L-006: Trailer Hitch Install - My story and tips
07-11-2010, 01:55 AM
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L-006: Trailer Hitch Install - My story and tips
Hi all,
I did some shopping and used info from this site, and chose the Valley hitch for my 2009 MDX. I bought from Amazon, which offered free shipping and the Valley hitch 82111 for $132.
I also bought the Draw Tite wiring kit 118424 from etrailer. This is the flat 4-connector type.
The MDX is really well-suited for towing, with a high weight limit for its class, the mounting holes pre-drilled and nutted, a tranny cooler already in place, and a trailer wiring socket with fuses already in the rear left fuse panel. The problem of not fitting a full-sized spare is mostly irrelevant to a lot of us, because our cars came with doughnut spares anyway. The only time I would have a problem is when I have a flat, and my flat tire won't fit under the car...but it will, since (mentioned before) it is punctured and flat, and thus deflated, takes up less space than the doughnut.
U-haul here in the Bay Area, CA, quoted $125 to install it for me. I would have paid, but it would take me 15 minutes to drive there to drop it off, times two because I need a ride home from a second person, then 15 to pick it up. Add in 15 minutes of paperwork and payment, and my family would be spending 1:15 of time AND the $125. Since people online said it took them 1-2 hours, I figured it would be simpler to do it myself, and only a few minutes more. Well it took me 1:50h including setup and cleanup, and I did it while also 'watching' my 3 and 5 year olds, and you can imagine how much help they were!
Thoughts:
- Valley hitch was shipped to me (and another poster) with no box. UPS labels and mounting hardware were affixed to the hitch. It arrived chipped of some paint, which doesn't matter to me for something that goes under my vehicle and gets rough treatment anyway. It also arrived without the mounting hardware. That did matter. If it were in a box, that wouldn't have happened. I called Valley (even though I bought from Amazon) and they shipped me out new mounting hardware free of charge. Nice, and simpler for everyone than returning the whole thing.
- I parked the car up on drive-up ramps. The extra 6 inches of the ramps was plenty to get me ample work space. Of course, you need to remove the spare tire, too.
- A good tip I read and used was to only remove one side muffler and heat shield. This was all anyone will need. Don't take off two, there is no benefit.
- The heat shield is easiest to remove if you bend it up first. When you put it back, you can just bend it back down.
- Wear gloves for the muffler and heat shield work, or you will cut your fingers a lot. I wore gloves, but cut my knee!
- As mentioned a lot, use a lubricant on the rubber muffler straps to get them off. I worked in some WD-40, and could not believe how easily they came off after all the trouble I read about. Remember there are two rubber straps on each muffler.
- I believe the socket I used to install the hitch was a 20mm socket. That's pretty big. Make sure you have one to use with your torque wrench. You'll also need a 4" to 8" extension to access some of the aft bolts.
- For installing the hitch, I found it totally achievable by myself, but if you don't consider yourself strong, get someone to help you. If you can lift the hitch over your head easily (away from the car!), you won't need any help under the car.
- I first raised the side of the hitch on the car side where I had not removed the muffler. To line up the hitch, I used the screwdriver trick with a modification. Once you get the first side close to the holes, insert a screwdriver in the hitch hole, and then the car hole, and use the screwdriver to align it (doing this alone, I worried that one side would fall on me while I pushed up the other). So before I went under the car, I had attached 16" of packing tape to the handle of the screwdriver. Then, as soon as I had it in the aligned holes, I taped the handle to the hitch near the side plate. This guaranteed that the screwdriver would not fall out, and that I would not get a mouthful of hitch.
- Once the first side was in place, I worked the second side with my knee, my arms, and a rubber mallet. Five minutes of patient effort got it lined up.
- I had no trouble with the bolts. It did take some steady work to get them all tightened up to 116ft-lb, but it was just a matter of elbow grease.
- My final install does touch the plastic bumper trim where the hitch receiver is, just barely making contact, and maybe bending it up 1/4".
- The electrical wiring took me an additional 12 minutes at a later date. It was very easy. Especially after I watched the how-to video on the etrailer site. The only tool: a 10mm socket. I like the 118424 wiring kit because it sits out of sight, clean, in the car near the jack. This is good for me since I don't intend to use it much. I'll mostly use the hitch for bike racks. But if I need to, I can spool out the flat-4 plug and haul a trailer (I own a few, but usually use my pickup truck).
So, if I ignore the hours (and hours) I spent doing research on the web, the total cost was about $170 and the total time was 2 hours 2 minutes. Thanks to everyone online that posted their help.
I did some shopping and used info from this site, and chose the Valley hitch for my 2009 MDX. I bought from Amazon, which offered free shipping and the Valley hitch 82111 for $132.
I also bought the Draw Tite wiring kit 118424 from etrailer. This is the flat 4-connector type.
The MDX is really well-suited for towing, with a high weight limit for its class, the mounting holes pre-drilled and nutted, a tranny cooler already in place, and a trailer wiring socket with fuses already in the rear left fuse panel. The problem of not fitting a full-sized spare is mostly irrelevant to a lot of us, because our cars came with doughnut spares anyway. The only time I would have a problem is when I have a flat, and my flat tire won't fit under the car...but it will, since (mentioned before) it is punctured and flat, and thus deflated, takes up less space than the doughnut.
U-haul here in the Bay Area, CA, quoted $125 to install it for me. I would have paid, but it would take me 15 minutes to drive there to drop it off, times two because I need a ride home from a second person, then 15 to pick it up. Add in 15 minutes of paperwork and payment, and my family would be spending 1:15 of time AND the $125. Since people online said it took them 1-2 hours, I figured it would be simpler to do it myself, and only a few minutes more. Well it took me 1:50h including setup and cleanup, and I did it while also 'watching' my 3 and 5 year olds, and you can imagine how much help they were!
Thoughts:
- Valley hitch was shipped to me (and another poster) with no box. UPS labels and mounting hardware were affixed to the hitch. It arrived chipped of some paint, which doesn't matter to me for something that goes under my vehicle and gets rough treatment anyway. It also arrived without the mounting hardware. That did matter. If it were in a box, that wouldn't have happened. I called Valley (even though I bought from Amazon) and they shipped me out new mounting hardware free of charge. Nice, and simpler for everyone than returning the whole thing.
- I parked the car up on drive-up ramps. The extra 6 inches of the ramps was plenty to get me ample work space. Of course, you need to remove the spare tire, too.
- A good tip I read and used was to only remove one side muffler and heat shield. This was all anyone will need. Don't take off two, there is no benefit.
- The heat shield is easiest to remove if you bend it up first. When you put it back, you can just bend it back down.
- Wear gloves for the muffler and heat shield work, or you will cut your fingers a lot. I wore gloves, but cut my knee!
- As mentioned a lot, use a lubricant on the rubber muffler straps to get them off. I worked in some WD-40, and could not believe how easily they came off after all the trouble I read about. Remember there are two rubber straps on each muffler.
- I believe the socket I used to install the hitch was a 20mm socket. That's pretty big. Make sure you have one to use with your torque wrench. You'll also need a 4" to 8" extension to access some of the aft bolts.
- For installing the hitch, I found it totally achievable by myself, but if you don't consider yourself strong, get someone to help you. If you can lift the hitch over your head easily (away from the car!), you won't need any help under the car.
- I first raised the side of the hitch on the car side where I had not removed the muffler. To line up the hitch, I used the screwdriver trick with a modification. Once you get the first side close to the holes, insert a screwdriver in the hitch hole, and then the car hole, and use the screwdriver to align it (doing this alone, I worried that one side would fall on me while I pushed up the other). So before I went under the car, I had attached 16" of packing tape to the handle of the screwdriver. Then, as soon as I had it in the aligned holes, I taped the handle to the hitch near the side plate. This guaranteed that the screwdriver would not fall out, and that I would not get a mouthful of hitch.
- Once the first side was in place, I worked the second side with my knee, my arms, and a rubber mallet. Five minutes of patient effort got it lined up.
- I had no trouble with the bolts. It did take some steady work to get them all tightened up to 116ft-lb, but it was just a matter of elbow grease.
- My final install does touch the plastic bumper trim where the hitch receiver is, just barely making contact, and maybe bending it up 1/4".
- The electrical wiring took me an additional 12 minutes at a later date. It was very easy. Especially after I watched the how-to video on the etrailer site. The only tool: a 10mm socket. I like the 118424 wiring kit because it sits out of sight, clean, in the car near the jack. This is good for me since I don't intend to use it much. I'll mostly use the hitch for bike racks. But if I need to, I can spool out the flat-4 plug and haul a trailer (I own a few, but usually use my pickup truck).
So, if I ignore the hours (and hours) I spent doing research on the web, the total cost was about $170 and the total time was 2 hours 2 minutes. Thanks to everyone online that posted their help.
09-04-2010, 10:39 PM
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The Valley hitch I just installed on my 2010 fits fine with the factory garnish. It just touches. I had to drop both sides of the exhaust and remove both heat sheilds. I tried just removing one, but couldn't access the bottom rear bolt sufficiently to tighten. Dropping the exhaust takes 30 seconds if you hit the rubber mounts with WD40 first. Also, once I got the hitch positioned in place, I put a floor jack under the receiver to hold in place, then to raise slightly as I aligned the holes for the mounting bolts. Takes a little patience but I did it by myself with the vehicle on the ground in my garage.
04-06-2014, 11:09 AM
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Rear fuse panel schematic
Does anyone have a schematic/diagram for 2009 MDX rear fuse panel? specifically I bought a sweet harness to plug into the rear fuse panel and goes to a 4 pole trailer plug from etrailer:
http://www.etrailer.com/Custom-Fit-V...eid=2009106634
This installs easily. I also bought a 4pole to 5 pole adapter because I have hydraulic brakes with solenoid bypass from reverse signal. I am looking for schematic of rear fuse box because I am wondering if the reverse signal runs through the fuse box any where and I can tap off that instead of removing the light etc.
Thank you for any help!
http://www.etrailer.com/Custom-Fit-V...eid=2009106634
This installs easily. I also bought a 4pole to 5 pole adapter because I have hydraulic brakes with solenoid bypass from reverse signal. I am looking for schematic of rear fuse box because I am wondering if the reverse signal runs through the fuse box any where and I can tap off that instead of removing the light etc.
Thank you for any help!
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