How to Install a Trailer Hitch on a 2015 Hyundai Santa Fe

Today on our 2015 Hyundai Santa Fe, we'll be taking a look at and installing the Draw-Tite Custom Fit Class 3 trailer hitch receiver, part number 75776. Here's what our hitch is going to look like once it's installed. It has that nice sleek and tucked away look. You won't even know it's there unless you remove the cover. That 2" by 2" receiver opening is going to be great for offering a 750 pound tongue weight rating and 5000 pound towing capacity. With weight distribution, the towing capacity of your hitch is going to get raised up a little bit. The tongue weight rating is still going to be 750 pounds of tongue weight directly on the receiver tube bottom here. For our towing, with that weight distribution, it's going to go up to 7500 pounds.

With those chain tie downs on either side, made out of heavy 1/4" plate steel. Fully welded design offering supreme durability. We're going to have two pin holes here on the side. The 5/8" pin hole for all your 5/8" accessories and your 1/2" pin hole for your J hook stabilization device. Another nice feature about this receiver hitch is it's going to have the welded on bracket to secure our trailer wiring. You see that here, tucked up against the bottom of our fascia. Now, we'll give you a few measurements to help you in selecting hitch accessories. From the top of our receiver tube to the ground, it's going to be about 15 1/4".

From the center of the pin hole, to the outermost edge of the bumper, it's going to be about 4 1/4". These measurements should assist you in selecting some hitch accessories, such as ball mounts, bike racks, and cargo carriers for your new hitch. Now let's go ahead and see how it's installed. First thing we're going to do on the back side of our Hyundai is remove the cover that's going to cover up where our receiver tube is going to be. We're first going to take a flat blade screwdriver, stick it into the push fastener, tip it to pull out the center and we can pull it down and remove it. We'll then set that fastener off to the side and remove the other one here on the other side.

You can see it comes out nice and easy. There will be two tabs, one on either side. Push them in and pull down. Make sure that you don't break the tabs that are here on the top securing it along that top rail. Go ahead and set that off to the side for now until we get our hitch installed. Go ahead and open up the back so we can lower down our spare tire a little bit and give us a little bit more access underneath.

Lift up the back to gain access to the spare tire lowering bolt. We'll just use our wrench here to hold it up in place and thread off the top. See the bolt here, it fits your normal lug wrench that you have in the back here. We'll go ahead our tube brush to clean out our weld nuts where we're going to be threading in our hardware. We're going to have two mounting points here on the bottom and then two bolts that will slide through the side. The bolts that will slide through the sides are going to have their own separate nut and not the built in weld nut from the factory, so we don't need to clean out those top ones, just the bottom two on each side. We'll clean out those threads to make sure we have a nice easy time getting our hardware into place. It gets rid of that powder coat and undercoating on the bottom side. With those two cleaned out, let's repeat that same process on the driver's side. Here we'll see two alignment tabs for the rear bumper. We're going to need to bend that in or cut them off in order to get our bolts to fit in properly through the sides. We'll just take a long socket, slide it over the top, and we're just going to bend these in. We'll do that on both sides. The hardware that we're going to be using to slide up underneath where we cleaned out those weld nuts is going to the two hex head bolts and conical tooth washers will slide over like so with the teeth facing towards the receiver and the frame. We'll get an extra set of hands to help us hold our hitch up into place while we secure one of those bolts on each side before replacing the rest of our hardware. Slide the hitch up into position, lining up the bottom holes. Take the bolt and thread it in from the back side. Go ahead and temporarily fasten those and those will allow the hitch to rest in place while we put in the rest of our hardware. Take the second hex head bolt and conical tooth washer and thread it into position. Do that on both the driver and passenger side. Now, we'll take our long hex bolts. Place our conical tooth washer the same way with the teeth facing towards the receiver over the top and slide it through the frame out the other side. Slide it through in both locations and out the other side. Place on a conical tooth washer on the backside and the hex nut. Now then repeat that same process on the driver's side. Go ahead and tighten down our bottom hardware first and then the top hardware. We'll start by torquing our bottom ones first. We'll put our spare tire up into position. We'll raise our tire up into position. Move that all the way back up. We'll then put our tab back on. Put our rear cover back into place, then attach our push fasteners at the bottom. Place them in and push in the centers. Just like that our installation is finished. That will do it for our review and installation of the Draw-Tite Custom Fit Class 3 trailer hitch receiver, part number 75776 on our 2015 Hyundai Santa Fe.