etrailer | Setting up the Curt Trailer Hitch Receiver on a 2014 BMW X3

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Shane: Hi, I'm Shane with etrailer.com. Today, I'm going to walk through how to install the CURT class three trailer hitch receiver on your 2014 BMW X3. Adding hitch like this is going to give you many options. Maybe you want to put a cargo carrier on it so you can get some items out from inside the vehicle to make more room for your passengers. Maybe you want to carry a bike rack. This hitch should allow you to carry up to four bike racks, going to make a lot easier because you're not going to have to load the bikes inside the car or on a roof rack.

Now you want to pull a small trailer or a camper. This hitch is going to allow you to do all that. Being a two inch by two inch receiver tube opening and a class three hitch is going to give you many options for different hitch accessories. You can find all the accessories here at etrailer.com.So I mentioned this is going to be a class three hitch, two inch by two inch receiver tube opening. Reinforced collar give us a little extra stability there.

Hitch pin hole is going to be five eighths inch in diameter. It's going to take a standard five eighths hitch pin. Hitch pin and clip does not come with this hitch. However, you can find them here at etrailer.com. We're going to have a rolled steel style safety chain loops.

Going to accommodate different size safety chain hooks.And as you'll notice, the only thing we can see here is our receiver tube. The cross tube is completely hidden behind our bumper fascia. So it's going to maintain a very nice clean look on the back of the BMW. This hitch is going to be a steel construction, black powder coat finish. It's going to be very durable.

Now I'm going to give you a few measurements and weight capacities to help you with any of those hitch mounted accessory you may need. From the center of our hitch pin hole to the outermost far of our bumper is going to be about four inches. That number is important for any of your hitch mounted accessories, like your bike racks and cargo carriers that may fold up against the bumper. You want to make sure they're not going to make contact. From the ground to the top innermost part of the receiver tube is going to be about 13 inches.Keep that number in mind for any of those hitch mount accessories that may require a little bit more ground clearance. As far as our weight capacities go, we're going to have a 350 pound max tongue weight, which is a downward pressure on the inside of the receiver tube. So when you're loading that cargo carrier or the bike rack, you want to make sure you're not exceeding that downward pressure. We're going to have a 3,500 pound gross trailer weight. That's how much the hitch can pull. That's going to be the trailer plus the load included. You can use weight distribution with this hitch. Tongue weight's going to go up to 400 pounds. Trailer weight's going to go up to 4,000 pounds. I always recommend checking the owner's manual of the BMW. Make sure the vehicle can withstand that amount of weight. You're going to go with the lowest number between the vehicle and the hitch.Now that we've gone over some of the features, let's walk through how to get it installed. Start our installation, we need to remove our taillights. You're going to have a plastic piece right in here. We're going to pop that off. We need to remove those two nuts. We'll use a 10 millimeter socket. We're going to pull our light out, straight back, and then unplug it. You're going to push on that tab and pull. Then we're going to take an eight millimeter socket. We're going to remove that bolt. In each wheel well, we need to remove the plastic rivets. We're going to have to drill a hole right through the center. Your directions are going to tell you to remove all seven. I don't think it's necessary. If you feel more comfortable doing that, you can do that. We just need to actually remove this one, this one, this one, and this one. We're going to have a bolt here, or a bolt here and bolt here, holding our fascia or our fascia on to the back of the vehicle. Small drill bit, we're going to drill right in the center.If you decide you want to remove all of them, your kit is going to come with replaceable rivets to replace all of them. Once you get the centers out, take a trim panel tool. Screwdriver would probably work, and you're going to pop them out like that. We're going to take our eight millimeter socket. Right down here in the bottom corner you're going to have a bolt. Remove that. Kind of pull this out a little bit. Get your liner out. You can just pull this trim piece off. What you got to watch is where thes