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

Video Transcript for Trailer Hitch Installation - 2011 Subaru Forester - Curt

Today on our 2011 Subaru Forester, we will be taking a look at and installing the current class 2 1-1/4" hitch receiver. Part number C12047. The current class 2 trailer hitch receiver, is perfect for light duty towing or carrying accessories. Such as cargo carriers or bike racks. Please note when carrying a non trailer load, it's recommended that you use the current stabilization strap and you can find that at etrailer.com. It has gross trailer weight rating of 3,500 lbs and the tongue weight rating of 350 lbs, that's going to be the weight pushed down on the bottom of the hitch here. It the include a hitch fitting clip for your half inch pin hole.

We have a steel plate welded on safety chain loop, here at the bottom, the holes here are going to be large enough to fit a wide variety of safety chains. Now we will give you a few measurements, to help you when selecting accessories for your hitch. Such a ball mounts, bike racks or cargo carriers. From the center of the hitch pin holes to the outer edge of the bumper, its about 3-3/4" of an inch. From the top of the inside edge of the receiver tube to the ground, it's about 14-1/2". To begin our install we are going to get our car ready for our hitch. Now per our instructions, it just tells us, to lower our exhaust but I found it easier just to remove the muffles on either side and take them off completely.

So we will take our 14 millimeters socket and our 14 millimeter wrench and take it out just like that. Now we can remove our exhaust finger here. We just going to hit with some sprayer lubricant and make it easier to get off. Then we will drop down our side cone there , then we can just repeat same process on other side, then we can remove our rubber plug, we just take some pliers and pop it loose. Now as you can see, our hardware will not fit, we need to widen that hole. So we are just going to be using a step bit. If you don't have one you can just use a file.

Now keep in mind we just need to make the hole big enough that we can fit our hardware through. Perfect we do the exact same thing for the plug on the opposite side. Now we also need to remove our bolt here, that's holding up our portion of our heat shield because it is in the way of our hitch. So we just take a 10 millimeter and take that off. Repeat same process through the other side. Now lets go ahead and remove plug here, the last modification we needed to make is make the hole bigger, so this portion of our bolt can come down through. So same as last time we just take our step bit.

I think that did it. Perfect! Now lets go ahead and repeat same process on other side. Now we can ready to install our hardware, so we can grab our fish wire and we start by feeding this end here through the smaller hole and we going to come out the larger hole. There we are, then we'll take our block fit that over and we'll take our carriage bolt and thread that on. Then what we are going to do is feed that block up through first, follow by our carriage bolt and guide that all the way over here and then bring it down like that and we can take off that fish wire, then we will do the reverse pull through method. What we will do, is take our fish wire put our block on first and thread on our carriage bolt, then this time we will put our carriage bolt through first, then the block and then we will pull it down like so. Just like that, then we can repeat same process on the other side. Now we can raise our hitch up in position. It's not a bad idea to get an extra set of hands. Just want to be careful not to push the bolt back up to the frame. Then we will take our flange nut and just thread that on. Once we got one in place, we can rest the hitch on it. Now we can go ahead and snug down our carriage bolts. We just going to use a 19 millimeter socket. Now we can go ahead a torque it down to manufacturer specifications. This are found in the instructions. Last thing we can do is re-install our exhaust the same way it came out and that is going to complete look at install of the current class 2 1-1/4" trailer hitch receiver part number c12047 on our 2011 Subaru Forester. .