Curt Hitch ???

[Terry Stibal]

We towed our box trailer (used for our band stuff) to the local Ikea to pick up a bunch of furniture and decking. It was a bit harder to make highway speeds with the trailer and load attached, and the car certainly "knows" that there's a load back there. But, with a trailer loaded close to capacity weight (we totaled up the weights on the various Ikea items), everything was smooth enough to suit me.

Well, one caveat:

DO NOT use the cruise control when towing a trailer. While I could (without using the paddle shifting system) make it over what passes for hills down here (mostly freeway overpasses), if I tried to do it with the cruise control engaged, the system would downshift three gears when presented with an overpass slope, and then rev up to the redline in Third, and almost as high in Fourth, before settling into Fifth on the down side of the overpass.

Needless to say, we won't be doing that any longer...

Our primary reason for getting a hitch on this little car is for camping with the nifty trailer sold by the guy up in rural Missouri, but a close second is for mounting a spare tire for trips out of the metro area here. Having a second vehicle capable of towing the band trailer is sort of icing on the cake.

[donnyonee]

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[mnfitz]

I just installed one of these on my 2009 cab. I backed up on some ramps for a little more room. I can recommend actually having the recommended tools on-hand, as there ends up being a reason for them!
I found I had to enlarge the holes more than the instructions called for to be able to get the carriage bolt heads in. I was apprehensive about the fishwire techniques in the instructions, but found it VERY easy.

Overview- this hitch has three bolts/side. The back bolts are already there.... need to be removed and reinstalled (12 point socket MUST be used!). One of the middle holes is there, but the other needs to be drilled and both enlarged sufficiently to wiggle in carriage bolts and backing plates. The front holes are already there. Once the holes are prepared, you use the fish wires supplied to pull carriage bolts from the enlarged middle holes to the front holes (easier than it sounds). Then you fish-wire carriage bolts into the middle holes.... and you're ready to hang the hitch!


Haven't wired it up yet, though.

Mike

[jmartinsmart]

Originally Posted by mnfitz

I just installed one of these on my 2009 cab. I backed up on some ramps for a little more room. I can recommend actually having the recommended tools on-hand, as there ends up being a reason for them!
I found I had to enlarge the holes more than the instructions called for to be able to get the carriage bolt heads in. I was apprehensive about the fishwire techniques in the instructions, but found it VERY easy.

Overview- this hitch has three bolts/side. The back bolts are already there.... need to be removed and reinstalled (12 point socket MUST be used!). One of the middle holes is there, but the other needs to be drilled and both enlarged sufficiently to wiggle in carriage bolts and backing plates. The front holes are already there. Once the holes are prepared, you use the fish wires supplied to pull carriage bolts from the enlarged middle holes to the front holes (easier than it sounds). Then you fish-wire carriage bolts into the middle holes.... and you're ready to hang the hitch!


Haven't wired it up yet, though.

Mike

I too, just installed one of these hitches on my 2008. Also backing up onto a pair of ramps. I found that the amount the holes needed to be enlarged was substantially more than the diagram suggests. It was easy enough to get the backing plates through the holes, but I don't know what they were thinking - in that there was no way the carriage bolts were going to fit through the same holes. After some additional enlarging (which I chose to do with a hacksaw blade), I was able to get the bolts through too. The fishwire was awkward but obviously a requirement.

So far I love the hitch. In truth, I am using it to support some custom brackets that I had made which bolt into the tow hook attachement locations. These brackets hold two Thule bike racks. I was hoping the tow bolts would support the bike racks by itself, but after attaching it and giving it the "bounce test" the amount of flex in the tow hook attachements did not give me a good enough feeling to load $1000 worth of beach cruisers on it.

Just my $.02,

Jim

[mnfitz]

Jim, do you have pictures of your Thule setup? I'm thinking about using the tow bolt holes to stabilize a hitch mounted bike rack and would like to see what you've done.
Thanks,
Mike