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Full transcript: www.etrailer.c...
Ryan: Hey everybody. Ryan here at etrailer.com. Today, on our 2017 Kia Niro, we're going to be taking a look at and showing you how to install the CURT class two, inch and a quarter trailer hitch receiver. This hitch is not only going to allow us to use hitch mounted accessories like bike racks, cargo carriers, or even some really light duty towing, but it's also going to look good because it's mostly hidden. All you're going to see is the receiver tube opening. The rest of the hitch is actually hidden up underneath the car.
It's going to make you happy that now you can carry some extra cargo and not clutter up the inside of your car, all while being able to utilize your fuel efficient vehicle, which is nice. That way you can carry your own bikes to the trails and not have to hitch a ride with a friend anymore.Now, once you get your hands on this hitch, you can feel that it's really sturdy and built the last. Now, in my opinion, this is going to work best for bike racks. But if you plan on doing any light duty towing, I would recommend some trailer wiring. That way you can illuminate your trailers lights.
Now, what separates this hitch from some of the others is its nice reinforced collar. In my opinion, it just gives it an overall more finished look. If you want to take it a step further to enhance your appearance, you can take up any etrailer.com hitch cover. That's a little rubber plug that'll fit inside and not only help keep the inside of your receiver tube clean, but it also give it a more finished look. Now, many of our customers uses hitch to carry bikes.
And many of them wonder how many they can actually carry.Well, I'll give you a few weight capacities now that'll help you figure that out. As far as the maximum tongue weight rating goes, that's 350 pounds. That's the amount of weight pushing down on our hitch. So that should be more than enough weight capacity to handle two or three bikes. And everyone's going to be a little bit different depending on how heavy your bikes and bike rack weigh.
Now, for the maximum gross trailer weight rating, that's going to be 3,500 pounds, or the amount of weight pulling on our hitch. So the weight of your trailer, plus anything you might have on it. Now, it is always a good idea to check with your Kia's owner's manual to make sure your vehicle can pull that much weight. Now, the pinhole opening is a half inch, and it does not come included with the pin and clip.If you need one, you can find it on etrailer.com. And it does have loop style safety chain openings, which give us more than enough room to use just about any size hooks that we might have. Now if you're looking for a bike rack that would work good with this hitch, I would recommend the Thule Helium Pro. They're really clean and extremely lightweight. Now I'm going to give you a couple of measurements. These are going to help you determine which hitch-mounted accessories to use. From the ground to the top inside edge of the receiver tube opening, it's about 11 and a half inches. You're going to use that measurement to help you figure out if you need to get a ball Mount with either a drop or rise. From the center of the hitch pin hole to the edge of our rear bumper, that's about six and a half inches.You're going to use that measurement to figure out if any folding accessories you might have can be stored in the upright position without hitting our back bumper. Well, some of our customers said they had a couple of minor issues during their installation process, but I'll go ahead and show you how to overcome those. Let's go ahead and do it together now. To begin our installation, we're first going to have to remove this metal exhaust carving. It's going to be held in place with four bolts. We're going to have two bolts on each side of it, just like that. We're going to take them out using a 12 millimeter socket. Now we're going to have to lower our exhaust. But before we do that, what I did was I took a strap and ran it from one side to the other. That way, when we do remove our rubber exhaust hangers, the exhaust won't come flying down. We can have a little more control on how fast we let it down.The three rubber exhaust hangers that we're going to have to remove will be here, here, and then there'll be one in the center right there. To remove them, what I do is spray them down with some lubricant, just to make it a little easier. And then you can take a pry bar or even a large screwdriver, and just pry it off of the hanger. So I'm going to use that same technique inaudible 00:04:53. on the driver's side, we're going to have to remove th