Gooseneck Trailer Hitch Installation - 2006 GMC Sierra

Installation of a Gooseneck Trailer Hitch on a 2006 GMC Sierra

Today we are going to be installing Hide-a-Goose part number 9465-4434 on a 2006 GMC Sierra 2500. The first thing we want to do is to go ahead and lower the spare tire. That will give us a lot more room to install the gooseneck system. The second step is to go ahead and cut out a section of the heat shield, which is basically forward of the axle in between the two hat channels, which is basically parallel to the gas tank as well. We need to go ahead and cut that section out to allow us to get the crossmembers into place. OK, with that section of the heat shield removed, we want to next go inside the bed. And we are going to go ahead and mark and then drill our hole for the opening in the Hide-a-Goose system. You want to check with your directions to verify the appropriate dimension that you are going to be drilling from. On this particular short-bed model, we are going to go ahead and mark from the end of the bed at 44-1/2 inches, and then we just want to center that in between the two wheel wells, which will land us right in the center of this rib here. And with my dimensions marked out, I am just going to go ahead and center punch that location, and then we are going to go ahead and drill out our 3-1/2 inch hole.

And then next we are going to go back under the bed, go ahead and loosen up the bed bolts, and then we will slide our crossmembers into place. In order to loosen the bed, we want to go ahead, and we are actually going to remove the four bolts on the drivers side. And we are just going to loosen the ones on the passengers side. And that should give us enough wiggle room to get the crossmembers into place. OK, with the bed loosened up, we want to go ahead and put the crossmembers into place. I am going to go ahead and put the rear one in first. And what you can actually do, you can actually pre-assemble the whole Hide-a-Goose system and slide it through, or you can just put each crossmember in one at a time and then attach the gooseneck head afterward, which is what I am going to do. We are going to start by putting the 5/8 carriage bolts into position here on this rear crossmember. The rear crossmember is the one that has the carriage hole and the oblong hole on the top and the notches cut out here at the bottom. It is also a little bit shorter than the front one. I am just going to go ahead and slide that through from the drivers side over to the passengers side, and I am going to slide this one back against this hat channel here. The front crossmember, we want to make sure that we have the side with all the holes in it. That is going to be the top side, to be on top. Next we want to go ahead and put the head assembly in, and we want to go ahead and align the two bolts here in the rear crossmember with the holes here at the top. We are also going to need to put two of the 5/8 carriage bolts into the holes here at the side of the front crossmember. Those are going to attach to the holes here in the side of the head assembly. When we are ing this, we want to make sure that the side with the handle is on the drivers side. To ease in the installation of the head assembly here, I went ahead and ed the ball. I am actually going to feed it up through the hole that we drilled in the bed. Have a second person go ahead and hold it in place while we attach the carriage bolts. I left the bolts on the gooseneck head assembly loose for the time being until we get everything in place, get our final adjustments made. And then we will go ahead and tighten everything down.

Next, we want to come over here to the side of the frame. I am going to start here at the drivers side. And we are going to go ahead and put our side brackets on. You want to check your side brackets to make sure you have got the appropriate one for the drivers and passengers side. The big indicator would be the curvature of the bracket itself it should match the curve of the frame. I am going to set it up so that this section here goes around the hat channel there, and then it should match up with the studs from the crossmembers. We are just going to loosely install those with the flat washer, lock washer and nut. And then through the existing hole in the side of the frame, we want to use the 5/8 bolt along with the block. We are going to run that from the inside of the frame out. And then we just want to put the U-bolt onto the two fasteners here. We are going to bolt that from the inside of the frame outward. And then we are going to repeat that for the passengers side as well. When hand tightening them down at first, we are going to start by tightening the brackets on the side of the frame first, which would consist of the 5/8 bolt and the two U-bolt screws. When tightening down the U-bolt, you want to make sure that you tighten it evenly, so that the same amount of threads are protruding out both sides. We will do that on both sides. We come back and tighten up the 5/8 bolts on the crossmembers, and then we will finish up with the bolts on the gooseneck head itself.

All right, now that we have hand tightened down all of the bolts and checked our alignment with the hole that we drilled in the bed, we can go ahead and torque everything down. You want to check with your instructions to verify the appropriate torque rating for each individual bolt. And again, I am going to start by torquing the bolts on the frame brackets first, and then we will go back and tighten the bolts for the gooseneck head last. OK, with all of our bolts torqued down, we are going to go ahead and install our safety chains. From underneath the vehicle, you can see the slotted holes here in the underside of the gooseneck head, and this is where we are going to be installing our U-bolts on each side. We are going to be drilling 9/16 holes in each one of these slots for our safety chains. When installing them, if you can, it is better off to actually catch one of the undulations on the lower side of the bed ribs. Drill into that area there, because then when we go back and install the safety chain on the top side, they will actually be sitting inside of a groove, giving you more of a flat surface in the bed.

OK, with all four of our holes drilled for our safety chain, we can go ahead and come back inside the bed and them down. And then, from the underside, we just want to secure the safety chains. We are just going to put a flat washer, and then the spring and then the nut. We are going to do that in all four locations. And then we want to go ahead and tighten the nuts down. We want to make sure that when we tighten them down that you have at least three threads protruding past the nut. And lastly, we want to go ahead, we want to put the handle on for the release of the gooseneck ball. In doing so, we want to feed it from the outside of the drivers side bracket, slide the handle inside of the release tube and the cotter pin. We want to align both holes. All right, and then lastly we just want to go ahead and make sure that we tighten up all of the bed bolts that we loosened earlier. With the bed bolts tightened down, make sure that you put your spare tire back up into place, and your installation will be complete. This will conclude the installation of Hide-a-Goose part number 9465-4434 on a 2006 GMC Sierra 2500 short bed.