Kuat Hi-Lo Pro Hitch Extender - 2" Hitches - 10" Extension - 2-1/8" Rise/Drop

Video Transcript for Kuat Hi-Lo Hitch Extender Review KU37FR

Hi, everyone, it's Evangeline. And today we'll be taking a look at our Curt Hi-Lo Hitch Extender with a rise and drop, right here at etrailer. So if you wanna carry around your bike and go for a bike ride, or you wanna carry other accessories on your hitch, but you have a spare tire like this, or maybe your hitch is deep inside towards the inside of your vehicle. And you have difficulties with just finding enough clearance for accessories. The solution to that is going to be a hitch extender that you can add on and get some extra space in clearance. So, let's take a look at how we got to this.

So, here with our Curt Sherpa without a hitch extender, as I try to put this into my hitch receiver, I can't get it lined up with the hitch pin holes without hitting the spare tire. So, because a bike rack can't fit behind that spare tire, this is what ends up happening. You're gonna have to put your bike in your backseat and trunk. Not as safe for the bike or for your vehicle, plus you can't carry your friends with you. So, we're gonna get our extender and pop it into our hitch, but before we do that, let's take a quick look at how this works.

We have a hitch pin and a lock as well as two keys included. If you're using other Curt accessories, you could get everything to match, if you plan ahead of time. Let's take a look over here at the shank. So, we're gonna have this wedge, and this is gonna be similar to the wedge in your bike racks. It's gonna work as your anti rattle.

So, you can see the mechanism on the inside. That's what's going to secure it to your hitch pin that's included, and to tighten it down, you're gonna have a tool. This is gonna be a allen key in order to tighten down. Now this will look very similar, cause it is exactly like what you see on your bike rack. Those knobs on the end of your Curt Sherpa or your Curt NV, you can use a hex tool to tighten it down further, if you don't have enough grip strength.

In fact, if you have a Curt NV, you will have this included tool hidden inside of your bike rack. So then you can just pop this in. In fact you can pick and choose, if you want to use it in the rise or the drop position, whichever works better for you and your bike racks. I usually recommend the rise position, just so that you have more ground clearance. Just line up the holes, pop your hitch pin through, get that lock into place. If you do have, let's see, we have a wiring harness here. We're just gonna switch around the hitch pin and then we can put the lock on the other side. So we have a good amount of shake without tightening it down. So we're gonna use that tool just so it secures itself around that hitch pin into the receiver. Now your lock, once you pop that on, it automatically locks, and then you can remove your keys, and you are going to have an included desk cap that you can put over the end of your lock. The one downside to that desk cap is it's not attached to the lock, so just try not to lose it. And now with everything all secure, we can pop our bike rack in just like usual, line up the hitch pin holes, and look at how much more space we have. So this is gonna have the same type of hitch pin hole as your hitch receiver. So this way you can use the hitch pin and lock, or even anti rattle bolt that your bike rack or other accessories will come with. Now let's take some measurements. So first I'm gonna give you the meaasurements for this hitch adapter, and then I'm gonna show you how to measure for your spare tire and bumper clearance. That way you can see if this fits on your vehicle. So we're gonna measure center of hitch pin hole of your hitch receiver, to the center of the hitch pin hole on the adapter. So this is going to add 10 inches of extension with this adapter. And then there's a measurement for rise and drop. So if you have this in the rise orientation it's gonna add two and one eighth inches of rise. If you have it in the drop, it's gonna add two and one eighth inches of drop. So if you're not sure if you have enough clearance or how much clearance do you need, here's how to measure for it. So you're gonna measure from the center of your hitch pin hole, to the furthest end of your vehicle. So whether it's your bumper or your spare tire, for example, our spare tire here sits nine and a half inches away from our hitch pin hole. You may also need to measure for the rise or drop that you will need. So for example, the bottom of our spare tire is six and a half inches away from the center of our hitch pin hole. So knowing that measurement, you can use the product pages right here at etrailer. We give closest distance and that will help you figure out if you have enough clearance. So that extension, as well as rise and drop, won't just help for if you can load your bikes on or not, it will also help figuring out if with your bike rack tilted away, can you open up your hatch, open up your door. For example here, since I can't fully open up my door for the bike rack on, I would go ahead and put it into the drop position and then I would have a better chance. Now there's some other things you have to consider with a hitch extender, though, that is going to be that you are going to lose about 50% of your hitch capacity. For example, if you had 500 pound tongue weight capacity you now have 250 pounds of tongue weight capacity for your accessories or for your bikes. Another thing is that this is not rated for towing. If you wanna use this with your bike racks, perfectly fine. If you wanna use this to pull a trailer though, I would recommend something else like the etrailer hitch extender, because this is rated for towing. Now the downside is something like this is that this does not include a rise or a drop. So there's different pros and cons and things to consider, depending on what you're using this for. And now we can finally load up our bike on its proper cradle and position. So you can see here we have plenty more space for our pedals, our handle bars. Our bike is all nice and safe. This is definitely better than trying to fit it around the spare tire, or putting it in the trunk. So my personal thoughts about our hitch extender here is I really like how it works with the Curt bike racks. Everything is very streamlined, very Curt in terms of style, as well as practicality. Being able to use the tools you get with your bike rack to tighten this down was really impressive for me. The one downside to this is going to be that it is not rated for towing. Every now and then I have to pull like a light trailer and having a extender that's also rated for towing would be nice. So we do have those other options I mentioned earlier in this video that may help with that. So definitely pick and choose the right extender for your accessories. And that was a look at our Curt High Low Hitch Extender with a rise and drop right here at etrailer. My name is Evangeline and I hope you enjoyed the journey..