So I was installing my drawtite hitch and I accidentally popped one of the bolts up into my frame and have no way of getting it.. I managed to secure and tie down the inside washer w/a wire so it won't slide away also..

but what do i do now?. I assume there is nothing in the frame that the bolt will interfere with right?.. other than possibly sliding around and being noisy..

any idea's on how I can get the bolt?.. or is it a lost cause.

any idea's at all?

thanks

 

Wow, that's quite a problem. It will definitely make noise as you're driving the car. If the bolt is magnetic, you might possibly guide it back to the frame hole using a magnet, but even then, getting it vertical would be a neat trick.

If it's not magnetic, tilting the car at it's jacking points may help guide the bolt back to its frame hole, and from there I don't know.

Good luck, it can happen to anyone.

 

Only way out is usually the same way as in but the other direction ;-)

It will bounce around a bit, but I doubt you'll hear it. Nothing more to worry about. You might give a squirt of insulating foam into the frame and foam it in place, that won't hurt anything and hold it where ever it is.

 

*update*

Crisis averted: with the use of two fish wires, a wire coat hanger, a really strong magnet and about 1hr of monkeying w/it I managed to get the screw back into the washer and through the hole... sigh of relief..

 

ughh.. what a nightmare install.. after I fished the bolt out and tried to mount the hitch again, I realized how grossy defective the hitch was. I brought it inside and placed it on my tile floor to inspect it and saw just how off it was.. The metal plate on the left side is bent inwards and at an angle making the mount holes on one side nowhere near Parallel to the ones on the other side. Extremely Poor QC at Draw-tite. Hopefully etrailer has good customer service and sends me a replacement w/o hassel. I will try to post pics later.

*FYI anyone looking to buy a drawtite hitch, inspect it before you attempt to install it. make sure the mount holes on either side are parallel, and the flanges sit flush on a flat surface..

 

Pictures...

the flanges on either side w/the mount holes should be Parallel to one another, you can see they're not.




1/4" steel plate clearly bent, no way this could have been bent during shipping.

 

Trade it for a curt 3-point hitch.

 

Yeah I would have preferred the curt as I hear they're the best, except that it required drilling into the trunk well which turned me off to it.

 

As I understand it that part isn't so bad, certainly compared to what you've been going thru. Like grand dad always said, "Pay a dime more and go first class." Plus, it's a much more stable hitch with that extra connection.

 

i also like "you get what you pay for"

i assume they'll send me a replacement, if that one has the same issue i'll go w/curt. I'm only going to be using the hitch for a bike rack so i wasn't to concerned w/the small amount of extra support the 3rd point would provide.

 

Consider this. A bike rack puts a large torque on the connection points, it's a long vertical lever with 50# or so of bicycles hanging off the end of the lever arm bounding with the car movement.

That extra support relieves a huge amount of stress on the 2 bolt connectors each end of the hitch bar.
Those ends are connecting into a pinched seem of sheet metal.

Think geometry and a bit of logical physics.

 

stop making sense

 

As immortalized by the uncompilable David Byrne.

STOP MAKING SENSE

I'm guilty_

 

ha ha, i was wondering if you'd catch my TH/byrne reference