Fifth Wheel Hitch Kit Installation - 2009 Chevrolet Silverado 2500

Installation of a 5th Wheel Hitch Kit on a 2009 Chevrolet Silverado 2500

Today on this 2009 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 series, 6 foot bed, we will be installing the Signature Series rails and brackets part number 30061. We are going to do a couple of things in preparation to installing our Signature Series rails and brackets. First, we will need to lower the spare tire out of the way, and next we will need to remove the heat shield over here on the passenger side. We are going to remove this section, just forward of this cross member here, all the way back to the rear of the vehicle. :27

With the heat shield removed we can go ahead and put our cross members into place. I do want to note on the 2007 and newer models vehicles, if your vehicle has the factory installed brake controller unit, you will need to relocate the brake control module that is mounted directly to the drivers side frame rail, just about equal with our rear tire here. These five bolts here that are holding it into place are actually going to interfere with the installing of our frame brackets. So what we will need is the mounting relocation bracket, part number 58318. That will help us relocate that unit and get it out of our way. 1:01

With the bolts loosened on the outboard side of the frame, you can go to the inboard side and remove the brake controller box and plug from the frame rail. Then what we will do is remove the screws from those units and mount it to our brake control plate. Before sliding our cross members into place I want to note that the two cross members are different lengths. The shorter one is the rear cross member and the longer one will be the forward cross member. It is a good idea to run our 5/ 8 ths bolt in and out of the weld nuts here at the end of the cross members before we install them. Sometimes there will be some access paint in there that may make it difficult to get the bolts started once the members are in position. At this point, with the relocation bracket in place we can go ahead and start putting our cross members up under the bed. We can do that either one of two ways. We can slide them in from underneath the vehicle as noted in the instructions, or we can loosen up the bed bolts and slide them in from one side of the vehicle over to the other. That is the method we are going to use. There are 4 bed bolts per side, what we are going to do is remove the rearmost on each side and put the front ones in place. This should give us enough room to get the bed up and the cross members into place. Next, we will loosely install the side brackets to the cross members. We will be doing that using the 5/ 8 ths bolts along with the lock washer and flat washer. 2:32

We can next install our side brackets onto the side of the vehicle. We are going to start over on the drivers side with the relocation bracket that we mounted earlier. There are two bolts that are going to be holding the relocation bracket to the inside of the frame rail. We first have a 7/ 16 ths carriage bolt that is going to mount to the rear side of the bracket. We do need to provide spacers in between the relocation bracket and the inside of the frame as well. And the 5/ 8 ths bolt that is not only going to mount the relocation at the forward side, but is also going to attach the side bracket to the outside of the frame. You will note on the drivers side as well that on some models you will have an enclosed portion of the frame where the forward bolt goes. In that instance, instead of mounting the bolt from the outside of the frame, inside, we are actually going to fish wire the bolt inside this channel here to where the thread will point to the outside of the frame. From there we can attach with the washer and bolt. You will notice with the 5/ 8ths bolt at this forward attaching point, is shorter than the other ones provided with the installation kit. This bolt is going to be 1- 1/ 2 inches long. We are going to repeat that setup for the passenger side as well. However, on the passenger side, at the forward location we will be using a 2 inch long bolt, as opposed to the 1-1/ 2 inch that we used on the drivers side. We will be attaching to these bolts using a conical tooth washer and nut. Now we want to go ahead and tighten our fasteners down, both the ones on the cross members and the frame rails. However, we do not want to fully torque them, we will save that for our final steps. We also want to make sure we tighten our bed bolts back down, since we loosened those earlier. 4:38

With all the bolts torqued down we want to next mark out the holes that need to be drilled inside of the bed using the pointed bolt that is provided with the installation kit. We are going to run that into the four existing weld nuts in the cross members underneath the bed. Once it makes contact with the bed it will leave a dimple in the bed so we know where to drill our holes. Before drilling the holes we want to make sure we loosen up our cross members and slide them both forward and backwards out of the way. We want to make sure we do not hit them when we drill our holes through the bed. Then we want to go back up into the bed and locate our four marks. We want to use a 2- 1/ 2 inch hole saw and drill all four holes for our pucks. With the holes drilled out we can go ahead and install our pucks. First place one of the trim rings onto the puck. With the holes drilled we want to slide our cross members into position and snug them down to our frame brackets. We can then install our pucks. We want to take on of the 5/ 8ths button headed bolts and add a lock washer onto it, slide it down inside the puck and into the hole in the bed, and thread it into the cross members underneath. I am just going to snug those down for the time being until we get them all into place and then we can torque them down. With all of those in place we can go ahead and start the torquing process. We are going to start by torquing the pucks to the cross members, followed by the cross members to the frame brackets, and finally the frame brackets to the frame. You want to check with the directions to verify the appropriate torque rating for each individual bolt. With all the bolts torqued down we want to put our heat shield and spare tire back into place and our installation will be complete. This will conclude the installation of Signature Series rails and brackets part number 30061 on a 2009 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 series.