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

Video Transcript for Trailer Hitch Installation - 2016 Ford Escape - Curt

Today on our 2016 Ford Escape, we're going to take a look at and show you how to install the Curt Custom Fit Class 2 Trailer Hitch Receiver. Part number is C12111 Here's what our hitch is going to look like installed on our vehicle. As you can see we got a nice hidden cross tube here, not going to have to worry about a bunch hanging down below the vehicle. All we really are going to notice is going to be receiver tube itself and our safety chain connection points. See we've got the 1-1/4" by 1-1/4" opening. Reinforcement collar around the end, that's going to flush.

It also sits tucked in behind the bumper's edge a little bit, so we're not going to have to worry about bumping into it. Safety chain connection points themselves are going to be out of rolled steel. We've got nice open areas so I don't think we're going to have to worry about getting our chains connected. Should be ready to go, easy to do. Got our 1/2" diameter pin-hole. That's going to work great with any Class 2 accessory that you choose.

The hitch itself is going to have a 350 pound tongue weight rating. That's going to be maximum downward force we can put here at our receiver tube opening. It offers a 3,500 pound gross trailer weight rating. That's the total of our trailer and anything that load up on it. Of course, we want to check the Escape's manual, see what it's tow ratings are.

We'll go off of whichever of those numbers are the lowest. A couple measurements that are going to be helpful in selecting your ball mount, bike rack or hitch cargo carrier will be from the ground to the inside top edge of the receiver tube opening. We've got about 13-1/2". Then, from the center of our hitch pin-hole to the outermost edge of our bumper, it's about four. The first thing that we need to do is lower our exhaust hangers here. We're going to have two bolts that are going to go up into the frame. We'll back those out.

We'll do the same thing on our passenger side. These bolts we won't be reusing so we can set them aside or give them back to our customer. Now, we use a little bit of spray lubricant. We want to go just in front of our rear cross member here. There's going to be a little rubber hanger there. Spray it with a little bit of lubricant. We just want to pry that off there. Now, we're going to enlarge our access hole just a little bit. You can do this with a file. You can try to bend it with a wrench. What we're going to do is just use a little cutting wheel. Just notch out the side of it there. We'll go over and do the same thing for our passenger side. Now, we need to remove this small little nut that's on the front side of the heat shield. Then, we're going to take off, right down this edge right here, take off about that amount of our heat shield. We're going to be removing this so our hitch has a nice spot to sit up there without any interference. It's pretty thin material so tin snips or shears will work fine. That should be fine there. We'll go do the same thing for our other side. Now, through the access hole that we enlarged, we're going to fish wire one bolt, the 7/16 carriage bolt, through this rear most round hole on the outside of our frame rail. Just use our pull wire, it's going to go into the frame rail there. Then we'll just guide it out our hole location. Then, we'll slide our spacer block up and in, then, also, our carriage bolt. You can see here, we'll pull until it come out of the frame. Then, we just want to slide that right back in. Then, we get our other two started. Now, for our access hole location, what we're going to do is slide our bolt up and in, then our spacer block. We'll bring it right down, right in that same spot. Now, we'll head over to the passenger side, do the same thing there. Now, with an extra set of hands, we can raise our hitch up into position. Just want to guide it up over top of the exhaust. Now, we're going to bring our fish wires down through the first and the third hole on the bottom side of the hitch. Then, the one that we had in the side of the frame rail, that's going to go through the oblong hole. Now, we can lift our hitch straight up into position. We'll pull our bolt out on the side to support our hitch. Now, let's pull one of our fish wires off the bottom of the hitch here. Then, we'll thread on one of our flange nuts. We'll take care of the other two here, just get a nut hand tight on them or even just started really. We'll go do the same for our other side. Now, we'll take a quick look here just to insure that we've got our hitch centered, then we'll start snugging down our fasteners. You'll notice our other two holes, there going to be sitting directly below our mounting locations for the exhaust hanger. It's going come up, so we want to be sure that holes are fully open. Then, we'll just snug our bolts here on the bottom down first. Now, we'll bring our exhaust back over into position, and we'll take the provided hardware and get it resecured right into its original mounting locations. We can snug those down. We'll also get our hanger here in the middle resecured. Now, we can go through get all of our hardware torqued down to proper specification. Those will be listed on your instructions. That's going to complete our installation of the Curt Class 2 Trailer Hitch Receiver, part number C12111, on our 2016 Ford Escape.