Attaching a Draw-Tite Hitch to a Honda Accord

Earlier in 2008 I had to get rid of my VW Jetta.  Bought a Honda Accord.  For Christmas I got a hitch for it... because of course I need a hitch to be able to tow the bike to trackdays.  So, came time for the first trackday and I needed to get this thing mounted.  Notice in the lower right hand corner of the pic there is a bolt with a wire threaded around it.  You get these with the kit to be able to tread the bold through the frame holes... neat..

First thing was removing two exhaust hangers in order to get to a couple of the frame holes where the hitch would attach.  This is the one just above the muffler... that was a pain.  It's rubber and it just stretches and would not move off the pins.  Finally I squirted some WD40 in the holes, grabbed the rubber with my hands and just pulled sideways... that did it...

The other hanger bracket was no problem....

Here's another shot of a bolt with the threading wire on it...

First thing is you take one of the brackets, put it in the frame, then you thread the bolt through there.  Here's what the bracket looks like, and the completely threaded bolt and bracket in the frame...

Once you have the bolts in on both sides you insert the hitch above the muffler on one side.  The center of the hitch attaches to the tow loop attached to the bottom of the trunk bed..

I left the bolt threading wire on until I threaded the bolts through the hitch... then had to be careful I didn't push them up into the frame when attaching the washers and nuts... but it was fairly painless... torque down and done...

Now, the wiring... The Hitch comes with a nice wiring harness that just snaps in line with the tail light wire connectors... So, had to get to the left tail light wires...

Remove a couple pieces in the trunk and I'm at the wires... unplug, plug in the harness... and there it is...

However, my harness had one wire left over... and when I checked the light functions I had no left turn signal... so I got out my volt meter and started fishing for a wire that had the turn signal... I found it, and I was getting ready to do some wire splicing, when I noticed this:

It was another connector, taped to the car wire harness... and it plugged right into the hitch harness... Someone was thinking when they designed the car...!

Now this is where I get stupid... Instead of disconnecting everything, finding a hole I could fish the harness through, and then reconnecting everything... I cut the four wires that lead to the hitch, feed them through a caped hole and then splice them all back together... WHAT! was I thinking... Maybe some of those black boxes hanging off the harness would not have been small enough to fit through the hole... but at least I should have thought of it... anyway... it works... I put the trunk back togehter and there's the finished product...