Gooseneck Trailer Hitch Installation - 2007 Dodge Ram 2500

Installation of a Gooseneck Trailer Hitch on a 2007 Dodge Ram 2500

Today on this 2007 Dodge Ram 2500 we are going to be installing part number C600-659, the double lock gooseneck hitch by Curt. For the ease of installation we have gone ahead and removed the rear tires and the spare tires just to make things a little more accessible and easier to install. Our first step is going to be finding 47-1/2 inches off the edge of our truck bed as this is an 8 foot bed, or considered a long bed pickup. This is going to be our center mark between our wheel wells and it is also our mark for 47-1/2 inches off the edge of the bed. What I am going to do now is drill a pilot hole through the bed liner, just making a mark in the steel bed. I am just using it as a reference point in the steel bed because I am going to re-measure everything to make sure that the bed liner is square to the truck bed. I am taking out our push pins for the removal of our bed liner. Next I am going to get my torque spit and ratchet. We have four hold down hooks that are going to have to be removed. Here is the passenger rear corner. We are going to do the other three the same way. Now I am going to go ahead and pull this bed liner out. You can see here is the mark we made with our pilot hole through the bed liner. Now what we will want to do is re-measure this so that we can see if we are still at our 47-1/2 inch mark. And you will see now we are actually about a quarter of an inch off. We need to go towards the cab a quarter of an inch. I am going to go ahead and check my wheel well to wheel well measurement now. See if there is any difference there. There is a slight difference from side to side between the wheel wells. We are going to need to move towards the passenger side about 1/8 of an inch. OK, now we have our pilot hole through the bed that is going to mark out our larger hole once we get our gooseneck in place. 1:55

Next what I am going to do is, for ease of installation, loosen up the bed bolts on the driver side and actually remove the bed bolts on the passenger side. Here is our second bolt. Now we have two more towards the front. Now what I am going to do is go over to the driver side, where the fasteners are going to be primarily exactly the same. We are going to loosen those but not remove them. I am going to back them off about half way of the bolt length just to give me enough room to be able to raise the passenger side bed up. OK, what I am doing now is assembling the side rails to the gooseneck head. Put our carriage bolt through the side rail. Thread on our nut. And right now we are just going to leave everything hand tight as we will need to make adjustments once we get into the truck. OK, what I am doing now is installing a block of wood. This will give me space here over the axle to slip the new gooseneck head and frame rails in. This is the space here that we are looking for so that we can slide in our unit. I have my head unit resting on the frame rail right now. What I am going to do is raise the vehicle up so that I can get under it and rest the rails on the passenger and the driver side. Here is our pilot hole from earlier. The goal of setting our head unit in place is to make sure that our tube is going to line up with our pilot hole. So what I am going to do now is muscle the head unit into place. What I am going to do now is go ahead and remove the block that I used to raise the bed up with so I can see how the head is lining up. OK, we have our head in place. We have it centered up. So far everything is looking pretty good. But what I want to do is go ahead and install my side plate so that I can make sure that all of my bolt holes that we are using the manufacturers frame line up properly. We are just doing this finger tight, because again it is precautionary, just to see if all of our measurements are correct, if our head is going to be sitting in the proper location, before we drill it out to the large hole for our ball. 4:03

Now with my side plate bolted up, I can see that the manufacturer bolt hole that we put our large carriage bolt through, here on the back side of the frame, is actually more rearward of the vehicle. So my head unit is going to have to come back. Before I do that, I want to go over to the driver side, put that side plate on and see if both sides are equal. The driver side mirrors the passenger side so it is basically the same thing. One difference to note on the driver side versus the passenger side is this emergency brake cable will have to be removed before we can install our side plate. We are going to set that aside for reinstallation later. One other item I want to move out of the way, just to be precautionary, is the wiring harness. We do not want to pinch it or harm it in any way. So what I am going to do is just loosen it from its mounts. Go ahead and pull it out of the way for the time being. That should get it out of our way enough that we do not have to worry about harming it. Now I can go ahead and put on my side plate. We are trying to install the lower bolt for our side plate. But in order to do that what we are going to have to do is move the exhaust out of our way. I like to use a little lubricant. I am just going to spray the hanger. There are a couple of manufacturer hold on clips here we are going to take off. These are not necessary to put back on. They are installed on the assembly line so that the exhaust does not fall off before it gets completely bolted on. We are able to move our exhaust out of the way enough. We should be able to just get our bolt started there. And again, the idea is just to make sure that our pilot hole is lined up correctly before we drill out the big hole for our pin in the head of our new gooseneck. Now I am going to go to the driver side and repeat that same process. 5:54

Now that we have our side rails removed, what we can do is raise the bed back up so that I can pull the head unit out. What we are going to do is remove our block from under the bed. Set it back down on the frame. OK, we are going to go ahead and drill out our large hole. This will be the hole that is necessary for the hitch to come up through the bed of the vehicle. One thing to be mindful of is that you make sure that you are clear underneath the vehicle and you are not going to be drilling into anything. OK, now that we have our hole cut out, what we want to do is put this rubber stripping around the cut out. That is how your finished product will look once you have outlined the hole. Just to verify and make sure I am as close as I can be, I am going to put this trim ring on and line up the screw holes there. It will also help hold it in place for me as it comes up almost flush with the bed. OK, now that we are centered up, we are good to go on the top side. I am going to go back underneath the truck. Tighten up all of the gooseneck head and frame rails and the side rails. Now that we have the rails to head tightened down, I am going to go ahead and torque them to specifications. OK, here we are on the passenger side. We are tightening up our side rails to our frame rails of our hitch. We are also running the bolt through the frame of the vehicle. OK, now that I have everything tightened down, I can go ahead and torque to specifications. OK, now that we have our side rails torqued down to specifications, we are going to go ahead and install our U-bolt. We have our U-bolt in place. We are going to put on our lock washers and our flange nuts. We are going to tighten them down and then torque to specifications. We are going to move over to the driver side and repeat the same process. For our U-bolt on the driver side we are going to install this bracket that allows it to compensate for the brake line. Put on our lock washer, our flange nut both top and bottom. We are going to tighten that down and torque to specifications. Now that we have our U-bolt torqued to specifications, we can go ahead and reinstall our emergency brake cable bracket. I am just going to loop it back around the cable. Put it in our side bracket here. Then we have a new nut and bolt to tighten it down with. The bolt goes through the backside. The flange nut goes on the outside. And we are just going to tighten it down. Now that the emergency brake cable holder is back in place, we can go on the inside of the frame rail and put all of our wires back in place. Now our wires are back in place. Everything is re-secured. We can reinstall our exhaust hanger. 8:29

OK, what we are doing right now is we are prepping our bed liner to sill our 4 inch hole. I am going to put blocks under either side of it so that my bit does not hit the ground. Now we have our cut out for our bed. We can go ahead and reinstall our liner. Now that we have our liner reinstalled in the truck bed, we can go ahead and reinstall our hold down hooks and our two snaps in the back. OK, we are going to drill 1/2 inch holes in the two outer oblong shapes here. We are going to get as close to the center as possible around your exhaust. You will note that it is in the valley of the bed, or the low rib of the bed. We do not want to be on the inside which will put me on the high rib of the bed. We are going to move over to the driver side and repeat the same process. OK, now that we have our U-bolt for our chain hold downs drilled out, we can go ahead and install them. And then we will go underneath and we will add our spring tension, washers and nylon lock nuts. First I am going to put on a washer, and then our spring. I am going to add another washer and then a nylon lock nut. Alright, and we are going to do that to all four legs of our U-bolt chain hold downs. We can go ahead and tighten them down to specifications. We are going to move over to the driver side and repeat the same process. What we are doing now is we are going to install our lock handle. But first, we have to drill a hole through the outer edge of the bed. OK, you can see here I have gone ahead and taken m y handle and fed it into the head of my gooseneck just to get a line on where we need to notch it out. Let us just do a test fit. See if our handle is going to go. We can install a washer. We are going to put in our double lock pin. Double check to make sure I made it all of the way to my double pin lock. We are good. Now we can go ahead and put on our spring. We have another washer to slide in there. I need to tape that all of the way in until I can put a bolt and nut on it. Alright, we are going to tighten our rod bolt down. And that completes the installation of lock rod and double lock pin. Now that our hitch install is complete, we can retighten the bed bolts. We can go ahead and reinstall the back wheels and put the spare tire back in place. That completes the installation of part number C600-659 by Curt on a 2007 Dodge Ram 2500.