Draw-Tite Sportframe Trailer Hitch Receiver - Custom Fit - Class I - 1-1/4"

Video Transcript for Installation: Draw-Tite Sportframe Trailer Hitch Receiver on a 2009 Honda Fit

Today, on our 2009 Honda Fit, we're going to take a look at and also show you how to install the Draw-Tite Custom Fit Class II Note, this is a Class I hitch, not Class II 00:00:07 trailer hitch receiver. Its part number is 24826. Okay, this is what our hitch looks like installed. You'll see our cross tube meets here in the middle at our 1-1/4" x 1-1/4" receiver tube opening. This is a Class I rated hitch, so this hitch is going to work out well for us when it comes to your smaller cargo carriers, small bike carriers, or even the light-duty trailers. To secure all of our items in place, we're going to use the 1/2" diameter pinhole here on the side. You want to be sure you use Class I rated accessories, but no matter which one you would pick, whether it would be an anti-rattle bolt, maybe a locking hitch pin, or a regular hitch pin and clip, should be plenty of room to make that work. You can see our safety-chain connection points here, kind of a rounded steel-stock material.

Plenty of room there for getting those chains connected if we need them. When it comes to weight ratings, the hitch is going to offer a 200 pound tongue weight capacity, so that's the maximum downward force that we can put here at the received tube opening. It gives us a 2,000 pound gross trail weight rating. That would be the total weight of our trailer and anything that we we're to load up on it. Of course, we need to check the owner's manual on the Fit. We need to see what it's rated for, then we can go off of whichever of those numbers are the lowest. The hitch does sit a little bit lower.

Of course, it's on the Honda Fit, so ground clearance is going to be the biggest issue that you might have if you run into any problems with it. Something you'll want to do if you pick a bike rack or if you pick a cargo carrier, be sure you get one that has the raised shank. That's going to elevate that up a little bit, giving you more room at the back of that carrier or that rack for ground clearance. A few measurements that'll be helpful when if comes to selecting your cargo carrier or bike rack will be from the ground to the inside top edge of the receiver tube opening. We've got about 9-1/2". Then from the center of our hitch-pin hole to the outermost edge of our bumper, it's about 4" To being our installation, we need to take off just a little of this rear wheel-well liner, this rear appearance panel.

It's just going to be where it fits up on our frame here. What we'll do, just going to cut up this inside edge here. That will bring it down a little bit to give our hitch room to go into place like that. We're going to be removing this top section here. Then we can just cut that in a straight line coming off of there.

That should give us plenty of room. You can trim this off with a razor knife if you want or what we're going to use is a high-speed cut wheel. We can use a screw driver or a trim panel tool. We'll pop that pushpin fastener out. You can see that little piece that we trimmed off. Now we need to prepare the rear hole. See our carriage bolt, that's going to fit through there fine. You can see our spacer block, we need to take out just a little bit of material. It's going to make a little U shape on the back side so that it'll slide in there without interference. Now what we're going to do is grab one of our pull wires. We'll start it at our forward-attachment point here, and we want it to come out the rear hole that we just enlarged. Onto that, we're going to slide one of the spacer blocks, thread in our carriage bolt. Now we'll feed these up into the frame rail separately then allow it come right down out of our hole location. For our other one, we want to thread our bolt on first. We'll put our bolt up inside of the frame rail first, slide in that spacer block, and then pull it back down through. Then we'll go do the same thing on the passenger's side, although it is a little tighter. Now with an extra set of hands, we're ready to get our hitch into position. I'm going to be using the fish wires here to kind of guide us up. We need to get it around the exhaust first. Might have to pull down on it a bit. Once we have it in position there, we can guide it up onto the bolts that we have installed. Our heat shield's going to hold down slightly on the hitch, which is okay. It'll be sandwiched between the hitch and the frame once we tighten it down. We need to place on a conical-tooth washer. The teeth of that washer will face up towards our hitch and also a nut. These are all provided with the hitch. Once we have three or four good turns on that, we can just let our hitch rest on this side while we get one started on the other side there. Our hitch will rest there while we get our other two conical-tube washers and nuts installed. We'll continue on by snugging them down. Now we can grab our torque wrench and torque them all down appropriately. Those specifications you'll find listed in your instructions. That'll complete our installation of the Draw-Tite Custom-Fit Class I trailer hitch receiver with the 1-1/4" x 1-1/4" opening, part number 24826, on our 2009 Honda Fit.