Today, on this 2006 Ford F-250 Diesel, we will be installing Hide-a-Goose part number 9460-48. The first thing we want to do in preparation of installing our gooseneck assembly is go ahead and lower your exhaust down. Depending on your model year, this being a 2006, we just need to remove the rear most hanger here, but I actually want to take the whole bracket down off of the frame rail because we are going to be installing a new bracket piece to help lower the exhaust once the gooseneck is installed. There is just one bolt to the side of the frame we just want to set that off to the side because we will be reusing that bolt and flange nut assembly there. Now that we have the exhaust lowered, we can go ahead and slide our cross members into place. You do want to note that the two cross members that come with the installation kit are different. The front cross member has two extra holes here in the middle whereas the rear one does not. So, before we slide those into place we do want to install our carriage bolts into position because once we rails in place we will not be able to get the carriage bolts into place. We are going to be using 5/8 carriage bolts in these positions here. 1:05
On the rear channel we want to go ahead and install them in the square holes and then on the front ones, again, into the square holes. Another good idea, before we get started, you will notice the threads here at the end where the cross members are going to attach to the frame brackets have a heavy coat of paint on them. Might be a good idea to take the nuts, run them on and off a few times to help clean off the threads and make the installation much easier once you get the cross members into place. When installing the cross members there is an order of operation that we want to abide by. We are first going to slide the rear hitch handle in and what we want to do is slide the passenger side up and over the exhaust. Up and over the front and then put the rear section in back towards the rear hat channel here. Then we will just take and pull back the passenger side until it rests against this rear hat channel here. On the front hat channel we actually want to slide the threaded piece in on the drivers side. We will manipulate over the exhaust. The push pin is located here on the drivers side frame rail just forward of our suspension spring. This is going to need to be removed as well. 2:25
Now that we have the cross members set up and in place, we can come out to outside of the frame and go ahead and place our frame brackets onto the side. We are going to loosely attach those with a flat washer, lock washer, and nut. Then we will take the 5/8 by 3 inch long carriage bolt and we will it into the square hole here. We do need to but the 5/8 by 1 ½ by 2 inch thick block in between the frame bracket and the frame itself. We will be loosely attaching that with the 1 ½ by 3 inch block, lock washer, and nut. Then next go ahead and install the U bolt from the inside of the frame rail out through the attached side bracket. You will notice that the U-bolt will be at an angle so you want to make sure that you do not pinch any of the wiring harnesses or brake cables that may be on the inboard side as well. And we will be attaching that to the frame bracket using the ½ in flat washer, lock washer, and nut. You always want to make sure that when using a U-bolt like this that you tighten it up evenly. You want to see it flat on the back side there. Okay, now that we have our side brackets loosely installed, we can go into the bed of the truck. We are going to mark and drill out our hole for the gooseneck ball. On short bed models, we want to take our dimension from the end of the bed here. On long bed models we will be marking to 48 inches even and then we just want to center that mark in between the wheel wells. We are just going to take and punch out that hole. Then we will go ahead and take and drill out our hole here. And now that we have our hole drilled we can come back underneath the vehicle and install our head assembly. The hole in the head assembly is off set, we want the off set to face forward on the truck so that the tower for the handle is over here on the drivers side. And we are going to be using the outer holes, the outer four sets of holes to attach to the carriage bolts that we put into the cross members. We are attaching these with the flat washers and lock nuts. 4:43
Okay, with the bolts loosely installed on the head assembly, we are just going to push the head assembly up into the hole we had drilled previously and while doing so we are going to tighten and torque the bolts down on the head assembly here to the cross members. You do want to check with the directions to verify the appropriate torque ratings for all of the gooseneck fasteners. Now, we are going to go over to the side brackets where we will tighten those down and torque them as well. I am going to start by tightening down the carriage bolt here that is pointing through the inboard side off its frame bracket. You want to be careful of all of the wire harnesses and the lines here. Then next I am going to go ahead and tighten down the U-bolts and again you want to make sure that you tighten them evenly. And then we will go ahead and do the cross member bolts. Okay, then we will go back over to the other side, tighten the bolts down for the other bracket, then we will come back and torque them. And we want to repeat that torquing procedure for the other side as well. 6:01
The next step, with all of our bolts torqued down, is to go ahead and drill out our holes for our safety chains. You see, looking underneath the vehicle, we have go two oblong holes on each side that we are going to be drilling 9/16 holes through for our safety chains. What we want to do, being that this is oblong, it allows you to center your hole and what we are attempting to do is to catch one of the ribs that are facing down so that when you put the safety chain up into the bed the safety chain will actually be sitting on one of the corrugations and leaves more of a flush look in your bed. And with our holes drilled we can go ahead and slide our safety U-bolts from the top of the bed down through the holes. You will notice that the U-bolts are different. The one has a shorter leg on it. The purpose of that is to accommodate the smaller space above the exhaust over here on the passenger side of the vehicle. So, we want that shorter leg to be facing toward the rear on the passenger side. Then we are just going to go ahead and attach those using the flat washers, springs, and nut at the bottom. That is a lock nut. Okay, and then we will go ahead and tighten those up. What we want to do is tighten the nut up just enough to where we see just three threads protruding past the nut at the bottom. We are going to the handle from the outboard side of the frame, up over the frame and through the hole here then what we are going to do is align the hole here in the handle with the hole here in the collar. Just feed that through, line the two up, and we will slide our cotter pin through. Then when you pull on the handle that will allow us to remove the gooseneck ball. The only thing that we have left to do is to go ahead and shim down our exhaust over here and again depending on your model you will have a different procedure over here. On this particular model, being a 2006, the set up that we will be using is the longer spacer bracket here. Four holes in the upper leg, we are going to align that and we want this square hole here to align with the hole in our original exhaust bracket. You might find that the hardware will not go through there, the hole might be just a bit too small not only for this hole but for the upper most hole as well that we are supposed to be using the 7/16 bolt on. If that is the case then you might need to take a drill bit and enlarge each one of those out. Okay, then we will go ahead and lift the bracket up. We are going to be attaching, again, using the 7/16 bolts. The two holes here in the bracket through those holes in the frame. Then we will be attaching here on the end board side using the lock nuts provided with the installation kit. Then we will just go ahead and tighten those down. With our exhaust bracket mounted back up, we just want to make sure to put our spare tire back up into place and our installation will be complete. And this will conclude the installation of Hide-a-Goose part number 9460-48 on a 2006
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