Curt Trailer Hitch Receiver with Standard Drawbar - Custom Fit - Class I - 1-1/4"

Video Transcript for Trailer Hitch Installation - 2014 Toyota Prius - Curt

Today on our 2014 Toyota Prius, we're going to be taking a look at and showing you how to install the Curt custom fit class one trailer hitch receiver. This is an inch and a quarter opening, part number is C11276. Here's what the hitch looks like once you get it on your vehicle. As you can see, it's a pretty clean look. You're going to have the round tube, so it's a little softer than some of the other designs. This offers a 200 pound tongue weight capacity, 2,000 pound gross trailer weight capacity, but of course you're going to want to check with the Prius owner's manual to make sure those numbers are okay.

If not, go off of whichever number is going to be the lowest. The edge of the receiver tube here is about flush with the back of the car. It's not going to be sticking out too far, and it's not tucked up so far underneath to where you can't use some items out there. This is a class one, so not a lot of heavy duty situations for towing and things like that. Work great for bike racks, some small cargo carriers, and light duty towing applications. When using a bike rack, you can use a four bike rack in the hitch, but you're limited to just a two bike capacity, so you'll want to keep that in mind. Now let's go over a couple of measurements that will help you in selecting your ball mount, bike rack, or maybe cargo carrier.

From the ground to the inside edge of the top of the receiver tube opening is going to be about 11 1/8 inches. From the center of the hitch pin hole to the outer edge of the bumper, we're looking at about two. Now we're going to just put a strap across the underside here of the exhaust to begin with. This is just going to give us a bit of support because our first step is going to be to remove the bracket right here by taking out the bolt located here and here. That's out of the way. You'll see our exhaust will come down a little bit.

It's going to give us some room to work. They also recommend removing the rubber hanger from the exhaust just to ease our installation a little bit later. We'll do a little spray lubricant on that hanger and then we'll just try to pry it from the back side to get it off. We can let that isolator and that hanger stay there. Now on the driver's side here, we're going to be removing the tow hook or the tie-down loop. These are both the same size bolt as what we used there on the passenger side.

We're going to pull those down and we'll return the tow loop. The hardware we removed from the driver's side and the passenger side we'll want to hold on to in case we ever remove the hitch. We can put these back into place. You can see here where we removed our tow loop, we're going to have the two mounting locations for our driver's side. Where we removed our exhaust hanger on the passenger side, we'll have our two mounting locations there. Here's the hardware that will come with the hitch. As you can see, we're going to have a hex bolt and a conical tooth washer. We want to make sure that the teeth face in. This is going to go right through our hitch and then into our existing weld nuts up here. It's a good idea to start each one just to make sure it's going to thread in, there aren't any threads that are out of line or anything like that. Let those start in there five, six turns; you'll be in good shape. Now we can lift our hitch up into position. We'll guide the hitch through on the driver's side. As you can see, you've got to wiggle it there and get it to slide through that opening. Going to guide the passenger side to where it's at least above the exhaust there, then I'm going to line up one of my holes on the driver's side and we'll get it started. Now we'll come over here to the driver's side, we'll put our hitch up into position, then we'll bring our exhaust bracket back in. We're going to sandwich the hitch between the exhaust bracket and the frame. Now we'll get our other bolt started on the passenger side here, and then head to the driver's side and get the last one over there started. Now we'll take a quick look, just to be sure that we have our hitch centered with the vehicle. Once we've confirmed that, we'll start snugging up all our fasteners. Now we'll get our torque wrench out and torque each one to specifications listed in the instructions. Now we'll slide our exhaust hanger back into place and we can remove our safety strap. We just with those couple of short steps, our hitch is in and we're ready to hook up. Put our exhaust back in place, that's going to complete today's installation of the Curt class 1 custom trailer hitch receiver, part number C11276 on our 2014 Toyota Prius. .