etrailer Trailer Hitch Receiver - Custom Fit - Matte Black Finish - Class III - 2"

Video Transcript for etrailer Class III Trailer Hitch Installation - 2019 Ram 1500 Classic

Hi John with etrailer. Hey, if you're ready to tow with your truck and I'm not talking about bumper pulling, I'm talking the real trailer hitch here. Now check out our etrailer's Class Three Receiver Hitch and it's going on our 2019 Dodge Ram 1500 Classic. Now right off the bat, I do want to tell you that this hitch is going to fit your truck if it's a Dodge Ram Classic and whether or not it's a short bed or a long bed. And, this is the important part, if your truck did not have the factory hitch. If any of those things are different, we have other hitches available on our website, just check them out.

But just know that the installation and everything, our truck today, it's going to be a Ram Classic 1500 short-bed and it did not have the OEM hitch package. Now let's take a closer look at this. This is going to be a class three receiver hitch. This is the standard two inch by two inch receiver opening. It has a reinforced collar.

Something exclusive to etrailer hitches, it has a matte black finish. I really, really like this on the trucks. It's a little bit tougher than the other powder coat finishes on the other hitches and those are also glossy. This one, it just kind of hangs out under your truck, looks factory. Now this has an exposed cross tube under here and it has a plate style chain hanger, which is plenty of room for standard S hook or for heavier duty clevis style.

(metal clanking) Doesn't come with a pin and clip. If you're new to towing, you're going to need one of these. And we have these available here at etrailer. This is a five eighths inch pin and clip. There are two different sizes for different styles of hitches.

This one takes the five eighths. We have styles like this. If you want a locking one to secure your trailer and ball mounts, we have those available here at etrailer as well. Now this is a four by four classic. So let's get some measurements here so you kind of know if your truck is similar, you're going to know what you're looking at. So from the ground to the top of the inside collar up here, we're looking at 19 inches. And it's going to be flush with the back of the bumper here. So from the pinhole to the back of the bumper is going to be two and a quarter inches. So it is nice that it's flush with the bumper. So if you take your ball mount out, you're not going to bang your ankles on this. These numbers are important for you. You can check your trailer height at home or if you're going to purchase a trailer, you may just be okay with a straight shank ball mount or you may need one with a rise or a drop to it. Now speaking of towing, let's talk about some capacities for our hitch because maybe you're looking at either a cargo rack or hauling your motorcycle back here. How about tongue weight ratings This hitch 600 pound tongue weight rating. That's going to be the force pushing down on this hitch. Plenty of room for, if you want to get a cargo rack with a generator or load it up for camping if your bed's full. So as far as tow weight ratings, we're looking at 6,000 pounds. That's going to be the weight of your trailer and any cargo that's in it or on it. Now, if you have a weight distribution hitch we can bump those numbers up, 1000 pounds of tongue weight rating, 10,000 pounds of trailer weight rating. Of course, check the owner's manual of your Dodge and make sure that your Dodge can handle those kind of numbers. So final thoughts on the hitch. Look, if you need a hitch, don't pay somebody else to do it. Honestly, we got this done in 30 minutes. Now I know we we're in a shop and we had it up on a lift, but it's not that big of a deal. There's plenty of room. You lower the spare tire and you've got gobs of room to work under there. All of the hardware is included. If you don't have a torque wrench, you can rent one. If you think this is the right hitch for you and you want to see how we did it, we'll walk you through step by step. Stick around. Okay, so to begin the hitch installation, first thing we need to do is lower the spare tire. It's just going to give us more room underneath and access to places that we're going to need to get to. (tool cranking) You can find all of the hardware to do this in your truck. It's a good idea to check tire pressure while it's down because a flat spare tire doesn't do you any good out on the road. Now we've raised the truck up in the air on our jacks, of course you can do this on your driveway, but we're going to show you. If you come under the truck here, you've got the factory bumper support. What we're going to be looking for is this bolt right here and you're going to have one on each side, that's 21 millimeter. We're going to pop this one out and then the other side. (tool operating) Now real quick, I dumped out the hardware that comes with the kit so we can go over it. You're going to have four carriage bolts. All of these are the same. You're going to have four locking flange nuts. All of those are the same. You're going to have two fish wires. These are the same. Your spacers are not the same. This is where we need to take a look. We got two smaller ones and two bigger ones. Two smaller ones, we're going to fish wire into the frame of the truck. The two smaller one or the two bigger ones, excuse me, are going to go into the bumper support when we fish wire through. You'll see that in our upcoming shots here. Now this is the bolt location that we took out just earlier. So we're going to be bolting here and we're going to be using this large hole right here. We're going to do what is a reverse fish wire technique. We're going to take the spring, go through the washer and then thread your carriage bolt on. This is not too hard to do. (metal clanking) Do that and bring that down, just like that. Do this on both sides. (metal clanking) Okay, now we've got both sides done. Go ahead and leave your fish wires on right now. That's going to help us thread it through. And when we bring the hitch up, we're going to use the front holes. These are already threaded for us. And just in case our hitch hits this bolt and sends it up there, we can bring them right back down. We're not going to lose the bolts in the frame. Now we're about to raise the hitch up and we are going to be reusing the same bolts that we took out of there. Look, a good idea is to take a bottle brush and just clean these threads out right now (brush scraping) because there's nothing worse than holding the hitch up with one hand and then having some gunk stop this bolt from going up to where it's supposed to go. Now's a good chance to get yourself an extra helping hand and we're going to put this hitch up. Now we are going to start with the threaded portion. Take the fish wires that we put up and run them through this hole. Not the one on the end, that's for a long bed, this is for the short beds here. And we'll go ahead and go and raise this up. (metal clanking) With the factory bolts in, you may have to wiggle the hitch around to get the bolt hole to line up. Looks like we're good here. Nice job. Okay, so we're good. Okay, so the hitch is hanging by the front bolt. Now we can turn our attention to the bolts that we fish wired in. Now we need to save the fish wires. We're going to be reusing this in the next step here. Grab yourself a locking flange nut and I like to put pressure on that bolt to keep it from popping up into the frame on us. And then I'm kind of pulling down on the bolt so that it stays in that spacer up there. And I'm just going to snug this up and repeat that on the other side now. Okay, now we're under the truck looking backwards and this is going to be where we fish wire next, these two holes. This is the rear bumper support. Now, do yourself a favor and when you have this hitch up here, don't snug everything too tight. You want the hitch to be able to move because it looks like we've got a little bit of movement up, down, left and right. Test fit your carriage bolts to make sure that they're going to go through. We're looking good. Let's grab our fish wires and the spacers and we'll run these through. Okay, now when we're going to fish wire these it's not like we did on the frame, that was a reverse fish wire. So what we're going to do, take your spring and run it in and we're going to head this way towards the edge of the truck and it's going to snake up and around that tube. And we can come out either at the very end, that just seems fine to me. There's also a hole in the bottom here. And then we'll put the spacer on first, then thread the carriage bolt on. All right, so we have these here. We got the wire on the other side. Just insert the spacer and the carriage bolt. Just carefully run them through. And you can come on under the truck here and I'll show you on the backside. (metal clanking) They have to do. There we go. It was kind of twisted around just because it's doing a lot of twisting in there. So we've got the one here. And tell you what, I'm just going to grab the flange nut while we have you on this one. 'Cause we're going to be doing the same thing with the other side. So make sure you're putting pressure on that carriage bolt when you're taking this off. You don't want it to fall back into the bumper support here. There we go. Just kind of snug it up and then just go ahead and repeat the same thing on this side. And next we can torque this hardware to the specs that are found in your installation manual. I will tell you that the bolts that we're existing on this truck, they are going to be a different torque than the other hardware that came with your kit. So just keep that in mind when you're doing this. If you don't have a torque wrench, we have them here at etrailer available or you get down to your local auto parts store and typically you can rent them for free. Now, the only thing left to do is raise your spare tire back up under the truck and you're good to go. (tool ratcheting) Make sure you check while you're doing this, make sure it's not crooked or catching on the exhaust or anything else. It absolutely will fit with this hitch. And that was a look at etrailer's Class Three Receiver Hitch on our 2019 Dodge Ram 1500 Classic.