etrailer | Setting up the Draw-Tite Max-Frame Trailer Hitch Receiver on your 2015 BMW X5

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Full transcript: www.etrailer.c...
Today in our 2015 BMW X5, we'll be having a look at, and installing the Draw-Tite Class III Max-Frame Trailer Hitch Receiver. Part number 75600. All right, here's what our hitch looks like installed. As you can see, our hitch sits nice and tight up against our fascia, with the main frame of it hidden completely behind our fascia. It fits in nicely in the factory cutout, in our fascia as well, so there's no trimming required. On the side of our receiver, you'll find two pinholes. The larger diameter one, is our 5/8 of an inch diameter hitch pinhole, which we use to secure any of our hitch mounted accessories.
The one closest to the rear, is a J-pin stabilization device hole, which you can use to take away some of that shake, play and rattle, out of what's inserted into your receiver. Some bike racks and cargo carriers already have an anti-rattle device built into them, but if yours does not, you can utilize a J-pin stabilization device, which we have available separately on our website. Welded onto the bottom of our receiver is our rolled steel safety chain loops. These are fairly large openings, so we shouldn't have much of a problem, if any, using the hooks from our safety chains on our trailer on these. At the end of our receiver, we have this collar that is welded on to give us nice, clean, finished look on our receiver, making our hitch look like a factory hitch on our X5. This hitch features a 600 pound max gross tongue weight rating, which is the amount forcing down, and a 6,000 pound max gross trailer weight rating, which is the amount you can pull. It does support the use of weight distribution, but those numbers don't change, they say the same. You want to consult the owner's manual of your X5, and not exceed the limits of the hitch or the vehicle itself.
You don't want to cause damage to either one. Now what I really like about this hitch compared to others on the market, is how clean of a look we get on our vehicle. It looks just like a factory hitch on our X5. Now for a few measurements to better assist you in choosing any hitch mounted accessory you may need, such as a ball mount, bike rack, or cargo carrier. You're looking at about 13-1/2 inches from the ground, to the top of the 2-inch receiver opening, and about 4 inches from the center of the hitch pinhole, to the rear-most part of the back bumper. Now that we've gone over some features, we'll show you how to get it installed. All right, to begin our install, we'll start at each side of our car right where the rear fascia meets the wheel well.
Okay, now on each side of our wheel well, we'll find two plastic rivets. These rivets cannot be reused. Our hitch does come with new rivets to replace these. So we use a drill, and we'll drill out the center section of the rivet. We use a trim panel tool now and pull out the rivet.
And we'll do the same on the other side. Okay, now we'll grab our wheel well molding here, pull it away from the car. We'll find an 8mm screw, remove this, and again anything that we do on one side of the car, we'll repeat on the other side. Now on the sides of our fascia, we'll find one, two, three screws that we need to remove. These are still 8mm. All right, now we need a remove our rear reflector right here. In order to do that, we'll slide behind the bumper and have a look at the clip that holds it in place. We look inside our fascia to the inside and above our exhaust pipe, we'll find a clip right here. We push out on the clip. Okay, there's another clip just to the left of that. You push up on the clip. Once you have that one unclipped, the reflector just pulls on out. And here's the other clip you're just going to push up on to unlatch it. Now the reason we need a remove are our reflectors is because there's another 8mm screw behind them that we need a remove. Okay, now with our rear hatch open and our bottom tailgate held open it about a 45 degree angle, we'll find four tabs, two on each side, that hold our top of the fascia in place. So you press down the top section of the tab. Okay, once you press on those tabs, you can just grab the fascia and start pulling it. It'll unhook from those tabs. With that done, you can close the tailgate back up. Okay now we'll grab the corners of our fascia, and pull the length of the back bumper. Now, on each side, we need remove our rear tail light assemblies. We'll fold down these bins here. So here are the two 8mm nuts that hold the tail light assembly in place. We'll remove these. With the nuts removed, we'll push out on the studs, and pull the tail light assembly on back. We'll unplug the tail lights by pushing on this tab here at the top, and unplugging

[@gnamakoudji]

Looks like a very straightforward installation.

[@iwantfree9257]

Awesome video. Looks hard to screw up after watching this.

[@mikecoggins3634]

This video and others are really outdated for the installation of Draw-Tite trailer hitch (#76288). The 8 mm screw placements are far different, one does not need to remove the rear brake light assembly to pull off the rear fascia. The fascia underneath has 3 pieces, the center one needs to be trimmed. Two hugely importnt considerations: 1) You need to grind/saw off a considerable chunk of aluminum from the rear bumper assembly; 2) the trimming of fascia to accomodate the hitch is not well documented/explained. A final bit is you need a special rivet tool. The rivets are larger than 3/16" and most standard hand tools only go up to 3/16. We were able to find a Pittsburgh rivet tool and POM rivets that are metric at Hrbor Freight tools. Total install time was 2 hours. The dealership wanted $540 to do this labor. CRAZY!

[@etrailer]

Thanks for the tips. We installed the hitch according to the instructions provided with the hitch by Draw-Tite.
www.etrailer.com/Trailer-Hitch/Draw-Tite/75600.html

[@mikecoggins3634]

@@etrailer yes, I understand. I just believe for the DIY folks, these instructions lack clarity and specific considerations, so I thought I’d highlight those for others to grasp before embarking on this project.