Curt Fish Wire Bolt Leader - 3/8"

Video Transcript for Curt Fish Wire Bolt Leader Review

Hey, everybody, how's it going Today, we're gonna be showing you how to use the Curt Fish Wire Bolt Leader. So you wanna make sure that you get the correct fish wire depending on what size bolt you have, and thankfully, Curt makes these in a few different sizes. For starters, you're gonna have a 3/8 inch, a 7/16 inch, a 1/2 inch and a 5/8 inch. So the first thing we need to do is we need to determine what size fish wire we need because there's several different ones. Now, when I talk about size, I'm not talking about the length of it. I'm talking about the size of this coiled portion here.

So there's gonna be all different kinds of sizes that are gonna match up with the common sizes used for hitch bolts. So this one here is a carriage bolt with a 7/16 inch diameter. So we're gonna be using the corresponding fish wire here, which is gonna be the 7/16-inch fish wire. So once we determine that we have the correct size fish wire, what I like to do is I like the bend the end here, the pointy end, that way when we stick our hitch up into position and you stick this through the hole in your hitch, it doesn't slide back out. This is gonna serve as a little stopper.

Now, I think it's another good point to make is that while we're using fish wire, I always like to make sure I have safety glasses on because these things are very sharp and they're springy so they could potentially put out your eye. So we've got our safety glasses here. I'm gonna go make sure I put these on. Now, the coiled end is gonna go through the hole that we want our bolt to go through and then we're gonna be fishing it out our access hole. So a lot of this is gonna vary depending on your particular vehicle or what you're installing it on, but for our Subaru Outback here, the hole that we're gonna be using is in the bottom of the frame.

So we'll jump under there in a second and show you that, but we're gonna be placing our coiled end through that hole that we want the bolt to come out of, and then we're gonna be fishing it out our access hole. So now, I'm gonna take the coiled end of our fish wire and I'm gonna be placing it through the hole that we want our bolt to come through, and now, here's our access hole. So I'm gonna take the fish wire here, the coiled end, and I'm gonna pull it out through the access hole. Now you wanna make sure you don't pull it too far, 'cause we obviously don't wanna pull through our other side of our fish wire and then I'm gonna hold onto the fish wire and I'm going to carefully thread on our carriage bolt. So we're gonna thread that all the way on.

Now, if your particular one uses a spacer block, you wanna go ahead and place that over the coiled end before you put on the carriage bolt. A lotta times, when you're fish wiring into the frame, there's both a spacer block and a carriage bolt, but this particular one here has the bosses already drilled into the hitch there, so you don't need a spacer block, but now, we're just gonna grab the other side of our fish wire there, feed our hardware through the access hole, and now, we'll just pull the other side of our fish wire down through the hole there, bring our bolt along with it. Now, if you have more than one hole that you need to do this to, chances are you are, and you only have one fish wire, you wanna make sure that you unthread it as opposed to just pulling it straight off. So once we have our fish wire off, we'll take our flange nut here and we'll go ahead and thread it onto the carriage bolt. Now, you wanna be careful when you're threading this on because you don't wanna push the bolt back up into the frame. So a lot of the times, I like to take a finger or if you have a conical tooth washer you're installing along with the nut. You'll use that to put pressure on the side of the bolt, so you're not pushing it back up into the frame. So another common fish wire technique that's used a lot, it's sort of similar to the one we just showed you, but it's called reverse fish wire. So with reverse fish wire, there's only one hole and that's your attachment hole. What you're going to do is you're gonna first take your fish wire here, the coiled end, and you're gonna place your spacer block over the fish wire like so, and then you're actually going to thread on your carriage bolt. So you're actually gonna be doing all this outside of the hole, and then what you're gonna do is you're gonna take the head of the carriage bolt. You're gonna stick that up through your attachment hole, shove that into the frame, follow that up with your carriage bolt, and then you're just gonna pull both of them down through the hole like so, and this is how it should sit inside the frame of the vehicle, and you'll just simply unscrew your fish wire, and that's gonna do it for our look at the Curt Fish Wire Bolt Leader..