I think I’ve mentioned before how Autopian contributor Emily Velasco is always reliable for spotting and sending me interesting cars she happens to see, and she’s done it again, though this time it’s a little more mundane than what she usually sends. Mundane, but still interesting. The car itself isn’t particularly exciting, but what’s been done to it is, because while it’s a sort of crudely executed modification, it’s also pretty smart.
At least I think it is?
The DIY mod is, as you can see, a tow hitch mount for what looks like a 2015 to 2019 or so Toyota Corolla. Normally, adding a tow hitch to a Corolla involves one of those tow hitch mounts that goes under the bodywork and mounts to the frame. Well, it’s unibody, so not the frame as such, but some stronger mounting points:
These are fairly unobtrusive and not that expensive, though they can be a pain to install. But what if you don’t like this solution? What if you don’t want to give up about an inch of ground clearance, or you don’t want the extra weight? What are your options then?
Well, I’m happy to say there do seem to be options, like this one, where you can cut a hole in the bumper skin and mount a tow hitch right onto the heavy-duty bumper bar inside the bumper cap:
That bumper bar is very securely mounted to the frame and should be a strong point to handle a tow hitch. What’s this guy towing, anyway? A boat? I’d like to think it’s a boat. I bet the boat is a fiberglass recreation of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor and has working cannon and is used for Civil War naval reenactments. Just a guess.
But back to that tow hitch; it’s a little sloppy but the concept is good. I think the key is that metal insert that the DIYer used to encapsulate the open cut-out bumper skin area. It looks like it was an existing part from, um, something, because that central rounded-rectangle feels too well-executed compared to the other cut-out parts.
This got me thinking that perhaps one could manufacture and sell these plastic inserts designed for just this purpose, like this:
You’d cut a properly-sized hole in your bumper skin, install this plastic box to fill the hole, install your tow hitch, and maybe there would even be a snap-in cover to hide the hitch when not in use.
The “box” could also be used to hold things like tow safety chains and other small towing accessories! Like tow lights, maybe?
There’s something about this solution that I like. Even coarsely executed, it feels tidier than the under-the bumper bar method, and it keeps the tow hitch closer to the rear of the car, which let’s say without checking is a good thing.
What do you think? Am I a fool to be impressed with this clunky modification, or do you also see the beauty in it?
Now I have to get to sleep; I have a plane to catch in the morning!
The only thing that would make me happier is if it was towing another Corolla with a similarly bespoke front towbar
I see these auction-car road trains headed south through Utah all the time.
Get some pics! The site needs them
I guess they didn’t want it grounded to the ground
Ex-towbar mechanical engineer here. The bumper bar is made of tinfoil in comparison to a towbar.
The bumper bar must withstand 1 crash deforming the intended way. As far as I remember, a towbar is fatigue tested to 60% of its rated load for 2 million push-pull cycles.
Is the real comparison between the bumper bar and whatever holes in the unibody these hitches normally use? The last unibody hitch I installed used some existing holes in the trunk floor.
What we tested were the towbars themselves mounted to a test bench, with custom test fixtures for each towbar to be tested.
Our towbars used the same mounting points to the unibody as the OEM towbars.
They had the same load ratings as the OEM towbars too, as the ratings were calculated based on the vehicle configuration with highest towing capacity.
The bumper bar is usually mounted on the vertical wall at the back of the vehicle. The towbar usually uses the same mounting points as the bumper bar plus some others on the frame rails way lower on the car unibody and closer to the height were the hitch/ball stands, so that the torque from offset force on the hitch/ball does not twist the vertical wall.
The frame of a Toyota Land Cruiser generation would crack with one of our towbars, because it was designed before the OEM towbar could be reverse engineered, and a few mounting points were not noticed/used.
This was not remedied since our towbar was already ‘certified’ and no one seemed to care about damaged customer cars. The certification pretty much only proved that it passed the fatigue test, that the position of the ball was within regulations, and that the instruction manuals were good enough.
There are many many reasons this is deeply wrong from an engineering and safety standpoint. First off is hitch location, it’s far too high for most standard and safe towing, meaning the angle of a trailer will be steep, and this will augment and artificially increase tongue weight. Next, this is a crash bar, a carefully and intentionally engineered piece designed to absorb load in a carefully calculated way with uniform weight distribution over it’s entire area (rear end by car). What you have now done is create a point load in the middle (least rigid) of that beam, meaning it is liable to bend and warp far more easily than that of a subframe.
Not to mention this is a structure designed to deform under load. The subframe and underbody where hitches are mounted are designed to be maximally rigid. If you don’t have an engineering degree (I do, and some automotive crash safety design experience in a research context) this is truly horrendous. One too-heavy braking event with a trailer and that ball hitch is liable to snap off, or warp the crash beam and push into the chassis. Not to mention that the safety chain hook appears to be attached to the same bar that the hitch is bolted to. If (when) that crash bar deforms due to an incorrect load being applied to it, the safety chain hook goes with it. With typical hit receivers, the pin holding the hitch to the receiver is the engineered weak point, meaning the chain anchors stay, but here, the crash bar is the weak point.
And just so we are all entirely clear, a hitch install that requires a sawzall to cut into the mounting piece for clearance is dangerous, and because this is aggressively DIY, there is absolutely zero rating for what this can safely tow, meaning anything slapped on that hitch is putting others at risk. If I were a cop, I’d pull this guy over and ticket him on sight.
That shiny metal piece is part of the chrome front bumper of a Ford F-series.
The hole is the center air inlet for the condenser and radiator.
A lot of cars (not totally sure about this Toyota) have shock absorber mounts on the bumper. I doubt those were replaced with solid brackets, so whatever weight would be pulling a hydraulic piston the opposite way it’s supposed to go. I’d say no thanks on this
Shock absorber bumper mounts havent been a thing for the last couple decades.
I know for sure my 07 Audi has them, although that model did come out 2 decades ago
You’re right. 2 decades was a bit too much, more like 1 1/2. Most had given up them up around the turn of the century but some did hold on longer.
My ’90 Legacy didn’t even have them.
The worry (aside from my reflexes and collision avoidance skills when this does come apart) is that someone who does this level of ‘value engineering’ may also feel that auto insurance is also a ‘luxury’ to be disregarded.
Here in NYC many such jankmobiles also have out-of-state temporary license printouts. There ain’t no bigger red flags for uninsured vehicles.
Of course such jankmobiles also are being driven by jerkoffs. “Judgment proof” is the most powerful liability shield I reckon.
My experience is you are forced to pay insurance companies, but they don’t pay claims.
Without knowing about the execution of it (remember, we were all okay with DT ‘repairing’ 72.8% of the Postal DJ’s frame instead of, I don’t know, getting another frame), I don’t hate t his at all.
Pickups have step bumper hitches all the time. Their ratings are lower than a class IV, of course. But still, isn’t this almost the next step in the brown diesel wagon with a ball hitch!?!?!?
Whether you want to call this redneck ingenuity, poverty problem solving, or anything else, it won’t change that this is pretty clever.
4 out of 5 stars. Would eff with it.
Pickups have bumpers. This hitch is not attached to the car’s bumper, it’s attached to a deformable, single-use impact absorber.
No one has even mentioned the provisions for safety chains hanging from below the bumper, clearly this person knew exactly what they were doing!
Right?! Hopefully the trailer pulls left in case of hitch failure, though the retention clip is on there if it does go right.
I will have to check my notes, but I think that the retention clip is rated for the same amount of weight as the “bumper-mounted hitch ball”, so we should be good.
That’s a great boat idea. I should get a boat.
Yeah and what’s wrong with the Merrimack?? Damn automotive elites, always dictating civil war era ironclad ship preferences…
The Virgina (the name the CSA used for their re-worked Merrimac) was a casemate ironclad, basically just a huge iron tent on a boat. The Monitor was something new! A powered turret! mostly submerged! Flush toilets!
Leave those top hatches open and everything on the Monitor got flushed.
This is something I imagine my dad doing.
0% Form
50% Functionality
100% Cheap
Son?
I didn’t think I had relatives on this site. What’s up fam?
Oh come on, it’s at least 2% form.
Well, ok, maybe 1%.
Jason, let me put you in a scenario. Imagine this car is actively towing, directly in front of you, with Otto in the car. Isn’t he eligible for his permit soon, like, a month or two? He’s driving and you’re in the passenger seat. He’s never had to avoid a crash for real before.
I’m thinking in the moment you’d tell him to get back as far away as possible and, unless it does, take the next exit. And we’d be seeing this as one of your drawings because it wouldn’t even occur to you that you could get content from it until after the moment was over, let alone get out your phone in it.
I’d trust a sagging frame rust belt pickup staying together long before I’d trust whatever hopes and dreams are holding up this concoction of nonsense.
This reminds me of the sort of rigs I used to see in Philadelphia all the time. It is perfect for hauling a hot-dog cart when your only employment option is buying and tending a hot-dog cart. They say that necessity is the mother of invention; I will only add that poverty is the parent of a lot of necessity.
I know someone wanting a hotdog cart.
Did you know the right location can net six figures?
I sure didn’t
Definitely a disaster waiting to happen
I am staying all the fucks away from that Jerry ghetto rigged jank. That looks like it would rip off just from someone lightly pulling on it. Just from the overall condition of that car that is most likely someone that is in the mindset of “idgaf if I smash other people’s cars”.
Judging by the mismatched front fender and the way that the trunk doesn’t line up, I think Jason is giving the driver just a liiiiiittle too much credit. I’m guessing this was backed into something first, then the obliterated plastic was hacked out to slap the tow ball on.
I admire the cleverness of the application, but this feels like a “necessity is the mother of invention” scenario. I’m guessing there was 0 forethought here.
Yeah the driver’s rear got crunched in some manner. The trunk decklid is deformed.
Now my curiosity is a) whether or not the current driver let the car get to this condition in general, or b) if the current driver bought it in this condition for some other “towing” use. And then of course all the questions related to those. It’s like an archeology project without all the digging.
I’d put $10 on “salvage yard parts pusher.”
The Corolla was likely totaled out for non-mechanical issues. Since it still ran and drove, the scrapyard slapped a new fender on it and cleaned up the mangled bumper, and attached the ball and hook to move around lightweight but inconvenient to handle hunks of metal.
The trunk lid dent was from an unfortunate event with version 1.0. What you see here is actually the improved version 2.0.
There are a few points to consider:
The Corolla doesn’t have a frame to attach a hitch to. When you install a hitch – a properly engineered one – you install a subframe that spreads the load around the chassis, and the ball attaches to that.
A Corolla of that vintage is rated for 750 pounds towing, unbraked. Not much, but it actually gets a lot done if you load carefully and break big loads into multiple trips. How do you eat an elephant: one bite at a time.
All of that said, we can’t see if there’s any kind of bracing to support the bumper bar against the torque applied by the tow ball. The bumper bar isn’t designed to resist twist. The boxing around it, I can’t say if it’s even metal, chrome-like shine notwithstanding; or whether it’s attached to the bumper bar.
Frankly this is embarrassing. Someone with sufficient smarts to know about the bumper bar, and motivated enough to take on this bit of jankstruction, did this. With similar effort they could have installed a proper hitch attached in the correct locations to have a far sturdier solution. This has to be an effort put forth by someone with no money to spare, none.
…we can’t see if there’s any kind of bracing to support the bumper bar against the torque applied by the tow ball.
Not a betting man but I’d put a year’s Cloth membership on that being a “no”.
Judging by the quality of the install, I suspect that there was no additional bracing. This looks terrible.
The 9th gen civic towing kits I’ve seen bolt in where the bumper beam mounts to the subframe. I would bet that a bumper beam could take a fair amount of torque as well. It’s not a terrible idea, but I would bet it’s a terrible execution. How the hitch is mounted is absolutely the weak point.
Using the bumper mounting points to install a properly engineered hitch mount is a way different proposition than clamping the hitch ball directly to the bumper bar.
Absolutely it is, but it tells me that the bumper beam mounts are probably up to the task, and maybe the bumper beam is too. But the hitch ball bolted to the bumper beam is of course a terrible solution.
During the pandemic, a lot of receivers were unavailable, esp for Toyotas.
I finally ordered one for a Camry at retail on a waiting list.
Long after I gave up on that, one arrived without notice from Kamloops, Canadia!
I put a hitch on my kid’s kia soul and it was under $100 and took about 10 minutes. DIY is often cheap AND dangerous.
Do you give the plane a sporting chance by holding off your pursuit until it’s begun to taxi or are you one of those people who sneak up on it while it’s sleeping at a gate and pounce on it? And what do you do with it once you catch it?
Janky AF and a horrible idea.
Meh, if he’s only towing a Harbor Freight wheel trailer maybe? I had an MR2 for rallycross that needed a hitch for a tire trailer. I let a decent race shop do the work, can’t remember exactly what they did now.
A lot of Lotuses tow tires to the track with a hitch.
I’m not sure how they attach since the Elise is composed primarily from dreams and starlight
I’m not sure if I’d even trust it with a bike rack.
Bike racks usually go into a hitch receiver. A proper hitch install would have that.
I guess you could sort of drop one onto the hitch ball, and then the rack would flop over and the bikes would drag on the ground.
you’re doing it all wrong. Just balance the bike on the tow ball and secure with some bungee cords (keeping them away from the wheels so they’ll be able to windmill nicely).
Bike racks torque a receiver more than trailers do.
I’m converting to two point bike rack inserts for this reason.
Do tell more. Not sure if I’m picturing what you’re describing.
The mass and wind drag of the rack are elevated a couple of feet above the plane of the hitch receiver, whereas an actual hitch ball is, at most, just a couple of inches. Obviously if you’re using a rise or drop ball mount that will be different, though any fool using a rise mount on a compact car is about to learn an expensive lesson.
I get what he’s saying but I think you’d have to have several heavy bikes on an oversized, extra-long carrier to equal the torque applied by a trailer.
Trailers shouldn’t be twisting the hitch.
A trailer without a specialized hitch applies shock during braking and acceleration, but not twisting.
Any stress off-axis from the centerline of the hitch receiver is going to apply torque. The example of the bumper bar above is a good example; the ball will apply torque to the bar itself under acceleration and braking.
Agreed.
With cargo carriers and bike racks, two weaker points together perform better than a single point in controlling rotating torque.
I first noticed this with single wheel trailers using dual hitch points.
Receiver tubes spaced as widely as possible, mounted on the bottom of the receiver frame when there is one.
The bike carrier or carrier uses matching inserts to lock in place.
When bikes or any load torques side to side, it is damped by the two mounting points.
There are far more complex setups out there attempting to stop loads twisting.
I had to use a lot of bungees to control my bike last time and it wasn’t enough.
Strongly built Canadian bike rack, but didn’t matter.
Two point mounting is the strong point of single wheel trailers, so it seems the obvious solution.
This sounds like a custom thing. I don’t think I’ve heard of anything like this off the shelf.
I don’t know if there is.
There are elaborate attempts to get the results with more effort and cost.
A wide one would be easy to convert.
Mine is a traditional one post designed to bolt onto a receiver insert.
Mounted to a crossbar with dual inserts, it could easily be used either way.
I might make a better carrier since that becomes simple once you widen the base anyway.
It is easiest to use a crossbar on the bike carrier matching the inserts.
This is still superior to attempting to damp the motion of the bikes that wants to wigwag the finish off your car and bikes.
Your more practical execution of the idea reminds me a lot of what’s on the back of K2X GM SUV’s!! A box shaped cutout that sits on the rear bumper, except it just conceals a regular hitch receiver. I’ve seen this on quite a few vehicles actually, my dad’s Buick Enclave also has a flush-fitted hitch receiver cover that requires you to pull a rectangular panel off of the rear bumper skin
Yeah that is janky. The impact bar is designed to absorb some of the impact by deforming, so it really isn’t that strong or beefy. Then they hacked a bunch of material out of it taking away what little strength there was.
Plus they cost themselves at least $1000 in the vehicles value to save under $200 on a hitch.
Take a look at the front end and then at the trunk lid gaps. No resale value was lost.