Removing Trailer Hitch?

[Jordan Petry]

The two bolts the closest to the front of the car are not coming out, I've already loosened them and for the life of me they just turn and turn and wont come out. Any ideas? I stuck my fingers through a little hole and couldnt feel anything.

thanks in advance, Jordan

 

[Jordan Petry]

FML

Toyota apparently decided to put a piece of strip metal in there to hold the nuts in place, on both sides the nut twisted out of the piece of metal and is now sitting there turning...wonderful

from what I can tell, there is no way to get a wrench in there, pliers, anything... this is really frustrating. Does anyone have any ideas? I intend on putting the hitch back on after I paint it so I don't really want to cut anything.

 

[Stick Figure]

I've not tried to remove the trailer hitch, so i'm not 100% sure what it looks like under there, but if you can pry down on the hitch while spinning the bolts w/ an impact, that should work.... if they are just too rusted to come apart that way, you'll probably have to cut them off, and if you want to later put the hitch back on plan on doing some cutting and welding.

 

[nquaint]

i took mine off the other day and didn't have much of a problem, except for breaking the torque on them, they fell right out after I unscrewed them enough.

 

[Jordan Petry]

I've not tried to remove the trailer hitch, so i'm not 100% sure what it looks like under there, but if you can pry down on the hitch while spinning the bolts w/ an impact, that should work.... if they are just too rusted to come apart that way, you'll probably have to cut them off, and if you want to later put the hitch back on plan on doing some cutting and welding.

Unfortunately I don't have an impact here. My dad has one but he's 300 miles away. I just ended up cutting it off with my reciprocating saw. Mine is starting to rust real bad so I figured I would pop it off and paint it, I didn't think it would be this difficult. When I put it back on I'll reattach the 4 bolts and then weld it on. That oughta be sufficient!

Thanks for your guys input.

 

[TheDurk]

Did you manage to save the metal strip? You will have to tack new nuts to that strip in order to have anything to screw those two bolts into. I did the same thing last year but I was able to get the bolts out. It wasn't easy. Starting to rust again already...