Video Transcript for Beginner’s Guide to Installing the Draw-Tite Max-Frame Trailer Hitch Receiver on a 2012 Toyota RAV4

Speaker 1: Today in this 2012 Toyota RAV4 we'll be having a look at and showing you how to install the Draw-Tite Class III trailer hitch receiver, part number 75235.Here's what the hitch looks like installed. One of the first things you'll notice about this hitch is that we have a lot clearance around the receiver, which makes this a great hitch to use with bike racks and cargo carriers, which is what we found that many of our customers are purchasing hitches for, for the RAV4.On the side of our receiver you'll find two pin holes. The larger diameter one here, that's our industry standard 5/8th of an inch diameter hitch pin hole to secure your hitch mount accessories. You can pick up a pin and clip separately on our website as part number PC3. Closest to the rear, this smaller hole is for our J-Pin stabilization device. And what that does is take away some inaudible 00:00:45 shape play and rattle inaudible 00:00:47 what is inserted in your receiver.

We have one of those available on our website as well. On the end of our receiver here, you find this nice collar that's welded on. Not only does it give us a finished look, but it does help improve the strength of the receiver opening.Now one unique feature that this hitch has that sets it apart from others out there is that we have a bracket that's welded onto the hitch, and this serves as an attachment point for any trailer wiring that we may need. You can pick up adaptor brackets that will bolt onto this to hold your wiring options. We have several different wiring options available for you on our website as well.Welded on the bottom of our receiver are our plate style safety chain loops.

And what's nice about these is they have a really large opening. So if you have a large safety chain hook like this one on your trailer, you don't have any problem getting it on there or removing it.This hitch features a 675 pound max ton weight rating, which is the amount forcing down, and a 4500 pound max gross trailer rating, which is the amount it can pull. It does support the use of weight distribution, but when you're using that on your trailer, the numbers don't change. They stay the same. As always, you want to make sure you consult with the owners manual of your RAV4 and not exceed what the vehicle's rated for.

You want to go by which ever number's less.Now for a few measurements to better assist you in choosing any hitch mounted accessory you may need such as a ball mount, bike rack, or a cargo carrier. You're looking at about a 12-1/2" from the ground to the top of the 2" receiver opening, about 4" from the center of the hitch pin hole through most part of the back bumper, and about 8" from the center of the hitch pin hole through most part of the spare tire carrier mounted on the hatch.Now that we've gone over some features, we'll show you how to get it installed. To begin our install, we need to figure out if our vehicle has a factory appearance panel on the driver side. It'll be a plastic panel here that you'll have to remove. In our case we don't have it, so we don't need to worry about that.

If we have a panel and we have it removed, underneath that we'll find bolts for our tow hook. We need to remove these. It's a 17 millimeter socket to remove both of these bolts.Now just forward of our forward attachment hole, we'll have a sticker here that covers the frame inaudible 00:02:58. We need to remove this sticker. Now there's a couple ways you can do this. You can try peeling it off. Sometimes they come off easy. Or you can take a utility knife, poke in the middle, and then you can just tear off around a well nut and frame. Now on the passenger side of the vehicle, we need to remove the back one and the one that's closest to the front.Now we'll point out the attachment points. We'll be utilizing all three well nuts on the driver's side frame in this area here. And on our passenger side with our tape removed, we'll be utilizing these two well nuts here. Our hardware's going to work like this. We'll have a bolt and a conical tooth washer. The teeth will face away from the head of the bolt towards the hitch, and we'll secure our hitch into place with this hardware.Now I need an extra set of hands. We'll grab our hitch. We'll raise it up over our exhaust on the passenger side and we'll secure it with our hardware. Once we have one bolt started the hitch will support itself and you can get your other hardware started. With all of our hardware in place now, we use an 18 millimeter socket to tighten it. And now we'll torque all of our hardware to the amount specified in the instructions.That will complete our look at and showing you how to install the Draw-Tite Class III trailer hitch receiver, part number 75235 on this 2012 Toyota RAV4.