Does Curt Front Hitch # 31198 Have to Be Removed to Change Oil on 2009 Toyota Tundra w/ Skidplate

Updated 04/18/2013 | Published 04/17/2013

Question:

Do you have to remove the front hitch to remove the factory skid plat to do a oil change or is there enough room to remove the factory skid plate to do an oil change. Dont know if the Curt has enough clearance for SKID plate removal.

asked by: Terry

Expert Reply:

From the research I did I was able to determine that you will need to either remove the Curt Front Mount Trailer Hitch Receiver # 31198 every time you change your oil to access the oil filter or you can drill a hole in the skid plate to allow access to the oil filter. This is what most people on message boards with this hitch reported. However, my contact at Curt said that the skid shield will need to be removed, but the hitch can be left installed.

I attached installation instructions for this product to show you what it would take to install and remove the hitch.

I would strongly recommend you drill the hole in the skid plate since the installation hardware of the # 31198 is torque to yield, which means that once its been torqued to spec you can not reuse the hardware if it gets removed.

expert reply by: Jameson C