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If you’ve ever found yourself at your local rental center renting a trailer, if you own a boat, if you own a motorcycle or quad or even if your just cleaning your yard and throwing the debris in a small trailer to take to the junk yard, you need a hitch of some form or fashion. We recently had the opportunity to install a Class III Hidden Hitch receiver hitch on our 1999 Toyota Land Cruiser for just those reasons. Well, we don’t have a boat to tow, but hooking up the trailer to take the quads or the trash out sure is handy with a receiver hitch.
Most of you are familiar with receiver hitches that bolt to the frame and the unit from Hidden Hitch isn’t much different, save the fact that their hitches are well designed and planned out to keep you from having to re-route spare tires or exhaust pipes. This was a real pleasure and the entire hitch can be installed in about an hour with one person, although two people does make the job easier.
Follow along with the following few steps to see just how easy it is to put a receiver hitch from Hidden Hitch on your rig.
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 Step 1 – The first part, as usual, is to make sure that all of the components have arrived in your package. After that, we started by removing the stock tow hooks from the back, underside of the Cruiser. You may have to use a breaker bar and some lubricating oil to break the bolts loose as they’re pretty tight from the factory.
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 Step 2 – After the hooks have been removed, we attempted to install the vertical plates that attached to the frame that support the main horizontal receiver bar. However, the holes didn’t line up just right so we had to file on the holes for a bit to enlarge them. With this done, we loosely bolted the vertical supports to the frame.
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 Step 3 – With the vertical supports in place, we positioned and hung the main horizontal receiver bar in place, clearing the exhaust pipe nicely. Loosely add the bolts to support the horizontal bar to the vertical supports.
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 Step 4 – With everything bolted nicely in place, tighten all bolts to the specified torque settings supplied. Lastly, install the handy receiver tube cover and admire your new Class III receiver hitch in all its beauty.
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 The Hidden Hitch receiver hitch installed nicely except for 10 minutes worth of filing effort. Each vehicle tends to be slightly different in make so we don’t blame Hidden Hitch for the slightly off-center.
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4x4Review Off Road Magazine
