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

Video Transcript for Curt Trailer Hitch Receiver Installation - 2020 Mazda CX-9

Shane: Hey everyone, Shane here with etrailer.com. Today I have a 2020 Mazda CX9 and I'm going to walk you through how to install the CURT class 2 trailer hitch receiver. This is what our hitch is going to look like once it's installed. The cross tube is completely hidden behind our bumper facia. One thing we really see is our receiver tube. So it's not really taken away from the look of the vehicle.

The hitch is going to be a steel construction, black powder coat finish.So it's going to stay looking nice for a very long time. There are a few other hitches available for this vehicle. There is a CURT Class 3. We're going to have an inch and a quarter by inch and a quarter receiver tube opening. A reinforced collar gives us a little extra stability there.

The hitch pin hole is going to be half-inch in diameter.It's going to take your standard half-inch hitch pin. Hitch pin and clip does not come with this hitch. However, it can be found here at etrailer.com. We're going to have rolled steel, safety chain loops, you're going to see a very large opening. It can accommodate different size safety chain hooks.

Having the inch and a quarter by inch and a quarter receiver tube opening, it is going to limit you on different hitch mount accessories.Although it is going to be great for your bike racks and cargo carriers, maybe a small ball mount for a trailer. Bike rack, we don't have to try to load our bikes inside the vehicle. We can load them on the bike rack on the outside and make more room for our passengers. Same goes for the cargo carrier. Maybe we want to put a cargo carrier on here and get some of that cargo from inside, make a little bit more room, we can put it on the cargo carrier on the outside.Now I'm going to give you a few measurements and weight capacities to help you when deciding on any of those hitch mount accessories.

From the center of our hitch pin hole to the outer most part of our bumper is going to be about five inches. That number's important for any of your hitch mounted accessories like bike racks or cargo carriers that may fold up. You want to make sure they're not going to make contact.From the ground to the top innermost part of the receiver tube is going to be about 13 and a half inches. Keep that number in mind for any of those hitch mount accessories that may require a little bit more ground clearance. As far as weight capacities go, we're going to have a 350 pound max tongue weight, which is the downward pressure on the inside of the receiver tube.So when you're loading the cargo carrier or loading the bike rack, you want to make sure you're not exceeding that pressure. We're going to have a 3,500 pound gross trailer weight, which is the trailer plus the load included, that's going to be how much the hitch can pull. I always recommend checking the owner's manual of your Mazda. Make sure the vehicle can withstand that amount of weight. You're going to go with the lowest number between the vehicle and the hitch. Now that we've gone over some of the features, let's walk through how to get it installed.Start your installation. You take a support strap, you can hang it anywhere, I like to go from the Springs. It's a little easy. We're going to go underneath our exhausts. Singe that up. Then, what we're going to do is we're going to remove the rubber isolator from the exhaust where our exhaust will hang and allow us to get our hitch in place.We're going to have a hanger here, we'll spray it now with a little bit of lubrication, soapy water, anything to help that slide off there a little bit easier. We'll have one here on our driver's side. We'll have one towards the front on our driver's side, right in front of our muffler. And then we'll have a fourth one on the passenger side in front of our muffler.Next, we're going to take a pry bar and we're going to pry the the end of our rubber isolator off of the guidepost. And we're going to repeat that same thing for the three remaining hangers. Once we get all four of our isolators off we can use our strap to slowly lower our exhaust down. What we don't want to do is we don't want our exhaust to support itself because it will damage it up towards the front of the vehicle.Next, we need to remove this lower trim piece and the brackets that are holding it in place. You can see a little notch there, we're going to take a trim panel tool, flathead screwdriver, pry out the center, and then pull out the base. That'll allow you to move this panel. This will not be reinstalled.It's hard to see with the camera the two bolts that we have to remove. One's going to be up here and the other one's going to be on the other side. I'll use a 10 millimeter socket to remove those. We made a little clip right there, you can reach up on top, push that in and this will pop out. We're going to repeat that same process for the other one. This will not be reinstalled.Next, we need to install our hardware in our frame rail. We're going to take our pull wire spring side, we're going to start with the forward most hole, we're going to feed the spring in and it's going to come out here. You're going to take your spacer block, slide it on, slide it up into the frame. Take your carriage bolt, thread it onto the spring, pull it up into the hole, and then out there. For this one, it's going to be reverse pull. For the reverse pull, we'll take our spring in, we're going to put on our spacer block, we're going to thread on our carriage bolt. We're going to feed the carriage bolt up into the hole first, followed by the spacer block, and then back down. We're going to repeat that same process on the other frame rail.Now, with an extra set of hands we're going to raise our hitch up into position over the top of our exhaust. Take our pull wires, feed them over the corresponding holes, or feed them into the corresponding holes in the hitch. Removed one of our pull wires on each side, install a hex nut on each side that'll hold our hitch up into position while we install our remaining hardware. And with a three quarter inch socket, we're going to come back, we're going to tighten our hardware and then we're going to torque it to the specifications in the instructions.A good idea when raising your exhaust back up into place, spray the inside of your isolator, it will help just slide on the pin a little bit easier. Once you have your exhaust back up into place, you're going to remove your safety strap and you're ready to go.That's going to do it for the look at and installation on the CURT class 2 trailer hitch receiver on a 2020 Mazda CX9..