Installing a hitch on my 2013 Civic was significantly easier than I thought it would be. Somehow I had it in my mind that installing a hitch involved welding, hydraulic lifts and altering the underside of my brand new vehicle. Turns out people like etrailer.com have created step by step instructional videos that walk you through each step. Watching these videos gave me the confidence to go ahead and do it.
I ordered the hitch and what I thought was the correct wiring harness
and waited. The hitch arrived a few days later. I borrowed some drive
up ramps and asked a friend to help me lift the steel frame into place.
I removed the plastic shroud and heat shield from the bottom of the vehicle, trimmed them accordingly and then re-installed them. A few minutes later, we held the steel hitch into place and bolted it to the frame. Etrailer.com included these special bolts with long tabs that allowed you to hold them into place while tightening them. This made it much easier, as the tiny holes where the bolts were inserted were in awkward places.
All in all, it took us two hours from start to finish.
You can see on the left that I had to trim the plastic shroud significantly more than planned. This was mostly because the hitch needed to slide up and through the shroud. I guess it's not too big of a deal because the instructions suggested that you could just leave it off if you wanted.
It's kind of amazing that the hitch is only held into place with four bolts. One on each side and two that mount to the tow hook. Super simple and efficient. Now to the wiring.
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