Since picking up my Subaru in August, it has proven that it is perfect for:
I live in pickup truck country. Counting cars on any given day yields about 50% pickups, 40% SUVs, and 10% cars. This is in a metropolitan city. Most people think they “need” that truck for the once-a-year occasion they need to move something big. I can do just as much with a 4x8 utility trailer and my car, with the additional bonus of a super-low loading deck (useful for motorcycles).
I was a bit worried about installing a hitch, because my car also came with a gigantic “fart can” muffler which looked to be occupying the space normally taken up by a trailer hitch. The hitch that looked to be the most accommodating for my fart can was the Curt 11318 hitch for North American Subarus. It seems to make more of an effort to hide and to go over the muffler than other hitches.
Also, it was pretty much the same price as the other options, so I ordered one from Ebay.
I have heard that there can be some stubborn bolts to remove when installing this hitch, so the first thing to do (after getting the rear of the car up on stands) is to soak all the bolts with some PB Blaster.
The hitch takes the place of the factory tie-down points on both sides of the car, and the rearmost exhaust hanger on the left side. Here’s the (dirty) right side:
…and the (poorly-photographed and dark) left side (the big 90degree bracket and the exhaust hanger bracket both come off):
The above bolts came out very easily on my car, but I have heard mention of higher-mileage cars having some stuck bolts. These are threaded into nuts that are welded to the inside the body frame, and if the bolts are seized it can easily break those welds resulting in a spinning nut & bolt that won’t come loose (with no access to the nut on the inside). The only choice in this scenario is to drill big access holes from inside the trunk in order to put a socket down onto that loose nut.
All of the rubber exhaust isolators need to be pried off as well. A little spray of PB and a small pry bar make short work of that.
With the exhaust now hanging down, I could test-fit the hitch to see how it would work with a Japanese Impreza.
Not bad, but there were two areas that needed attention. The first was the bumper plastic on the left hand side. It needed just a little bit of trimming on the underside to fit the hitch. You can see here the interference:
I cut out some of the plastic with a small air grinder, but not quite enough. Another test fit, and some more to cut:
Once the plastic was cut out, the next point of interference became apparent - the body seam on the bottom of the spare wheel well (especially the thicker part with the two bolt heads):
Anyone who has fitted bigger wheels to a car or truck knows what to do when a body seam gets in the way - you go to the toolbox for your biggest hammer and you fold it flat. Some gentle persuasion got my problem out of the way. You can see here the first test-fit after some hammering - it still needs a little more bending to get it out of the way:
(you can also see some touch-up underbody spray I put on in a few spots)
The bracket attached by those bolts works to support the midsection of the plastic bumper, and that bracket needed some slight bending to accommodate the new shape of the body seam (sorry, no “before” pic - the angle was more open before bending):
With the two problem areas taken care of, it was simply a matter of bolting up the hitch using the original Subaru bolts that held the tie-down points. It’s best to loosely install all four bolts before tightening them down to 62 ft/lbs.
Now that the hitch was installed I could finally check whether it would cooperate with the muffler. That would require reattaching all the rubber isolators, which was no easy task. They are a tight fit. I filed a small chamfer on the forward-most isolator to help it seat in place:
…but still couldn’t get it on. I ended up using a floor jack to gently coerce it into place, being very careful not to bend the exhaust pipe:
The rest of the isolators went on tightly, but easier than this one. The final isolator gets attached to the hitch itself in place of the mounting point I unbolted from the left hand side:
With everything in place, the muffler just clears the trailer hitch. There’s about 1mm of room in there, but it isn’t touching:
And that’s it! With the hitch in place you can barely tell it’s there.
I don’t normally like to have parts left over when I’m done with a project, but at the end I had a small pile of parts:
In the next installment I’ll be wiring up the trailer wiring harness to complete this project.
Cost Breakdown:
$125 - Curt 11318 hitch (ebay)
Incidental supplies:
PB Blaster
- long road trips
- daily driving
- autocrossing
- rallycrossing
- carrying lots of stuff
I live in pickup truck country. Counting cars on any given day yields about 50% pickups, 40% SUVs, and 10% cars. This is in a metropolitan city. Most people think they “need” that truck for the once-a-year occasion they need to move something big. I can do just as much with a 4x8 utility trailer and my car, with the additional bonus of a super-low loading deck (useful for motorcycles).
I was a bit worried about installing a hitch, because my car also came with a gigantic “fart can” muffler which looked to be occupying the space normally taken up by a trailer hitch. The hitch that looked to be the most accommodating for my fart can was the Curt 11318 hitch for North American Subarus. It seems to make more of an effort to hide and to go over the muffler than other hitches.
Also, it was pretty much the same price as the other options, so I ordered one from Ebay.
I have heard that there can be some stubborn bolts to remove when installing this hitch, so the first thing to do (after getting the rear of the car up on stands) is to soak all the bolts with some PB Blaster.
The hitch takes the place of the factory tie-down points on both sides of the car, and the rearmost exhaust hanger on the left side. Here’s the (dirty) right side:
…and the (poorly-photographed and dark) left side (the big 90degree bracket and the exhaust hanger bracket both come off):
The above bolts came out very easily on my car, but I have heard mention of higher-mileage cars having some stuck bolts. These are threaded into nuts that are welded to the inside the body frame, and if the bolts are seized it can easily break those welds resulting in a spinning nut & bolt that won’t come loose (with no access to the nut on the inside). The only choice in this scenario is to drill big access holes from inside the trunk in order to put a socket down onto that loose nut.
All of the rubber exhaust isolators need to be pried off as well. A little spray of PB and a small pry bar make short work of that.
With the exhaust now hanging down, I could test-fit the hitch to see how it would work with a Japanese Impreza.
Not bad, but there were two areas that needed attention. The first was the bumper plastic on the left hand side. It needed just a little bit of trimming on the underside to fit the hitch. You can see here the interference:
I cut out some of the plastic with a small air grinder, but not quite enough. Another test fit, and some more to cut:
Once the plastic was cut out, the next point of interference became apparent - the body seam on the bottom of the spare wheel well (especially the thicker part with the two bolt heads):
Anyone who has fitted bigger wheels to a car or truck knows what to do when a body seam gets in the way - you go to the toolbox for your biggest hammer and you fold it flat. Some gentle persuasion got my problem out of the way. You can see here the first test-fit after some hammering - it still needs a little more bending to get it out of the way:
(you can also see some touch-up underbody spray I put on in a few spots)
The bracket attached by those bolts works to support the midsection of the plastic bumper, and that bracket needed some slight bending to accommodate the new shape of the body seam (sorry, no “before” pic - the angle was more open before bending):
With the two problem areas taken care of, it was simply a matter of bolting up the hitch using the original Subaru bolts that held the tie-down points. It’s best to loosely install all four bolts before tightening them down to 62 ft/lbs.
Now that the hitch was installed I could finally check whether it would cooperate with the muffler. That would require reattaching all the rubber isolators, which was no easy task. They are a tight fit. I filed a small chamfer on the forward-most isolator to help it seat in place:
…but still couldn’t get it on. I ended up using a floor jack to gently coerce it into place, being very careful not to bend the exhaust pipe:
The rest of the isolators went on tightly, but easier than this one. The final isolator gets attached to the hitch itself in place of the mounting point I unbolted from the left hand side:
With everything in place, the muffler just clears the trailer hitch. There’s about 1mm of room in there, but it isn’t touching:
And that’s it! With the hitch in place you can barely tell it’s there.
I don’t normally like to have parts left over when I’m done with a project, but at the end I had a small pile of parts:
In the next installment I’ll be wiring up the trailer wiring harness to complete this project.
Cost Breakdown:
$125 - Curt 11318 hitch (ebay)
Incidental supplies:
PB Blaster
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