Draw-Tite Max-Frame Trailer Hitch Receiver - Custom Fit - Class III - 2"

Video Transcript for Draw-Tite Max-Frame Trailer Hitch Installation - 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz

Hello neighbors it's Brad here at etrailer and today we're taking a look and installing the Draw-Tite class three trailer hitch on a 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz. So here we have our trailer hitch actually installed on the vehicle and you can see what it looks like. Now it does have an exposed cross tube, so you can see the hitch underneath it but the Santa Cruz does kind of find itself in it, kind of a niche market and the fact that it's not exactly on a truck frame but it is still a truck, so it pulls this exposed cross tube off pretty well. Now taking a closer look here, you can see it is a two inch by two inch receiver tube opening with a reinforced collar. So that's gonna be really good for a lot of your different accessories whether be a bike rack, a cargo carrier, maybe even a ball mount for a small trailer. Now you're also going to see that this is a nice black powder coat finish, so it gives it a really good look to it and also long term, this is gonna stay looking nice rather than corroded and rusted just while driving on the road and getting that road grime on there.

Now looking a little bit closer as well. You're also going to see a five, its five eighth standard hitchpin hole and that's gonna allow you to put your accessories in place and keep them in place by putting this through here. Now the hitch itself does not actually come with the hitchpin and clip but there's plenty of options available here at etrailer including locking ones now. And when you put your accessories in they're not gonna walk in the hands of someone else. Now a lot of your accessories will actually come with a hitchpin and clip.

So that's something to keep an eye on. When you are purchasing accessories for your hitch you also have a rolled style safety chain loop. So that's gonna be great for when you're pulling your trailer so you can put your standard size hooks or even a larger clevis hook, no problem on here. And it's gonna be hooking up is gonna be a breeze on this. Now let's do some quick measurements on here.

We're gonna measure from the center of the hitchpin hole to the furthest point of the rear bumper. And that's gonna tell us roughly about how far we can put our accessories in as far as our tilting ones, your bike racks or cargo carriers without making contact with the bumper. And that's gonna put us at three inches. So something to keep in mind when choosing your accessories. Something else that's gonna be important is gonna be our ground clearance.

So measuring from the inside of the receiver tube opening to the ground here, we have about 13 inches. So a decent amount of ground clearance for the hitch itself. But when you load your accessories sometimes they can actually hang out quite a bit. And as you go up inclines, those can actually tilt down so something to keep in mind when you have your accessories loaded up and you're driving on inclines or rough terrain. Now as far as specs on the hitch it's actually rated pretty high as far as what it can handle. It has a gross trailer weight rating of 5,000 pounds which is the weight of the trailer plus the accessories loaded up and that's a decent amount. You also have a ton weight rating which is the downward pressure on the inside of the receiver tube opening of 750 pounds. So that's gonna be the weight of the ton weight pushing down on here as well as your accessories that are actually suspended like your cargo carriers or bike racks. So that's a decent amount of weight. Now this is cannot be used with weight distribution. So unfortunately you're not gonna be able to do that to help you out pulling some heavier trailers. And you do wanna make sure that you are checking the owner manual to see what the vehicle's capable of and compare that with the numbers of what the hit capable of and take the lower of the two just to keep you safe. Now while we're talking about trailer weight ratings it's also kind of nice that the draw-tite here actually has a tab welded on, and you can just pick up a small bracket here at etrailer to allow you to put your four pole on here permanently. And that way you'll have access to it whenever you need to actually hook up and go. Now the hitch is gonna give you a lot more accessibility to put your hitches on and really take you to whatever adventure you need to do and give you a little bit more real estate if you're adding a cargo carrier. But a lot of times people are worried about the installation process. Well I'm here to tell you it's a pretty easy installation and I'm gonna walk you through every single step. So let's get your hitch installed. We're gonna be begin our installation by lowering down our spare tire. And that's gonna gain us access to actually put the hitch in place. And in order to do that if you've never lowered your spare tire on your truck what you're gonna do is there is this cap here that says spare tire. We're gonna just take a flat head screwdriver counterclockwise turn this and this should pop out. Now in here is going to be a hex and we're gonna need to rotate that. So you can actually use a 12 millimeter socket or we can use the factory tools that are in our toolkit to do it, and I'll show you where to find those. So on the passenger side, in the rear seats there's this loop on the side here that I'm gonna just pull allowing this seat to raise up. And that's gonna reveal where we have our Jack and our tools for our spare tire. So we'll go ahead and get our wrench. And we're also gonna grab this tube here and that's gonna have that hex that we need. So now we'll take this smaller hex side and we're just gonna slide this in straight shot and you should be able to kind of wiggle it around until we get that seated it on that actual hex. Just make sure that you are properly on there. And if you need to you can actually look underneath and see that pretty easily but just make sure that you have that on there. Once you have that on, you can go ahead and take your wrench, put it on the other side and we're just gonna rotate this counterclockwise and lower it down enough to get our spare tire off and out of the way. Once you have it low enough you can actually just pick this up. And you're just gonna kind of put this in that slight angle that should slide out. And now we get our spare tire moved and out of the way. So next we need to lower down our muffler here. As our hitch is gonna kind of live up in this area and to gain access, we will have to drop this down but it is important that we actually support this because once you pull these isolators off, the exhaust is gonna hang and down the way it can actually cause damage to it. So what we're gonna do is just take a cam buckle strap and we're gonna just, I'm gonna put this on the endlinks here and we'll gonna tighten that up and that's just gonna cradle that exhaust once we lower it down. Now if you're doing this in your garage or on your driveway some blocks or some wood underneath, it should do just fine. You just wanna make sure that this isn't using all of its weight and kind of causing strain down the way. So once we have this supported, we're gonna go ahead and go to our isolator and we're gonna pry this off. You can use a long plant head screwdriver or a pry bar and a little tip if you're struggling with them or even if you aren't struggling with them something that makes it a little bit easy is a little bit of penetrating oil. Just spraying this on here. It's gonna allow these to kind of slip through there a little bit easier and then you should be able to just put your pry bar or your flat head under here and just push out. And that's one of 'em down. Now there is another one on the center cross member here. So we're gonna do the same thing And you can actually use the exhaust a little bit as leverage to kind of just pry this back. And with that pop down you're gonna see that's gonna gain us a little bit more room here. Now there is gonna be one more and that's gonna be kind of tucked on this backside too. So we'll go ahead and get this one dropped as well. So this is sitting right behind muffler there. I'm just using a muffler here year as leveraged to kind of just pry this out but any place that you find necessary it can kind of get this out. It's gonna help work. And I'm actually gonna use our exhaust hangers that are on the muffler as leverage I was able to just kind of pry that and you can see this is doing its job of actually supporting our exhaust. So now that we have this dropped out of the way we'll continue on. Now we're gonna come over to our driver's side frame rail and we can see this harness clip. It is actually snapped into the frame rail here and our hitch is gonna live in this area. So we're gonna want to move this. Now I'm using a panel removal tool here, and this kind of makes it a little bit easier. If you don't have one of these, we actually sell 'em here at etrailer. They're really handy for things like this, as well as your plastic push pins. But we're gonna go ahead and I'm gonna lower both of these just to give us a little bit more space. So just pop these out. The flathead will also work just take your time here you don't wanna break those clips. And that should get this out of the way. So we're gonna be threading in our bolts that come with the hitch into these three holes as well as the other three on the other side they're gonna be identical or close to it. And what you're gonna want to do if your vehicle has been on the road for a bit sometimes these can actually get caked up with road grime and dust, dirt debris and whatever it may be, but that can actually cause issues on the threads as the bolts go in, making it very hard to do. So just for preventative maintenance and to make it a little bit easier for us I'm gonna spray this with a little bit of penetrating oil and with a tube brush I'm gonna just kind to bring these out make sure that they're nice and clean for us. If you need a toothbrush we actually have these here at etrailer as well. So now with an extra set of hands, or if you're working on the ground, you can actually use a jack stand and kind of just balance it and raise it up in position. But you're gonna wanna raise the passenger side up over the exhaust first and have hardware ready. So here we have our supplied bolt and a conical tooth washer. Now this conical tooth washer does have different shapes on each side. So you can see it's actually kind of curved. You want the teeth to actually bite into the hitch. So when putting it on the bolt have those teeth facing away from the head. So once we raise this in place you can pick any of the holes. There's gonna be one on the bottom or two on the side and you're just gonna want to hand tighten those in there. And that's just gonna allow this to kind of hold in place so we can get the rest of our hardware in. Now once you have a few threads started on both sides you'll be to actually have the hitch supported by itself. And then from there you can put the rest of the hardware in those two side holes or the bottom. So there should be a total of three on each side. So get those all hand tightened in. Now you may need to actually kind of lift the hitch up a little bit to get these holes aligned. But again, once you kind of get one started there that's gonna help with the next ones on the other side. So we'll go ahead and get that one in. And if you're having trouble getting it to a line you might just kind of move the hitch around and then you should have it able to start pretty easily. So I have all of my hardware just hand tightened in. Now I'm gonna go back with a 19 millimeter socket and I'm gonna do the bottom ones first. That's gonna kind of hinch it up and take some of the stress off those threads resting on the hitch. So let's go ahead and we'll tighten these down. Now we don't have to get too crazy here because we're gonna go back with a torque wrench and make sure they're toed properly. So just make sure that they're set, snugged they don't have to be really cranked down. Go ahead and do the same for the size here. And then repeat on the other side. So now we have it snugged up. We're gonna go back with our torque wrench and we're gonna use the torque settings in the manufacturers recommendations and the instructions. Now you will want to pick up at torque wrench either from here or you can rent one from an auto parts store. And this is important because it makes sure that it's at the proper setting of torque in that way it's not too tight on the actual threads but it's also not too loose to where it'll back out over time. So once you get your torque wrench set you can go ahead with that 19 again and just make sure these are torque down properly. Now you will probably need to use an extension to get to these vertical ones. And especially once you're working over the exhaust on the passenger side but extension's really gonna come than handy. So if you need to put one on now is a great time to do that. So now we can go back and make sure that they're all toed on properly. So now we have our hitch installed really all that's left to do. We're gonna get our wiring put back in place here And we can pop this one in as well. And then we can put our exhaust hangers back on raise our spare tire up and then we're ready to use our hitch. And that was a look and installation of the Draw-Tite class three trailer hitch on a 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz..