hitch

If you remember the first Hitching post, I mentioned how I’ve been looking for a trailer hitch for our Honda CR-V. Well, I got one.

I found one for about $80, which, with shipping was still under $100, so score one for shopping around via the interwebs. After acquiring a hitch, I had to deal with installation. Now, the sites I had looked at said it should take maybe 20 or 30 minutes, and some had testimonials saying as much. No drilling needed! You just need a file, and a wrench!

To begin with, there were two parts missing in my kit. There were supposed to be bolt leaders, which help put the bolts into place on the frame of the vehicle. I ended up making my own with some nylon cord and masking tape. It worked, but just barely. I ended up doing a lot of filing, and also ended up using my drill. A lot. I think spent more than 20 minutes just filing and drilling! As in all the diagrams I saw, no one ever mentioned the muffler, which I had to work around. So in total, I estimated that it took me over an hour to install the hitch. (Dana says it was closer to two hours, but we won’t argue that here.)

The large majority of the time was spent just trying to “modify” the holes of the frame to fit the bolts and plates. Once that was done, it was just a matter of getting the bolts into place. This was super-tricky, probably because I was missing the bolt leaders and had to make my own. Once the bolts were in place, it was simple as hell to just put the hitch on and tighten the bolts. So it definitely could have taken just 20 minutes if the bolts and plates had fit out of the box without needing to widen the holes.

So now I can add “putting on a trailer hitch” to the list of things I’ve done, and could probably do again.

I’ve been looking for a trailer hitch for our Honda CR-V. I found a local shop that will install one for about $170, which sounds like a lot to a cheapskate like me, so I looked online…

I’ve found hitches ranging from $80 to $150. I’m not real concerned about towing weight, as we don’t plan on pulling anything, we just want to attach a 4-bike rack to haul the bikes around. (I believe we need to look at “tongue weight” which is what it can hold vertically, which should be the bikes plus the bike rack combined.)

All of the sites I’ve looked at ship the hitch to you with instructions, and say you can install it in well under an hour without drilling anything. A few have testimonials from people saying how easy it is, but I sort of feel lost… At least when researching technical stuff (computers, electronics, etc.) I have a comfort zone, but with this, I just feel like there’s a lot I don’t know. Maybe I’m over thinking it.

I’ll just have to do a bunch more research, and see if I can find people to answer some questions. The last thing I want to see is 4 bikes falling off the back of our vehicle while going 65 on the freeway.