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Today on our 2011 Subaru Outback Wagon we'll be installing Curt hitch, part number 13390. now before we begin our installation here's what your hitch will look like on the vehicle. We'll go ahead and give you a few measurements to help you with selecting accessories such as a draw bar, a bike rack, or a cargo carrier. From the center of the hitch pin hole to the outer most part of the bumper is 3 1/2 inches. From the top of the receiver tube to the ground is 14 3/4 inches. Now let's go ahead with our install.
We'll need to lower the exhaust by removing the three rear most rubber isolators from the frame mounted hangers. You'll want to support the exhaust during the installation to prevent your exhaust from being damaged. Now for clarification purposes we're going to go ahead and remove the muffler from the vehicle. You will not need to do this during your installation. Now that we have our muffler out of the way you can see the heat shield here mounted to the body.
We'll need to trim this heat shield. I went ahead and drew a yellow line in the heat shield indicating where it will be cut. We'll then remove the heat shield from the vehicle and we're going to go ahead and cut it using our cut off wheel. With a little patience and a lot of time you can use a pair of tins nips to cut it just as good as I did with this cut off wheel. We'll now go ahead and reinstall the heat shield to show you what it looks like after it's been cut.
We'll now go ahead and remove the heat shield and point out the fastener locations. Now here on the passenger side of the vehicle you'll notice there are two rubber plugs. We'll go ahead and remove these plugs. The forward most plug will be our access hole that we'll use to get our hardware into the frame and the rear most hole will be the mounting location for the rear most fastener on our hitch. This is the same on the drivers side after revolving the heat shield.
Now on these access holes we'll need to open the hole up to allow us to get the fasteners in. we're going to do this with a drivel and a carbine tip grinding wheel. I went ahead and marked the hole to indicate how large we have to make it. With our access holes opened up we'll now take a fish wire, one of the carriage bolts, and the spacer block we'll feed the fish wire up through the rear most fastener point and out the access hole. We can then slide the space block on and thread the carriage bolt through the fish wire. We'll then use the fish wire and pull the spacer block and carriage bolt through the frame and out the mounting hole here. With that done on both sides we're now ready to put our hitch into position. It'll be a good idea to get an extra set of hands to help you hold the hitch up while you start your fasteners. With the hitch up we'll go ahead and thread the nut on finger tight. Now with our hitch in position we'll make sure it's centered with the vehicle and using the hitch as a template we'll use a step drill procedure to drill the hole here for our forward most fastener. We'll need to do this on both sides of the vehicle. Now with our holes drilled we'll again use the fish wire, one of the carriage bolts, and a spacer block feeding the fish wire through the drilled hole and out the access hole here. We'll then slide on the spacer block, thread on the carriage bolt, and using the pull wire pull it through the drilled hole in the frame and through the hitch. We'll then use the nut to thread it on the carriage bolt finger tight. With that done on both sides of the vehicle our fasteners are now all installed. We can go ahead and tighten them down and torque them to specification as indicated in the instructions. Now that all our hardware is torqued to specification we can go ahead and reinstall our heat shield here on the drivers side and rehang the exhaust which will complete our installation of Curt hitch, part number 13390, on our 2011 Subaru Outback Wagon.
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