Video Transcript for Hands-On with the B&W 5th Wheel Setup w/ Replacement Gooseneck Pin Box

Hey there neighbors, Kevin with etrailer and today we're going to be taking a closer look at the B&W Fifth Wheel To Gooseneck Pin Box. If you're someone who deals with a lot of road shock, chucking, or maybe you just want to clean out your bed so that way when you do get to your campsite, you can throw all of those lawn chairs. Maybe you're going to go down to the lake, you've got pool noodles, you got all your coolers, more firewood, all kinds of stuff you want to load in there. You don't have to deal with that bulky hitch anymore. You can simply swap over to a fifth wheel to gooseneck pin box like the B&W one we have today. If you're looking at this because you're replacing your existing fifth wheel pin box, the big thing to know is that B&W makes these in different versions to match the most common factory pin boxes like the Lippert Rhino and Lippert 1621 or 1621HD.

So before ordering, you'll want to verify what pin box you currently have on your trailer, but once you have the correct version, this is designed to bolt right in place of your existing pin box and give you that gooseneck connection without having to modify your trailer. Now what makes this different than all the rest is that this is going to have four pivot points. So we're going to have our whole front of our pin box, our physical connection down to the gooseneck ball be able to kind of shift up and down. And when it shifts up and down, that's going to be pressing up against a SumoSpring. Now if you've been in the RV world at all, you've definitely heard of SumoSprings that make it much easier to really deal with that road shock, try to dampen all of that out and hopefully also help with all that chucking.

And that's exactly what we're going to get here with this design because it's going to press up against that and then that spring's going to go back to its original form. It's going to push that back out and then force that shock back down through the vehicle so that way we're not feeling it up in the driver's seat here. Now along with that, this is going to be maintenance free. There's no break in period. There's no extra stuff you have to do.

You don't have to lug around air compressor or hope that there's a gas station nearby with an air machine that you could actually use and would hopefully function. And then on top of that, this is going to be pretty easy when it comes to maintenance overall because we just have those four grease points on our pivot points and then also a straight grease point that's down here at our connection with our ball. So really once you pick this up and get it on, there's not really much you're going to have to do to keep it well maintained. One thing that is especially nice with these replacement kits is that B&W includes the gooseneck ball and safety chain components you need for the conversion. Now one of the other nice features about this pin box is that it has a really wide funnel.

So it makes hooking up a lot simpler so that way you're not having to be so exact that you're getting in and out of the truck, having to go back an inch, go forward an inch and playing that game. This is going to be a lot easier to just drop it right down on there, have it link right up and it's going to auto latch on you. You'll see the pull cord for it, which is right over here, just kind of pop back and forth as it latches on. And then when it's time to disconnect, all you have to do is pull that cord, which the handle's right up at the back so you can easily grab it from the side of the truck or potentially from the back depending on where you're standing and be able to easily disconnect. Another thing that I like about this is that safety chains that we have are included as well as the hardware. And that's something that you don't always see with every single pin box. A lot of the time you're buying the pin box and then finding out, oh hey, I need to go buy new hardware because the hardware I have, I don't really want to reuse. It's kind of worn out or just doesn't look as good anymore and it's a safety concern. And then the same thing with the safety chains. This is going to be a requirement since it is a gooseneck connection now. So you absolutely have to have these to be safe and legal on the road. So it's awesome that they're going to send that with it because I know a lot of people don't always double check that. Maybe you've never used a gooseneck pin box before or any kind of gooseneck trailer and didn't know that that was a requirement because you didn't have to have that before with a fifth wheel hitch and standard pin box. And this is all going to be included so that way you're not having to purchase that separately or find out, oh, hey, now I can't take my trip because I have to wait for some safety chains to show up. And when it comes to these pin boxes, there's going to be four options for you currently. The first being our bolt pattern because there's a lot of different bolt holes options when we get up to our mounting point. Now if you do have a Rhino, you will want to make sure that you're getting your Rhino box version of this so that way it actually matches up with that bolt pattern. And then from there there's going to be two different pin weight capacities and that's essentially going to be what capacity spring you got in there to help dampen that. So this is going to have an overall trailer weight capacity of 25,000 no matter which one you get across the board, but that pin weight capacity is either going to be 3250 or 4500. In our case, this is the 3250 version of it for this specific one and that's going to be a good one for us just based on our trailer's pin weight. Now if you don't know what your trailer's gross vehicle weigh rating is or its pin weight, go to the driver's side and look for that white sticker that's going to list out that info for you so that way you can make sure that you are sizing this correctly to exactly what your trailer's pin weight is. Now if you don't know what your bolt pattern is, look for this sticker. Most of the time it's going to be on the mounting wings right here. Sometimes it can be up on the trailer itself as well. But what we're looking for here is the RPO number, the LCI item number and then the serial number. And then we can look up what your chassis bolt pattern is instead of just trying to guess at it or take measurements. Now you can also, if you look in the instructions for this, it'll list out the measurements that you can take to go from bolt hole to bolt hole across and you can get a general idea, but it's always nice to verify using those serial numbers. Now as far as insulation goes, to me, it's not too hard, but at the same time we have a forklift to use to lift up all this heavy equipment here. This is one where you definitely need to have a lot of friends that are really strong to help lift it up or some kind of heavy machinery to get this in place. So if that's the case for you, you don't have enough friends with enough muscles, you don't have a forklift or some other kind of bucket to kind of lift that up with, then definitely feel free to check out our installer locator and you can get it installed professionally. We have done a little bit of road testing. We've gone around our lot and just kind of gone over our bump course a little bit and then just kind of some of the wavier or more kind of tore up parts of our parking lot so we can get some of those bumps like you would experience out on the road. And then from there we also went out on the interstate down a little town highway that was full of potholes, full of all kinds of different patches of asphalt. It was honestly real, real bumpy ride even without having a trailer on the vehicle. So the thing I noticed with this is that you'll get that kind of little bump and it's almost like just two little bumps and then it kind of corrects itself and evens itself out. That's exactly what we're looking for. We want to correct that so we're not sliding all over the place. Now I've driven this truck and trailer quite a bit because this is my father's. I've taken it all the way out to Rend Lake, which is about an hour and a half drive for us and I've done that with a standard pin box and the Companion. And one of the things when I was driving with that was I was getting a ton of chucking, enough to where I was sliding in my seat because these are leather seats and that was something I didn't have at all while driving around with this new gooseneck pin box here. So overall, I do think this is a great product. I think it's really going to help you out if you are dealing with that chucking, all that road shock, up and down vibration. It's really going to make it a lot more comfortable for you. Well, that's going to do it for our closer look at the B&W Fifth Wheel to Gooseneck Pin Box. My name's Kevin. If you still have some questions about this pin box or it's fitment, definitely feel free to reach out to us via our ask the experts link, a comment on this video or a phone call to our customer service department and we'd be happy to help you out on your journey.