Hidden Hitch mod

A few months back I got a Hidden Hitch from etrailer.com hooked it up and immediately noticed a big problem. Pulling in and out of almost anywhere with a grade change resulted in grinding. This was mostly due to the design of the Saris bike rack but I have heard other people mention that the hit on occasion. My first fix for this was to put shims that were around 1" thick between the chassis and hitch on the forward most holes. This increased my ground clearance from 7" to 8 1/4". This helped tremendously but I still hit every now and then and this also put a damper on any thoughts of suspension mods. Since I wasn't satisfied I decided to try to get the hitch over the tow hook. I was able to get the hitch up there and I did manage to get the bolt through but none of the other holes would line up because the hitch was too far forward. I decided to take the hitch off and cut it so I could mount it above. As shown in the pic below I cut the slot to the end, please excuse the poor craftmanship...in the condo I have limited tools. Anyway, this slot allows for two things; first I can now get the hitch far enough back for the other hoels to line up and second it is a lot easier to get the bolt in place now. So I bolted the tow hook section but not tight so I could line up the other holes. I put my shims back in and bolted the frame up. What I noticed right away was that the rack was way higher than ever before. In fact it was too high, with teh rack up I couldn't open and close the rear hatch. So I went back under there and removed some of my shims up front. With around 5/8" of shims I found a happy medium. Once I had the other bolts tight I tightened up the tow hook and reinstalled the rack. I know have 10 1/4" of clearance and the hatch is still accessible but barely. See pictures below for comparisons.

 

Obviously doing this can compromise some strength in the hitch and I am sure it voids any warranty that came with it so if you choose to do this it is at your own risk!

ok, sounds like you did what I was thinking of doing but never did. so If I'm following you correctly, you cut off some of the bracket so you could slide the hitch over the top of the "d" ring which got you in line with the holes towards the front? what did you use to cut the hitch?

OK...at least for my hitch, when I put it up on top of the tow hook the slot is not long enough (towards the front). I was able to get a bolt through but on an angle. The problem with this was it forced the hitch too far towards the front of the car so I couldn't get the other holes to line up.

 

So I took it off and used a hack saw to cut out the section shown below in red. If you had a dremmel you could probably just slot this enough for things to line up. All I had was a cheap hack saw. Once I cut this piece off I put the hitch back over the tow hook and now that the hitch had the slot it was very easy to install this bolt. I tightened this just enough so it wouldn't fall off as I lined up the other holes. Once I had the other four bolts tight I tightened the tow hook bolt. I don't know for sure but I think the slot needed to be at least a 1/4" longer, so like I said if you have a dremmel you could probably cut out just what you need. For me I didn't care because this is only for bikes or other light stuff, I don't intend on actually towing a load.

 

Does that make more sense?

Mine's only used for bikes too. So your hidden hitch is square? mines tubular. But i think we still share the same issue, lack of clearance. think what you did will still work for me. I'll have to check next time i'm under there. Thanks for posting!

Mine is square but I would imagine it would work for the round version. You might not even have to cut it but it is easy enough to test. Just unbolt everything; slide the hitch over the tow hook and bolt up the other holes. Then just look up through the tow hook to see if you need to cut out or drill a hole for the bolt. That is what I was going to do if I had a dremel or other power tools. Since my only choice was to take the whole thing out it wasn't going to matter for me.

Just added some night shots of the hitch without the bike rack attached

In another thread someone was a bit confused by what I did with the shims, since I was installing a rear sway bar today I snapped a quick pic...hope it explains it a bit better. As you can see I have a block of aluminum between the hitch and the chasis in the forward most holes.