Today on our 2012 volkswagen tiguan we’re gonna take a look at and show you how to install the curt custom fit class 3 trailer hitch receiver this is going to offer the 2 inch by 2 inch opening its part number is c18150 weld nut so it’s really easy to do you just trim out this little piece of the panel right here that’s kind of pre marked for trimming this is the class 3 so we’ve got a 2 inch by 2 inch opening it’s going to offer a 5/8 diameter pinhole gonna work out really well with all the anti-rattle bolts hitch pin locks whatever accessory you’d really want to put on here I think you’re gonna have the room for it the hitch and mobilizer would have enough room through here for that to go around rolled steel style rolled stock style safety chain connection points plenty of room there for even some of the bigger chains to hook up to if you plan on towing this is also gonna work out really well with our hitch bike racks cargo carriers things like that it’s not a ton of space in the Tiguan once you start getting four or five people in it so it’ll be nice to be able to add a cargo carrier to get some gear out of there and free up some space or a bike rack so we can transport the bikes where we want to go now when it comes to towing we’ve got a 350 pound tongue weight rating that’s going to be the maximum downward force we can put here at the receiver tube opening we’re gonna have a 3,500 pound gross trailer weight rating it’s going to be the total of our trailer and then anything that we load up on it we of course also want to check the owner’s manual the Tiguan make sure it’s up to those levels if not we’ll go off of whatever numbers are the lowest whether it’s the vehicles tow rating or the hitches itself I like the look of it it’s nice and clean I’ve got the collar around here to give us some reinforcement on the end and overall it’s just a really nice useful addition we can throw on without changing the cosmetics of the vehicle all that much now a couple of measurements are going to be helpful in selecting your ball mount bike rack or even hitch cargo carrier will be from the ground to the inside top edge of the receiver tube opening we’re looking at about 15 and 3/4 of an inch then from the center of our hitch pinhole to the outermost edge of our bumper it’s going to be about three now to begin our installation we need to trim out six and a half inches of the side here right inside of this line it’s almost pre-cut we’ll
just use a razor knife we’ll get this trimmed out we’re gonna go from the passenger side edge over toward the driver’s side use a straight edge to mark that off and this is going to be the section that we want to get rid of I’m just gonna use a razor knife you can also use like a rotary tool or something if you wanted to go around there it’s going to score it a few times kind of around the outside we should be able to work it off there pretty easy nice clean cut out holder now what we’re gonna do we can see here we’ve got one two three and four mounting locations you use a little bit of spray lubricant and that’s inside there there’s gonna be a couple weld nuts and each are one weld nut in each of those locations it’s going to use a nylon tube brush and get up in those and clean them out make sure they’re free of any dirt and debris all right once those are cleaned out let’s get our hitch raised up into position as we slide our hitch up into position we want to get this curved lip kind of over our fascia first by tipping up we can kind of rotate it up we’ll use our supplied hardware place on one of the conical tooth washers now those teeth we want facing up towards our hitch I like to use an extension with the socket on it to get up in there it’s a little tough we’ll just slide that right up through here do our hole locations and we just get our thread started do the same thing for our other three locations now we can snug those down and then torque them to the specifications we’ll find in our instruction with all of our fasteners torque to specifications that is going to complete today’s installation of the curt custom fit class three trailer hitch receiver part number c13105 olks wagon Tigua
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