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

Video Transcript for etrailer Class III Trailer Hitch Installation - 2018 Ford Taurus

Hey guys, it's Jake here with etrailer. Today we have a 2018 Ford Taurus and we're gonna be taking a look at and I'm gonna show you how to install the etrailer class III two inch hitch receiver. Adding a hitch receiver to the back of your Ford Taurus is gonna give you a couple different options to haul accessories. You can use it for a bike rack, which is the most common use for it. You can use it for a cargo carrier, although the hitch receiver is kind of low to be able to use it with a cargo carrier, you might be able to get away with a high low adapter to get it up there a little bit higher. Then the lastly, you can use it to tow lighter trailers.

The hitch is gonna have a pretty impressive tow rating, but you will want to make sure that you check with your vehicle's owner's manual if you decide to tow a trailer with your Taurus. The other thing is, is if you decide to use it for a trailer or you're wanting to use it, you want to use four pole wiring to be able to connect to the trailer. This hitch will have a two inch by two inch hitch receiver tube opening, which is gonna give you a lot of different options for accessories. You'll also notice the matte black paint job that is a triple carbide black powder coat finish, which is very, very tough and will last for the years to come. You'll have a standard 5/8 inch hitch pin hole.

The hitch pin and clip do not come included, but you'll definitely want some sort of hitch pin, whether it's a locking or non locking hitch pin to keep those accessories safe. The safety chain loops are a nice large hoop cell safety chain loop. It fits different safety chain clevises of many different types. You definitely will want to utilize those if you plan on towing a trailer. Now as far as the weight capacities go for this hitch, you're gonna have a max tongue weight capacity of 400 pounds.

That's the downward pressure on the inside of the receiver tube and a max gross trailer weight rating of 4,000 pounds. Again, you will want to check with the Ford Taurus owner's manual to see what the capacities that it's rated for. Compare that to the hitch and go with the lower number between the two of 'em. Now some measurements for you so you know how it's gonna fit on your Taurus. From the center of the hitch pin hole to the outermost part of our bumper is about six and a half inches.

That measurement is important for any accessory that folds up to the back of your vehicle or any accessory that has a component that's close to the shank of the accessory. We've got a lot of videos on our website for cargo carriers or bike racks. They're gonna give you a measurement from the center of the hitch pin hole in the accessory to the closest part of the accessory when folded up or not one folded up so that you know whether or not it's gonna fit your Taurus in this hitch before you even have to make a purchase. From the ground to the top inside of a receiver tube, it's about 12 and a quarter inches. That is low enough to where you probably wanna look for accessories with a raised shank, definitely with a bike rack you will want to get one that has a raised shank so that the bikes sit a little higher off the ground. Again with a cargo carrier, it just kind of depends on what you have loaded on it. If you've got a lot of stuff loaded on it and your car's sagging down, it's gonna be even lower yet on the back end. So just be careful, maybe look for any accessory that has a raised shank no matter what you're looking for. Now as far as the installation goes, this install's not actually too bad. Ours was a little bit more difficult because our vehicle has been hit on the rear end so things weren't quite straight underneath there. You will have to drill out two holes to widen them to be able to fit some hardware in place. I'd say probably the hardest part for you will be is to lay under there and actually have access to be able to work under there. So if you have a set of wheel ramps or a friend of yours has a set of wheel ramps, back the car onto those wheel ramps, get it up in the air so you have more room to work. With that being said, let's go ahead and show you how we did it. To begin our installation, we're gonna need to lower our exhaust because we're gonna have to get access to the bottom of our frame rails up here. What I'm gonna do is just take some silicone, we're gonna spray it on this exhaust hanger right here to help us to pry it off. You do not want to use penetrating oil because it can start to deteriorate this rubber. So we'll have one on the driver's side and one on the passenger side. And we're gonna have a third one right in the middle where they come together. Now we're gonna take a pry tool and come up here and if you push on the side of the exhaust and pry outward, you should be able to pop it right off. We'll do the same thing for our front. Here we go. You wanna make sure you have a strap here to be able to hold the exhaust 'cause you don't wanna put all that strain on the one exhaust hanger that we have left up there. Now on our driver's side we'll have two 10 millimeter bolts we'll need to remove. Now we'll take an 18 millimeter socket on the passenger side to get these bolts removed. Now the next thing that you'll have to do is remove our two push pin fasteners. They're typically here, our vehicle's missing them 'cause there's been some damage to the vehicle, but they're right here and right here. We'll have to take those out. You just wanna flip this down because our hitch is gonna have to go up into place and then we're have to install some hardware there in a little bit. But we'll take our fish wire. We need to run a bolt through here so we'll have to go reverse fish wire, this one, you just want to stick the bolt up through. If you put it on your fish wire, take this, slide our spacer block up in there and then slide the bolt down. Now we're gonna have to reuse this fish wire 'cause they only give you two in the kit and we'll take it over to the driver's side. Now we'll take our fish wire on the driver's side, go up through spring side first. Go up through this smaller hole here, come out of the larger hole. We're gonna take that same spacer block, put it on and then our carriage bolt. Our driver's side's gonna get two carriage bolts and our passenger side is gonna get one carriage bolt and one hex bolt. Slide that over and pull it down. This one we can leave the fish wire on because we've got another fish wire for this bolt here. Now we'll do the same thing that we did for the passenger side. Reverse fish wire this, throw the bolt up in there first, then our spacer block. Wiggle around until it falls into place. Now I'll need to enlarge this hole until our hardware fits that's supposed to go in here. I found that a 15/30 seconds drill bit works just fine. Now before we get our hitch put up into place, we're gonna take the exhaust hangers and put 'em on our new exhaust hangers 'cause we're not gonna be reusing the old factory ones because obviously they're gonna be in the way 'cause they we inchesre mounted on the bottom of our frame rail. So I just put a little bit more silicone on there and they slide right on. Now with an extra set of hands we can get our hitch lifted up into place. If you've got those fish wires, you can thread those down through there and we'll take our hitch and you wanna make sure that you're over top of these plastic pieces here in the center. There we go. Now you want to take the largest of the three hex bolts that come through your kit and you want it threaded up into the weld nut in our frame. We just kind of had to fight with ours a little bit because our vehicle has very clearly been rear ended at some point so it was kind of a little bit wonky. So, but we got it straightened out and we put that bolt into place. And once you get all your hardware installed on the frame rails, so all four of 'em, we'll come back with a torque wrench and get 'em torqued down to the specifications in the instructions. And once we get our hitch all secured, you'll want to take a 15/30 seconds drill bit and drill out this hole so that we can get our hardware installed in this top bracket. Now underneath where we just drilled those two holes, we're gonna take our handle nut, put it on top, and then we'll take another conical tooth washer and the smaller hex bolts that come in your kit and thread it up through that handle nut. And we'll just tighten these up. And we'll come back with a torque wrench and torque these down. Now we just need to take our bumper supports and we'll resecure them using the hole that they give you in the bottom of the hitch. Since ours we inchesre missing, we just found some replacements. Now we can lift their exhaust back up into place. Now once you get everything back in place, that's gonna do it for installation. Hopefully this video helped you decide whether or not the etrailer trailer hitch receiver is gonna be right for you and your 2018 Ford Taurus.