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

Video Transcript for etrailer Class III Trailer Hitch Installation - 2019 Ford Transit Connect

Hello neighbors it's Brad here, etrailer. And today we're taking a look and installing the etrailer hitch receiver on a 2019 Ford Transit Connect. So this is what your hitch is gonna look like when it's installed. And you can see it's got a slightly visible cross too but kind of tapers up. But overall, this is a really clean fit here. You can see the two inch by two inch receiver tube opening is about flush with the fascia.

So it's really nice and it's gonna be easily accessible when you put your accessories in. Now, speaking of accessories, when you put them in place, you're gonna be having a 5/8 pin and clip to keep those in place. Now, the hitch does not come with the pin and clip. A lot of times, your accessories will come with one though. And if you wanna pick up a locking one, you can actually lock that in place with a key.

And that way, when you have your accessories loaded up, they're gonna stay locked and not walk away in the hands of someone else. Now on the bottom, you're gonna see a plate style safety chain loop and that's gonna allow us to put larger clevis style hooks or even just a normal style hook here when we're hooking up to a trailer. Now, a few quick measurements, going from the center the hitch pin hole to the furthest point on the rear fascia. We're looking about an inch and a half so that's gonna be really good for your folding accessories like your cargo carriers or bike racks. And they're not gonna make contact with the fascia.

Now you are gonna want to keep in mind with the hatch opening up when you have your accessories, just make sure you're not making contact with those. Now let's check our ground clearance From the top of the receiver tube opening to the ground, it's gonna be 12 and a half inches. So pretty good for the hitch itself. I don't worry about this making contact, but again if you have your suspended accessories as you go up an incline, they can kind of dip down. So something to keep in mind when you have 'em loaded but overall, a decent amount of ground clearance.

Now, as far as the installation goes, I'm happy to tell you that this is a pretty easy one to do in your garage or driveway. You're just gonna be fish wiring some bolts in to mount up the hitch. And all you really need is an 18 millimeter socket, a 19 millimeter socket, a way to tighten them and a torque wrench. And you'll be able to knock this out in about 15 to 20 minutes. Beginning our installation, we're gonna be under the vehicle obviously to get our bolts in place, to get our hitch up. Now this definitely can be done in your driveway or in your garage. And we're gonna start by actually laying out our hardware because we have two different size carriage bolts. So we have a 7/16 and we have a half inch. So make sure you're choosing the right hardware as it is gonna make a difference. The same goes with the fish wire. There's a smaller coil as well as a larger one for the half inch bolt here. And then we also have two different spacer blocks. You can see this one's centered and this one's offset. So starting off, we're going to be taking our coiled in here, and we're gonna be doing a reverse fish wire. So meaning we're gonna feed our hardware in and then pull it down using this, but we're gonna wanna make sure we keep our wire attached. It's gonna make installation a lot easier. So take your spacer block, feed that through here and then we're gonna take this coiled in and just feed our bolts on. And then we'll go ahead and just feed this in. So just kinda put it in an angle. You might need to rotate it a little bit here and there but it should go in and then you can feed your spacer block up and then just simply pull this down. Now we can go ahead and repeat the same process on the other side. Now we're gonna grab our half inch bolt as well as the larger coil and the centered up spacer block. And this one's gonna be slightly different but not too terribly bad. We're gonna feed it in through this oval hole. And then you're gonna see there's this access hole right there. So now we feed our spacer block in and then we'll coil this on. And then we'll just simply feed this in and pull this down. And then we'll go ahead and repeat that same step on the other side. So now with an extra set of hands, we're gonna feed our hitch up and we're gonna run our corresponding fish wires through the hole. Now I also recommend having at least one nut on each side and that way we can at least hand tighten this on to hold the hitch up for us. So the bolt or the nuts that come in the kit, there is gonna be a larger and a smaller diameter to correspond with those bolts. So just make sure you grab the right one. And then you're just gonna kind of raise this up. You can pull those wires through and then once you have the stud hanging down you can pull the fish wire all the way down. Just be careful, sometimes it'll kind of snap you or you can just uncoil it, whatever works easier for you. And then we're just gonna take our hardware and get this hand tightened on. Sometimes you'll wanna put a little bit of pressure by using the hitch or your finger to hold that in. And that way you can get this to rotate. And once we have a few threads started, that's gonna hold our hitch up and make it easier to get our other hardware in place. Now, with the hitch being supported by our hand tightened hardware, we can go ahead and take our other nuts and start those as well on the other studs. And that way we'll have all of our hardware in place. And before tightening them down, you're gonna wanna make sure that you actually have this aligned centered up 'cause as you can see, there's a little bit of wiggle room and you wanna make sure that your hitch is actually nice and straight. So find the center point, line that up before tightening it down. And then when you are ready to tighten down I'm gonna be using an 18 millimeter socket for our forward ones here. And then our larger ones are gonna be in 19. So I'm gonna go ahead and tighten them down. I'm not gonna get too crazy here because I am gonna follow up with a torque wrench in just a second. So this is just gonna snug this up for us though. So now with these tightened down, I'm gonna go back with my torque wrench and they're gonna have two different torque settings. The settings are found in the instruction manual. So just make sure you're adjusting accordingly. Now this is gonna be important step. So you're gonna wanna make sure you have a torque wrench to do this. And we actually have 'em available here at etrailer but you can also rent them at an auto parts store generally but this is gonna make sure that we have it torqued down properly to make sure that there's not gonna be too much stress on the threads but also that it's not gonna become loose over time. So now with everything tightened and torqued to spec, we are ready to use our hitch. And that was a look and installation of the etrailer hitch receiver on a 2019 Ford Transit Connect..