ready for a little bit of a challenge. So taking our 8 millimeter socket, we'll start out with this first one. (wrench ratcheting) So I'm gonna use a magnet stick. I've got this at basically just one thread hanging on there. You could try and get it with your fingers but I can't get two fingers in there so I'm not gonna waste my time trying to fight it and end up dropping it. So get our magnet in. Am I on it Yeah, there we go. And that's that little tiny nut that you're gonna need. So we're gonna set that aside and we're gonna get working on that top one now. It is right behind this guy right here so we can't really get to it with the camera. Lemme get the stick up in there, see if we can get an eyeball on it. There it is. Here's our last one. This one's super important to have that little trim piece out kind of so you can gauge how far back you need to be here. But that one I'm just gonna pop out by hand since we don't have to worry about it falling down. Now that we have that removed, we can start to pop out our tail light. You're gonna need to kind of pry away from the vehicle 'cause all those screws that we just had are facing towards the inside of the vehicle and there's not really any push in tabs besides just this little one back here at the back. So after that we can depress the two tabs on our plug here and you may need to kind of press in just a bit that way you can get it before it kind of bites in. There we go. And we'll set this aside you. So I've got this side popped out. I'm gonna show you guys where all these tabs are and then we're gonna show you how to do it over on the other side here. But we can get a little close up. That way we can see where we need to push in with our pry bar 'cause there's a few different tabs going down this that we're gonna need to press in. Otherwise you're gonna be sitting there yanking on it really trying to fight to get this out. So there's these three tabs here. I had to pull back the wheel well liner and of course they put something else that's plastic right in away. So you gotta kind of fight around that first and then you can get your pry bar in and kind of just press up on that centerpiece again 'cause that's what's holding us back here. So there's one at the bottom, one in the middle and then one right above that screw we took out earlier at the beginning of this. You'll want to go just a little bit above it, press up on that and then you can pop it out. Alright, I got my pry bar in. I'm gonna start popping this out. I'm gonna say we got one at the bottom, one in the middle. And of course there's metal in the way over on this side so might be a bit tricky to get your pry bar in there. Can kinda scope out where it is. There we go. We got those pins out. Now just at the top, this is just gonna be kind of the same thing. We'll work our way up and then you're gonna want an extra set of hands so you can grab both sides at the same time. We'll work our way through the middle. Up top there's also three tabs on both sides. If you start kind of pressing down on that, you'll make it a whole lot easier to kind of press and pop it out. There we go. And then there's gonna be a couple of sensors that we're gonna need to pop out. So we're gonna have two kick sensors on our driver's side. We're just gonna pop those out. Now there's gonna be one more sensor at the bottom. It's a whole lot easier if before you actually pop this off, just get under there and you can pop that one connector off which we've got here. So had my assistant over here hold it and then we just pop that one little connector off and that freed our fascia. So we can set this aside now. Now we're gonna use the 19 millimeter deep well socket and you're probably gonna need also an adjustable or adapter I should say to get into the inner ones here. The top ones would probably be pretty easy to go through with just an extension, but we're gonna take all these out and remove our crossmember. (drill grinding) With all eight of our nuts removed, we can now pop off our crossmember and we're gonna set this aside. We're not gonna be using this again because the hitch is now going to replace that. Now we're gonna remove this plastic panel right here, but we do wanna be careful, we do have wiring that runs to our kick sensors still inside of here. So as we take this off, don't just yank it outta the way 'cause you might end up ripping this, but this is just gonna be four nuts to remove using a 10 millimeter socket. (wrench ratcheting) With that removed, we can now set our hitch in place and we're gonna use a couple of the factory nuts just to kinda help hold that in place. I'll run that down about halfway. We don't want to fully tighten this just yet. We might need to kinda shift this just to get it centered properly. Gonna snug this down. You saw me use the impact to pull those off. I am not gonna use that on the way in just because I don't wanna tear these threads up just in case you can start to kind of cross thread it at least with the wrench you can stop it immediately and have it just perfect. Now I'm not gonna go all the way, like I said, I'm also gonna kind of move this and shift it back and forth so we get it just right. So we'll go almost tight but not all the way. So in the instructions they do tell you to use a 19 millimeter socket and that is what I used to take off those nuts. But honestly when you start to tighten it down with the torque wrench, it's darting around the bolt. So tried out an 18 millimeter. So torque lift was wrong at least for this specific vehicle here. Double check yours when you're doing it. Make sure if yours isn't a 19, that you're switching down to that 18 so you don't round the edges of that nut. But we'll go ahead and torque it down to the specifications in the instructions manual. In your kit, you're gonna have this bracket right here and that is what is going to hold our kick sensor. So we'll use the included 1/4 inch hardware and nyloc nuts to mount this bracket and then we'll just tighten it down. I'm gonna be using an 11 millimeter socket and a 5/32 Allen key. Now back on that plastic bracket that has our kick sensor in it, this is gonna have 10 different little clips we're gonna have to kind of pry on. So just take your time, work it out nice and slow. Don't end up breaking your sensor, you can just use like a flathead screwdriver, kind of pry up in there and pop it out of its holder. Just work your way across. To fasten up our kick sensor, I'm gonna just use some zip ties and I'm gonna have this facing down. Now I do have a little clip in the way that used to hold it into the plastic before. I'm gonna just cut that off so that this will sit nice and flush to our new bracket. And then the other tabs pretty much are fine to just kind of sit behind there. Now they do have little notches in here, but like I said, I just stuck with the tabs that way I knew I wasn't covering a sensor because I'm pretty sure right here is another sensor and that's lined up right with that tab. So you can use those tabs if you want. If not, it's not gonna be the end of the world just as long as you're not blocking out any sensors. Cut off our zip tie ends. Now we're gonna reinstall our bumper and we're going to need to also plug in our connectors that we removed. So we'll have that one right in the center, which is our kick sensor. And then we'll have two more over here on the driver's side as well. So I'll pop those back on. Now with those clips back in place, we're gonna go along and each one of these tabs, we're gonna pop it back in. And when you get over here to your fender liner, I stuck a paper towel in there just to kinda help push it away. But you wanna make sure you're not accidentally getting stuck on that. 'Cause a lot of times the end of your fascia here is gonna typically gonna wanna fight with that. Just keep working your way across. So the next step is going to be cutting this trim piece out here. Our receiver tube is sitting right here and that's what we're gonna have sit right up in there. And we're gonna need to go off the indentation that we have in our fascia, but we're not gonna cut up past this line here. So just this little rectangle. And what we wanna do is we're gonna be an inch over from this side, from that line right there all the way over to this line right here that we have. And that's going to allow us to, once we have the receiver tube in, run that bolt through and then tie into that weld nut. So the kick sensor is right above this. So to give myself just a little bit extra room here, I've shoved a couple of shop towels right in between our plastic we're gonna cut off and then also the receiver tube here. So that way it kind of pushes out just enough so I can get my saw in there without accidentally hitting that sensor. (saw grinding) Now we can just come back with a razor blade and just kind of trim off those little burrs, get this nice and cleaned up. With that trim cut out, now we can put in our receiver tube and we're gonna be using that bolt along with a split lock washer and a regular flat washer. So we'll slip this up. Using a 24 millimeter socket wrench, we're just gonna fully tighten this down. (wrench ratcheting) With that tightened down, now we can torque it to the specifications listed in the instructions. And that'll do it for the hitch portion of this. So now we can go ahead and just put all of that fascia back on, re-pop on our fender flares and then take off that painters tape that we put on there and that'll complete your install. Well I think that does it for today's installation of the EcoHitch trailer hitch receiver here on our 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLS. My name's Kevin, and if this video wasn't helpful enough, you still have questions, maybe you're still trying to decide what's gonna be the best fit for you, please feel free to reach out to us via our ask the experts link, a comment on this video or a phone call to our customer service department and we'd be happy to help you out on your journey.