etrailer | Installing the EcoHitch Hidden Trailer Hitch Receiver on your 2019 Volkswagen Golf

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Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-install-e...
Hi there Volkswagen owners, today in our 2019 Volkswagen Golf R we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to install EcoHitch's Class III 2" Trailer Hitch Receiver. And this is what our hitch looks like when it's installed. The majority of the hitch is gonna be completely hidden behind the bumper, so you're just gonna see the receiver here at the back. The EcoHitches are made of recycled metal, so if you're looking to reduce your carbon footprint, this can be one of the best options for that. It does have a textured black powder coat finish on it, so it does blend in with the vehicle. With this particular one, since it's glossy down here, it does stand out a little bit, but it does kind of match as far as the depth of the black is fairly similar.

You'll secure your accessories to your hitch using a five eighths inch hitch pin and clip. Now one doesn't come included with the hitch, but we've got plenty available here at etrailer. And I'd also recommend locking ones to protect your investments. On bottom, it has plate style safety chain loops with a fairly large opening that should accommodate just about every shape, size, and style of safety chain. We've got our smaller S hook there and that has no problem and our big boy here on and off with ease.

This hitch offers a 300 pound tongue weight, which is the force going down on top of our receiver. Now with this you do wanna remember that the tongue weight is gonna be the weight of anything in the receiver. So that'd be the weight of your bike rack or your cargo carrier, plus any weight that's placed on those devices. Now you don't want to exceed that maximum 300. It also features a 2000 pound gross towing capacity, which is how much that you can pull behind it.

And with 2000 pounds you should be able to use maybe like some small jet ski trailers, potentially like a Jon boat, something like that, small utility trailers for maybe moving a small lawn mower around. So you got some options there as well. Now I've got some measurements for you to help you when deciding on accessories. From the center of our hitch pin hole to the edge of our bumper, we're looking at here right at about three inches. This is important when determining if your accessories will contact the hitch one inserted and if they can be placed in the upright storage position without contacting the bumper.

And from the ground to the top inside edge of our receiver tube, we're at about 10 and a half inches. And this is important when determining if you need a drop, a rise or raise shank on your accessories. And since this hitch does sit so low to the ground, I would recommend raise shanks on your accessories so that way you have the proper ground clearance, especially when pulling into things like driveways, going over speed bumps, anywhere where you've got a steep incline that you need to go up. And now that we've covered some of the features of our hitch, why don't you follow along with me in the shop and we'll show you how to get it installed. We are gonna have to take the whole fascia off the back of this one, so if you're not used to working on vehicles, this is something I'd probably recommend holding off until a Saturday to complete. But if you're pretty well versed with tools then this is something you could easily knock out after work in an hour or so. We'll begin our installation here at the back of the vehicle underneath, we're gonna remove a few fasteners. Towards the center here you're gonna have these two kind of rectangular washers with a small torques in the middle. We're gonna use our T 15 to pull these outta here. And they are just plastic so you kind of wanna barely press in as you're trying to take these out. Cause if you're pressing in, they actually just want to just stay in. So you wanna just barely be in there and gently take it out. And if you're struggling, I'm struggling a little bit there. We're just going to switch to a hand tool since it keeps pushing up. You get a little bit easier time with this and even this is still pushing up. So what you can do is in the event that the plastic fastener keeps doing that, grab you a trim panel tool and once you got it started like that where it's out just a little bit, we can put our trim panel tool under it and then as we thread it out we can kind of pry downward with our trim panel tool and that'll pull that out of there. Once you get the center piece out, the other piece just pops out of there. So we're just gonna take our trim panel tool, get behind it and pop that out of there. There's quite a bit of dirt in there and that holds that up. So that works pret