Trailer Hitch Installation - 2017 Ford F-150 - Curt

How to Install a Trailer Hitch on a 2017 Ford F-150

Today on our 2017 Ford F-150, we're going to be taking a look at and also showing you how to install the CURT custom-fit class 4 trailer hitch receiver. This offers a 2 inch x 2 inch receiver tube opening. Its part number is C14016. Here's what our hitch is going to look like installed. You're going to see most of the cross tube as it comes around, meets here in the middle at our receiver tube opening. Now, this is a class 4 hitch, so while it still has the 2 inch x 2 inch receiver tube opening, this is going to be a really nice, strong hitch that'll take care of most of those hauling needs you might have. You've got safety chain connection points that are going to come up here, a nice plate style.

Large opening, so even if you're using the bigger clevis hooks you shouldn't have any issue getting those connected. You'll see our 5/8 diameter pin hole. That's going to be what we secure our ball mount with or any accessory we might put in the back of our hitch. There's plenty of room around there so even if you decide on an anti-rattle bolt or a locking hitch pin, you shouldn't have any interference to worry about. Now, when it comes to weight ratings, we've got a 1000 lb towing weight capacity, so that's the maximum downward force we can put here at the receiver tube opening. We have a 10,000 lb gross trailer weight rating, so that'd be the total weight of your trailer and anything you we're to load up on it.

It is also rated for use with weight distribution. If you do use weight distribution, the tongue weight's going to go up to 1200 lb and the gross trailer weight rating goes up to 12,000 lb. Of course, we need to check the owner's manual on the F-150. We want to see what it's rated for, and we'll use whichever of those numbers are the lowest. A few measurements that will be helpful for selecting your ball mount, bike rack, or hitch cargo carrier will be from the ground to the inside top edge of the receiver tube opening. We've got about 16 3/4 in.

Then from the center of our hitch pin hole to the outermost edge of our bumper is about 4 3/4 in. Now we're going to begin our installation with our spare tire removed. That's going to give you the room you need to get in to your attachment point. Now, on each side of the truck we've got two of those. One's going to be located right here at the rear. This is pretty much the very back side of the frame rail.

You're going to see a little indentation here with a hole. Then we move forward from there. We've got a set of double holes right here. We're going to go past this slightly larger hole to the second set of double holes that we've got right here. We're going to be using the upper of those two. Now, in the recessed area that we have here, we need to get a U-shaped spacer put over that. That's going to take up the gap. To do that, you're going to use a piece of tape. It just needs to be held in place temporarily until we get our bolt and our hitch up here. Just going to tape that in, and of course we want to cut out an area for our bolt to pass through. Just like that. Now, on our passenger side there is a ground wire that comes down, and if it's present on your vehicle, we'll need to remove that. We're going to return the fastener to our customer and we'll reattach it later. It's going to require the use of a 10 mm socket. There's a bent tab there. You're also going to flatten that out. That'll just help us when we reattach it. Now, if we come forward from that attachment point, we're going to have the rear leaf spring connection point. We'll go to the double set of holes just in front of that. We're going to use the lower hole. Now, to get our hardware in place we'll use our pull wire. We're going to go through our hole and we can come right out of the rear of the frame for our rear attachment point, like that, slide on our square hold spacer block, and we'll thread on one of our carriage bolts. I like to thread these on quite a bit because they can be sometimes difficult to pull through. Now, to get this in place we'll feed our spacer block in separately from our bolt. You can use your finger on the back side to give a little bit of pressure. You want to pull that out and then let it rest in the frame. We'll pull that through our hitch once it's in place, and that'll hold it up. Now we'll do the same thing for our forward attachment point here. Now we'll repeat that exact same process for our passenger side. Now with the help of an extra set of hands, we'll get our hitch lifted up into position, and we're going to pull these rear fish wires through first. You just feed them into the side plate of the hitch, we'll bring it up, and pull those through. Now we can remove our pull wires and we'll want to add on one of our flange nuts on each of our bolts to hold our hitch in position. These will just be loosely installed for now. Now, for the forward attachment point, there's going to be a gap, so we need to put the spacer block on the outside of our frame rail as well. Then just like that, and then we'll pull that through. Now let's repeat that process over on the passenger side. Now we're ready to get our hitch snugged down. As we do this, we want to ensure that the hole that our ground wire was attached to is visible inside of this hole. Then we'll snug all of our fasteners down. Now we'll check our instructions. We want to torque each of our nuts down to the appropriate specifications. Now we'll use the M8 screw to reattach the ground here. This is going to require a 13 mm socket. It's got a little bit bigger head than what the first one did. That will complete our installation of the CURT custom fit class 4 trailer hitch receiver, part number C14016 on our 2017 Ford F-150.