Draw-Tite Max-Frame Trailer Hitch Receiver - Custom Fit - Class III - 2"

Video Transcript for How to Set Up Your Draw-Tite Max-Frame Trailer Hitch Receiver on a 2021 BMW X1

Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2021 BMW X1, we're gonna be showing you how to install the Draw-Tite trailer hitch receiver. But before we do that, why don't we kind of check this out and talk about how it's gonna work with some accessories like bike racks, and maybe a few of the things that you're gonna need to be able to pull a trailer. First and foremost, I do want to address one of the big questions that we get asked a lot in regards to these X1s whenever you're putting a hitch on it. And that is, is the hitch gonna interfere with the hands-free lift gate assist And the answer is no, it's still going to work. You're just gonna have to kick your foot to either side of the hitch and the door will open up just like it should.

And you can even still close it as well. One thing that I do wanna mention is at first, I was kind of playing with it and could not get it to work. And what actually ended up being the cause of that is if you go on to your menu on your display, you can turn the hands-free lift gate assist to off and on. So if yours isn't working, make sure to go in there, double check that, get it turned on, and once it's set up like that, everything will operate. So I'm sitting here thinking if I was wanting to put a hitch on my Beemer, probably the first thing that would come to my mind is how it's gonna look.

You know, these are really stylish cars and so I wouldn't want some big obvious hitch hanging down below the back of my X1. And with this setup here, I think it looks pretty good really. For the most part, it's gonna be completely hidden. Really the only thing you're gonna be able to see is the receiver tube opening. And compared to some of the other hitches, it's gonna be right on par with them.

As far as the Curt hitch goes, it's gonna look pretty much identical. Nothing really too crazy about it. However, with that said, if you're someone that's looking for a completely factory type appearance, a case where you're not even gonna be able to see the hitch at all, there's an option for you actually. And it's called the Stealth hitch. And what those do is they bolt up to where you can't see them at all.

And the receiver tube, you can actually disconnect from the hitch. So you can take this part off and you won't even be able to notice it's there at all. That's definitely the advantage to that is the fact that it, you know, it'll be completely hidden and non-existent more or less. The disadvantage is, you know, they can get kind of annoying to work with. If you're someone that uses the hitch all the time, that's gonna require you to kinda get down on the ground and pop the thing in and set it up every single time, and take it apart when you're done with it. They also require special ball mounts if you plan on pulling a trailer. If you don't, not really a huge deal there, but that's kinda the two causes of that one. So you really have to ask yourself, do I plan on using the hitch a lot and is the appearance of it top priority You know, if you're someone who uses it a lot and you like the way this one looks, definitely the way to go with this type of hitch. If you're someone that is really worried about the appearance, really the only option is the Stealth. Or if you're worried about the appearance and you use the hitch occasionally, then the Stealth would probably be the way to go. But, you know, I just kinda wanted to touch base on that and kinda go over some of the hitches. That way you can kinda get an idea on which one is gonna be best for your setup. With all that said, we did find a lot of our neighbors like to use bike racks on the back of their BMWs. And this would be a pretty good setup for that, and I say that because it's gonna give us some pretty good clearance. So the hitch sits just behind our bumper, which I think is a good happy medium in terms of how it's gonna look and giving us the clearance that we need. And because of where it sits, we shouldn't really run into any issues at all. And whenever we take those folding type accessories, put them in that upright position and not have to worry about them making contact with the back of our X1. But if you stick around for a minute, in a moment here we'll take a couple of measurements that you can use to help figure out exactly if you'll run into any issues there. With this being a class three hitch, it is gonna have that two inch by two inch receiver tube opening. And that's a super common size, a lot of different accessories will work with it. At the end, there's gonna be a reinforced collar for a little bit of extra support. And it is going to use that standard five eighths pin and clip. Now keep in mind this doesn't come with the hitch. If you need one though, not really a huge deal. You can grab it here at etrailer. The safety chain openings are gonna be nice and thick. So I feel like, you know, you could rely on these in the event of an unlikely disconnect, and they're gonna be large enough to allow us to use just about any size hooks that we might have. As far as the hitch's weight capacities are concerned, it's gonna give us some pretty high ratings and it's actually the highest rated hitch of the ones that we offer. So that's always good to have a little overkill, but with that said, the maximum gross tongue weight rating is gonna be 675 pounds, and that's gonna be the amount of weight that's pushing down on the hitch. So a high number, and you'll be able to use pretty much any size bike rack or cargo carrier that you'd want to, for example. As far as he hitch's maximum gross trailer weight rating goes, that's gonna be 4,500 pounds, and that's gonna be the amount of weight that is pulling on the hitch. So the weight of your trailer, plus anything that you might have on it. This hitch also can be used with a weight distribution system, which is a separate component. But what happens is whenever you use that, it's gonna keep your BMW and your trailer nice and level whenever you're going down the road. So if you plan on pulling a somewhat big camper or something like that, maybe worth checking into. But with that said though, even if you use that weight distribution system, the weight capacities are gonna remain the same at 675 and 4,500. With all those numbers in mind, though, I do always like to recommend it's never a bad idea just to grab your vehicle's owner's manual. That way you can check in here and make sure your BMW can pull that much weight safely. Let's go ahead and grab those measurements now that we talked about. If you go from the center of the hitch pin hole to the edge of the rear bumper, that's gonna be about four and a half inches. And like I said, you can use that to figure out exactly if any of those folding accessories can be stored upright without interfering. And we'll also take one from the ground to the top inside edge of the receiver tube opening. That's gonna be right at about 12 and a half inches. So if you plan on pulling a trailer, chances are pretty good you can get a ball mount that has about a four inch rise in the shank. That should get you in the ballpark and work with most setups. With that said too, if you do plan on pulling a trailer, you're gonna want the lights to work on it. You know, that way people around you know what's going on and you'll be safe and legal. And the wiring kits that we've had a lot of luck with in the past is the Curt wiring kit. And matter of fact, we're getting ready to put that on next. So if that's something you plan on doing, definitely check that video out and see if it'll work for you. But other than that, a hitch you really can't go wrong with. You know, you're gonna be able to use it to do a lot of different things. And in my opinion, it's gonna look good too. Now as far as the installation goes, really wasn't too bad. I'd say in my experience, maybe medium difficulty. I'm gonna have to pop this small piece off down here and lower the exhaust a little bit. To give you the space that you need. Really not a huge deal. Everything's pretty easy to get to. You are gonna have to do some drilling though. You're gonna have to drill two holes to give you a spot to get your hardware in place. So you will need a one inch hole saw to do that. And it sounds like some people kinda run into some issues of that one inch hole being just a little bit too small, not being able to get the bolts up there. So if you run into that, you can kinda expect to maybe have to file them out a tiny bit more. Just kind of giving you a heads up if that's something you run into. But with all that said, why don't we go ahead, pull into the garage and put it on together now. To begin our installation, we're gonna be underneath the back of our vehicle and we need to remove this lower fascia portion here. And in order to do that, we're gonna have four pushpin type fasteners that we need to pull out first. So two on each side. So one of them will be here. You can take a flathead screwdriver and just pry underneath ahead of it. And if these are giving you trouble, maybe useful to use a trim panel tool. But it can be done with just a screwdriver. Work that out. Pull it out. I'm doing the same thing for this one here. Once I have this one out, we're gonna do the same thing on the other side. And I wanna mention from this point on, anything we do to this side of the vehicle, we're gonna do to the other side so it will be set up the same way. Now we can move on to these screws. So again, four on each side. One here, here, here, and here. I don't think we need to take this one out so we're not going to just yet. If it turns out we do, not a big deal. We'll come back and unzip it, but these are all eight millimeter head screws. Now we can pull off this lower portion. I did put some painter's tape along the edge there that way you don't accidentally scratch anything or anything like that. So what I like to do is just kinda grab it and just kinda gently work it and try to kinda get things moving, get them loosened up a little bit. And then we'll start at the corner down here and just kinda gently pull out. And so it seems like it's actually coming apart pretty easy. If you do get hung up, so say if I we're to get hung up here and it was really fighting me, what you could do is go to the other side and kinda work your way in and see if that'll help get things moving. Actually, that's what I might do actually. So once this is free, we can go ahead and just set it off to the side. Now we need to lower our exhaust. Before we do that though, I like to support it. That way we can kind of control how fast and how far we let it come down. So I'm just gonna take a strap and just run it from side to side. I can find a good spot for it here. We'll tighten it up, and that should do the trick. To get the exhaust lower, we're gonna have a 13 millimeter head nut. So one over here and then one on the other side of your vehicle. Go ahead and pull that off. Help that come down. And then if we kind of follow our way towards the center of our vehicle, follow the exhaust pipe up, we're gonna have a rubber isolator hanger which is this piece here. You can spray it down with some soapy water or some type of penetrating oil. And then we're gonna pry off one end of it. It don't really matter which side. Whichever one's easier for you to get to. I already have the other nut taken off from that that we did a moment ago. So once that's the case, you can loosen up your strap, and let the exhaust come down a little bit. Now we need to remove this portion of our heat shield. And so we're gonna have four 10 millimeter head nuts. Let me get those pulled off. It looks like you should be able to maybe kind of bend this one down a little bit. It's not really a big deal, You can always bend it right back up when you need to. Looks like we should be able to drop this one down and set it off to the side. Now we can trim our heat shield and so there's a diagram and instructions, but more or less, you're just gonna take out the centerpiece here that runs up this way. So I kinda marked it out. A couple of ways you could do this, if you use a pair of tin snips. That's what I'm gonna do. You could also use a cutoff wheel or some type of dremel tool. It would probably be faster. Or a combination of the both. Combination of them both. So I'll go ahead and grab my snips here and just start to get this trimmed out. Careful with this heat shield. When you cut this, it's got a really sharp edge. So not a bad idea to throw some gloves on and just pay attention to what you're doing. You don't wanna cut yourself on this. So nice and slow and be deliberate. So once you have everything trimmed, this is what you're left with. Two separate pieces. With that said, we're not gonna reinstall them just yet. We'll send them out of the way and get back to them later. If you look right here, we're gonna have this sensor bar. We need to loosen it up. We're not gonna completely remove it. But on each side of it, we're gonna have a 10 millimeter nut. And so I'll essentially back them off as far as we can. So about like that, and I did the other side already and that just gives us a little bit of extra wiggle room to make it easier to get our hitch up. So if we scoot over a little bit and look right here where our bumper beam is on the bottom, we're gonna have one 18 millimeter nut. And this one, we're gonna completely remove. I'll pull it off here and do it on the other side as well. We grab our hitch and we can get it up into position. So we're just gonna work it in. And it's gonna go on top of the studs. And what we're gonna do for now is take the nut, get it going on each side. We're just gonna snug this down. That way the hitch will stay in place and we can use it as a template to get some of our other hardware going. So if we look right here, we're gonna have another attachment point. There's a hole in the hitch. We're gonna use that as a template. So take a paint marker, or a Sharpie, or whatever you have laying around. And mark that out on each side. With our holes marked, now we'll go ahead and take the hitch back off. That way that'll give us the room we need to drill a couple of holes. To get our hole drilled out, I'm gonna use a one inch hole saw. So we'll line that up. That's gonna give us the opening we need to get our hardware in place. I went ahead and just put some paint around that bare metal that we exposed. Let it dry. That way it'll help prevent rust and things like that. So now we're gonna fish wire, or reverse fish wire rather, our hardware inside of the frame. So you're gonna take the coiled end of your pull wire, put on a spacer block, and then thread on the carriage bolt. Gonna feed the bolt up, feed the spacer block in, and then drop it back down. Now with an extra set of hands, we can take our hitch and get it into position. So you're gonna wanna take your fish wire, put it through that corresponding hole in the hitch. And we're just gonna try to sneak this in. And once we have it closed, we're going to lift it up, get it over the stud, and it'll slide back and our bolt will drop through. Once everything's dropped through, we're just gonna take this nut, put it on the stud on each side. Hand tight, that way the hitch will support itself while we work on the rest of the hardware. Now we can get our hardware started on this bolt. So we're gonna remove the pull wire. Take a conical tooth washer, make sure the teeth and the washer face up. When you're doing this, you can put that washer on, pull the bolt down and then apply some side pressure. That'll keep the bolt steady and that'll make it a little bit easier to get the nut started. Once we have that hand tight, come back with a three-quarter inch socket and snug it down. We'll switch over to our 18 millimeter and tighten on this bolt. At this point, we need to come back with a torque wrench and tighten everything down to the amount specified in the instructions. If you don't have a torque wrench, you can always grab one here at etrailer. Or a lot of times you go to your local auto parts store and they'll have one there available to rent. Now we can get our heat shields back in. So this side, I went ahead and slid it in and then pushed up on that part that we bent down to kind of hold it in place. Align it back up with the studs. And take our nuts here. We'll get all of them started. We'll come back and zip them down. So I went ahead and just re secured our exhausts the opposite way that we removed it. Put our nuts back and slid the rubber isolator hanger back on. And now we'll get rid of our strap. While just right here, I also just tightened our sensor back down. Again, just used our 10 millimeter. Tightened up them two bolts. And then we can grab this lower part of our fascia. And kinda looking at this, I think this is gonna work the best. I took that other piece of our heat shield and attached it to it and kinda holding it up. I did have to trim a little more area out here and just kinda make it a little thinner. And this should work. What we'll do, slide this into position. Get it all lined back up. And then we're just gonna try and get it snapped back in place. So the hard thing with these is making sure everything's lined up pretty much perfect, or else it's not gonna wanna snap in. Definitely don't wanna force it. Just wanna get it straight and push it back in. Usually once you kind of get it started, the rest will kind of just fall into position. So with this back up, took our tape off, and use the rest of our fasteners to re-secure it the opposite way. But with all that done, that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the Draw-Tite trailer hitch receiver on our 2021 BMW X1..