Trailer Hitch Installation - 2003 Chevrolet Impala

How to Install a Trailer Hitch on a 2003 Chevrolet Impala

Today on this 2003 Chevrolet Impala we are going to install part number 24681 from Draw-Tite. The first thing that we are going to do is show you where the hitch mounts up on the vehicle. There are two existing holes here and here, on the bottom of the vehicle that are already drilled out. But we still have to enlarge these to 1/ 2 inch. And also, on this first cross member in the back, before the spare tire well, is going to be an existing hole here and here. And just to make things easy too, you can actually hold up the hitch, center it and it will show you which holes to drill out. Alright, let us get going and drill out all of the holes we need. 0:56

Alright let us go ahead and start installing our hardware into the bumper first. We are going to use this square plate and then this bolt right here, which is going to be the 1-3/ 4 inch one. There are two sizes of bolts. The other one is 1-1/ 4 inches. On this application we are going to use 1-3/ 4 inches. First we can just tuck all of that in there and it in. To install our hardware here, what we are going to do is use a wire to pull this block and this 7/ 16 inch carriage bolt from this hole here out of this hole here. Now, you can use a wire pull from etrailer.com using part number 80103-1. Or, if you want, you can use some stove wire or basically any type of wire that holds its shape pretty good. You can use that too. What we are going to do is go ahead and put our block onto the bolt. And what we are going to do is wrap the wire into the threads of the bolt. You can see how we put the wire into the thread, put your thumb over it and just wrap it around. Keep it inside the threads and you have your own bolt leader. And you want to make sure that that edge gets pushed in there too. What we are actually going to do first is go ahead and put the wire in place and then wrap it up. And there you have it. OK, we are going to repeat the same process on the other side of the cross member. 2:55

We are going to go ahead and start hanging the hitch. We are going to start with the bumper bolts first. Then we will go to the back. Use a conical tooth washer, a 1/ 2 inch one, and a conical tooth nut. And we are just going to leave those loose. Alright, we will do the same thing for the bolts going towards the front of the vehicle. We will go ahead and snug the bolts down. And then we will go ahead and torque them down as specified in the instructions. Alright, now we will go ahead and lower the vehicle and get you a couple of hitch measurements with the vehicle on the ground. The first measurement is going to be from the ground to the top of the receiver opening. And on this particular vehicle it looks like about 13-1/ 4 inches. And from the center of the hitch pin hole out to the bumper is going to be about 5 inches. And with that, that will finish our install of part number 24681 from Draw-Tite.