winglesss

The usage of my 2017 NX200t Premium F Sport requires the addition of a hitch w/ hitch wiring.

This vehicle does not have the factory $160 towing package option.

As many others have reported, installing the hitch is “easy”, but the wiring presents greater challenges.

When I installed my hitch, initially I selected the Curt 13337 hitch and immediately discovered that this hitch doesn’t fit my vehicle, even though the part is specified to fit. The manufacturer was contacted and alerted of the problem.

That unusable hitch was exchanged for the Draw-Tite 75956 hitch. That Draw-Tite part fits the vehicle fine, without fit issues. Here are the Installation Instructions.

The only difficulty I encountered on the hitch installation part was that all the fasteners needed 92 ft-lbs torque, but there was partial obstruction above some fasteners, making a direct extension to the torque wrench difficult.

For my vehicle, the street to the residence floods w/ canal salt water on moon high tides, so there was surface corrosion on the right exhaust hanger. When that was removed for the hitch installation, the part was cleaned-up, then painted w/ Rustoleum to provide long-term protection.

The hitch installation is best performed w/ two people. In my case, it was just me, so I used cardboard cartons to push the hitch up against the bottom of the vehicle, until the fasteners are started. Those steps / processes worked fine for me to single-hand install the hitch.

The Draw-Tite 75956 hitch includes a welded tab for the electrical connector. For my installation I selected the Curt 58417 7-Way RV Blade Connector. This is a nice part w/ an integrated molded mounting bracket. The fit from this electrical connector to the welded tab is perfect. The rear cable feed loops nicely around the hitch tube, up to the chassis.

For the electrical, I purchased a Curt 56268 Custom Wiring Harness Adapter. This consists of a conversion module for separate brake / turn lamps, to singular left / brake and right / brake lamps, combined w/ vehicle-specific tee connectors. Just unplug the existing tail light connectors, insert the tee connectors, provide fused power, provide ground and done.

For my application, I snipped off the module’s flat 4-Way trailer connector and wired that ribbon to my 7-Way connector. I also ran an additional fused +12V power connector to that 7-Way connector, for trailer power, or trailer brakes.

The vehicle wiring is a major butt pain. My plan was to run along the door sill, then through the firewall, to the fuse boxes or to the battery. Unfortunately, getting through the firewall requires removal of the wipers, wiper tray and wiper motor, as-described here.

The plan I used instead to obtain two fused power was to run along the bottom, along the fuel tank, in split loom, up to the engine compartment and to the battery. That routing required removal of a triangle-shaped cover under the driver’s seat.

The wiring enters / leaves the passenger compartment by removing a plug on a vertical wall facing the rear of the vehicle. I used duct tape to seal the opening.

If going the under-the-vehicle route, then the difficult-to-remove side panels can remain in-place and just be loosened enough to reach the real lamp housing connectors.

My plan had been to also provide a backup lamp signal to the 7-Way connector, using a relay w/ the coil powered by the existing rear hatch backup lamps. My discovery was that the connector for that lamp housing must be hidden under the headliner. I was unwilling to R/R the headliner to access that wire, so I don’t have the backup lamp signal. That is fine for my application.

gompka

iTrader: (6)

Nice idea on running the harness under the car. In my application I had to put in the brake controller anyway so I did it the hard way. For the backup lights, the plug is under the headliner, very close to the rear hatch, its not hard to pull down the headliner about a foot to get to that area, the plug is hard to get to though even with headliner pulled. I just ran a wire all the way to the backup bulb through the rubber hatch grommet and back down to a relay. In my application I felt the backup lights were important, so i put in the extra effort and its working well.

Here is what my setup looks like, i used an extra solid state relay i had to only activate the trailer charging line when the car is turned on. This is more important in my case as the car will be charging the camper battery as well as running the 10 amp 3 way Dometic refrigerator in the camper. Probably overkill, but i had the relay laying around.