Gooseneck Trailer Hitch Installation - 2007 Dodge Ram 1500

Installation of a Gooseneck Trailer Hitch on a 2007 Dodge Ram 1500

Today on this 2007 Dodge Ram 1500, we are going to install part number 9464-38 from Draw-Tite. This is the Hide-A-Goose gooseneck hitch. What we have done so far is gone ahead and removed the spare tire and the wheels on the back axle. You do not have to take the tires off of the vehicle but it makes the installation a lot easier to do. Also in this case, it might be a good idea to loosen the exhaust up in order to have room to install the hitch head as well. In this case however, we are actually going to do it a little bit different. We are actually going to loosen the bed itself up, tilt it up and we will install the gooseneck hitch as one piece. There are three bolts on each side we need remove to loosen the bed. We have this one here, and on the back side towards the tailgate and there is one hidden at the very back end of the rail right here. We are going to use a piece of timber to help push up the bed and then we will use a small block of wood to actually hold it in there while we install the hitch itself. 1:02

Alright, we will go ahead and put the actual hitch together now, loosely. This is the actual Hide-A-Goose itself and we are going to put on our cross bars. It is going to fit on top just like this. And we are just going to use the four outside bolt holes. Alright, on the back side we will install the conical tooth washer and nut. And we are just going to get them to where they just touch. We are not going to keep it tight or anything like that because we will have to move it around when we line it up with the hole in the bed. And one other thing to check is that the threads on the end of the rails themselves will get coated with paint. Sometimes they are hard to thread on so it might be a good idea to run the nuts on and off before we put everything together. We can go ahead and slide in the hitch. The hitch itself if offset. So you want that offset going towards the front of the vehicle. It is a good idea to have an extra set of hands to help hold it up and push it in. 2:03

We have the hitch in place. We will go ahead and remove the wooden block and go ahead and lower the bed back down. Alright, at this point we can go ahead and reinstall the bed bolts. Before we get in the bed, let us go ahead and loosely attach the frame brackets to the cross members themselves. You can see there is a little tab right here. It will go towards the back of the truck. And then this tab with the oval is going to go towards the front. And we are just going to line them up with the rails. Move it around as needed. Alright, you want to make sure that this folded edge on top reaches over the frame itself. When we tighten everything up, this will raise up away from the frame a little bit too. We will go ahead and install two conical tooth washers and two lock nuts. Now to attach the frame bracket to the frame itself is going to use this U-bolt right here. We are looking from the inside of the frame here on the driver side and our U-bolt is going to fit right next to the frame. So we have to sneak it behind the brake lines here. The top of the bolt is going to get just a lock washer and a nut. The bottom half will get the conical tooth washer and nut. And then we will go into the bed and start drilling our hole. 3:13

We will go ahead and measure out for the hole we need to drill. We will measure from the edge of the bed itself. And we will go back as described in the instructions. And there are two edges in the bed of the truck and it comes out to exactly 48 inches which is really handy. So we will just split that in half and find our center. We are going to start with a 1/8 inch drill bit for our pilot hole. Then we will double check with the hitch below. Now we can go ahead and drill it out with a hole saw. We will take the hitch ball and we will use that to align the hitch the way we want it. Alright, with the hole drilled out we can go ahead and tighten up the Hide-A-Goose itself up to the frame rails. Once you verify that the Hide-A-Goose fits in the hole in the bed of the truck, we will tighten up the U-bolts first and then torque them down as specified. When you tighten down the U-bolts, make sure you do it as evenly as possible. Then move on to the cross members, here and here. And then we will tighten down the Hide-A-Goose underneath for good. Next we can work on the handle for the Hide-A-Goose ball. Let us go ahead and just put it over the frame rail and push it in to this part here and we will slide the hitch pin into place. 4:52

Now the next thing we are going to do is work on the safety chain U-bolts. Now what we are going to do with the U-bolts is kind of put them in the slot here. We are going to use those to find the lower part of the corrugation. What you want happening is when you install the U-bolt you want it sitting down as low as possible in the bottom half of the corrugation. It looks like the inside of the slot is the lowest part so we will go ahead and use a 1/2 inch bit to mark our center of our bolt hole. We will use a smaller bit for a pilot hole and then finish up to our final size going from the top down. OK go ahead and give it a quick test. OK, it looks like we are good. We will go ahead and clean up a little bit and then the U-bolts in. Alright, let us get back underneath the truck and install the rest of the hardware. What we are going to do is first install the flat washer and spring. Push that up and install the lock nut. And do the same thing for the remaining three bolts. Now we will go ahead and tighten down the nuts. And we only need to go about two or three threads past the nut and that is it. Now that we have our hitch installed, let us go ahead and show you the operation of it. When you want to open it up and take the ball out, just pull it out. Pull it to either side. It does not matter. And it will stay open and then you can take the ball out. And when you have the ball back in, put it back to center and the ball is back into place. The last thing to do is go ahead and reinstall the spare tire and the wheels. And with that we are finished. There you have it for part number 9464-38 from Draw-Tite.