Reese Quick-Install Custom Installation Kit w/ Base Rails for 5th Wheel Trailer Hitches

Video Transcript for Fifth Wheel Trailer Hitch Installation - 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 3500

Today on this 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 3500 Crewcab, we're going to show you part number RP50066-58. This is the Reese Quick-Install Custom Base Rails Installation Kit for fifth-wheel trailer hitches. This is what it looks like when it's installed it the truck. With this part number you get the 2 bed rails you see here and all the hardware needed to install. This is the rail system that's been along for a very long time, and it's considered a 10-bolt system with 5 bolts on each rail. You have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then the other 5 on the 2nd rail. It will be your normal 10-bolt system.

We'll take a look. We have multiple slots built in to the base rail. This will work with all Reese's older designs as well as their newer designed hitches that are out there. If we take a look at our frame bracket that comes with the kit, you can see it goes to the frame. It uses 2 bolts to hold it in place against the frame. It uses existing holes in the truck as well to mount up the frame bracket to.

Of course, you still have to drill through the bolt for the 10 bolts that go through the top. Next, we'll go ahead and show you how the kit installed. The first thing we need to do is go ahead and take some steps to go ahead and get our truck ready to install our hitch. We're going to go ahead and remove the spare tire. That will give us extra working room underneath. We're also going to remove our tires and wheels for the back axle to make access a little bit easier to the frame.

You don't have to do this, but it makes is a lot easier. If anything, raise the frame off the suspension however you can to have easy access to the frame on the outside. Next, we're going to go ahead and lower our spare tire shield. This will also be re-installed once we're done. We'll use a 13mm socket to remove this fastener here and one right here. Now, we need to go ahead and lower our exhaust to give us some extra working room as well.

I'm just going to use an old cargo strap and use it to pick the weight up off of it, and then, we'll go ahead and spray down the rubber hangers with some lubricant. We'll push, pull, and pry them off going all the way up towards the front as far as we can go. There's a special exhaust tool you can find at your local auto parts store too to make this a little bit easier. You can go ahead and loosen up the hanger at the flange where the exhaust bolts together, but we'll go ahead and try it by lowering our strap and see how much room we have. We have a pretty good amount of room. I think we'll leave it just like that. Our fasteners for our hitch are going to end up behind the heat shield here. What I like to do is go ahead and bend the heat shield up and out of the way using a floor jack or anything to push it up and out of thew way. Here's some extra room. I'm going to actually go and make a cut right here so I have something to fold up and out of my way, that way we can get our hand and have access for our tools through here. We'll do the same thing on this side as well. We'll go ahead and cut this square piece out of the way. We'll go ahead and use a jack to and just push out heat shield up and out of the way and up against the bed. The last little edge by the frame will probably get in the way too. We'll go ahead and just take our pry bar and just push it up and out of the way. Now, we got our truck ready to install our hitch. We'll go ahead and put one of the bed rails into the bed of the truck, and we'll measure out the location for it. From the edge of the bed, not the tailgate, from the edge of the bed back we'll measure out as described in the instructions. There are 2 different measurements for different bed lengths, for a 6' bed and 8' bed. We're going to using the 8' bed marks. We'll go ahead and take our base rail and put it up to our marks. Then, we'll go ahead and make sure it's center from left to right. Once you're satisfied with it being even left to right, we'll go ahead and start marking out our first holes. I'm using a 1/2" bit just to mark the center of our square hole. Here will be our center bolt hole. Now that we have our marks made, we'll go ahead and make a pilot hole first with a 1/8" bit. Then, we'll take a frame bracket and make sure it lines up with the holes we just drilled in the bed before we make them any bigger. We'll take one of our frame brackets, and you'll notice this edge right here from here to here is longer than this side here. The short side goes towards the front. These oval holes will line up with these round holes here. Let's go ahead and put our frame bracket up into place and make a note of our pilot holes we drilled first. Then, we'll go ahead and look up inside there to make sure they line up. It may help to have any extra set of hands to help hold it up to verify the alignment. We'll go ahead and drill out our remaining center hole here. Then, we'll go ahead and enlarge all of our holes up 9/16". At this point, we'll go ahead and start working with our frame brackets. We need to install this square block and this large carriage bolt inside the frame, and we'll pull it out through this hole. To help us do that, we'll use the provided bolt leader. We'll go ahead and run it through the hole and out the access hole on the other side of the frame. Here's our bolt leader through our round access hole. We'll take our block, thread it through the bolt leader into the frame, and then thread on our bolt, push it into the frame and then pull it out the hole. We're just going to leave the whole assembly sit like that for now. We'll repeat the same process for this hole over here. With the bolt leader in place, we'll go ahead and put our frame bracket onto our bolts. We can use our bolt leader to help keep the bolts in position. We'll go ahead and remove our bolt leader, and then, we'll install a 5/8" conical tooth washer. Make sure the teeth are what stays towards the hitch bracket, and then a 5/8" nut. Now, let's go to the other one and repeat the same process. Now, we're definitely going to leave these loose so we can move them around, maybe just enough where it snugs the bracket straight up against the frame. We're done with our passenger side for now. Let's go ahead and repeat the same process over on the driver side. On our driver side, the holes are a little bit obscured by the brake lines and the wiring, but you just go over the top of it, and there's plenty of room to work with. Next, we'll go ahead and align our brackets with our holes in the bed. We'll also install these U-shaped blocks. They'll go between the frame bracket and the corrugation of the bed. We did the same thing on both sides of the truck. This doesn't have to be super exact, but we've just got to have some material between the corrugation and the frame bracket. It may help to use a screwdriver to help manipulate it around as well. We'll go ahead and run our carriage bolts through our bed rail and then through our frame brackets. We'll go back underneath the truck and install our remaining hardware, which will be a conical tooth washer, a lock washer, and then a 1/2" nut. Now, we're going to use the same fasteners combination on all 5 bolts for our bed rail. Our center bolt will actually get one of these U-shaped blocks as well, and then, it will get the same fastener combination. Let's go ahead and work on our base rail. We'll just roughly put it into position, and then, we'll use our hitch to put it into place. In this case, we're actually using a Gooseneck adapter. This will properly space our rails for us. If you have a regular fifth wheel hitch, you want to try both of them out and make sure they fit okay before you cinch them down for good. With this in place, you'll want to go ahead and take a tape measure and check if we're square by going diagonal on both sides. Once we're satisfied with our rails being square, we'll go ahead and mark our holes. It's going to be different locations for the front rail. It will use these two holes on the very end of the rails on both sides. In the center, we'll use this hole as well. Just like we did before, we'll go ahead and mark our holes and then drill them out, working up to our final hole size of 9/16". When we drill these holes out, you want to be careful because there's some wiring, some brake lines, and a gas tank in the vicinity of the holes of the holes we're drilling. Let's go ahead and put our rail back into place after our holes are drilled. We'll need these U-shaped blocks again, but this time, they'll go underneath our rail on top like so. Sometimes, you'll have enough room to install them longways, but you see how it sits up. You want them sitting flat. In this case, we have to have them go with the truck and do the same thing to the other side. Then, we can install our carriage bolts. Now, we'll go back underneath, and we'll go ahead and install our hardware. We'll also go ahead and put our hitch back into place as well to help keep everything in alignment. I'll go ahead and put my pins in as well. This will help keep everything in alignment as we tighten it down a little bit later on. Now, we're back underneath our truck, and we'll go ahead and install the hardware just like we did on the rail towards the tailgate. This is the hardware for the rail going towards the front. This is good reason to lower our exhaust. We have plenty of working room to get access to our bolts up here. When we install our hardware on the passenger side, it's not too bad to get to. You have to lean over exhaust and work your way up in there and get the hardware installed. On the driver side, it's going to be a bit of a different story. You almost have to have an extra set of hands to twist the bolt from the top side while you hold the conical tooth washer, lock washer, and nut underneath and thread into it that way. Once you get it started, then you can go ahead and work it into place. With all of our hardware loosely installed, we can go ahead and hand tighten down our bolts. To do that, a 3/4" ratchet wrench works pretty good in this application especially over the gas tank. Now, we've tightened down our hardware, we'll tighten down our frame brackets to our bed rails first. Once we've got these bolts tightened down by hand, we'll go ahead and torque them down as specified in the instructions. We're using a crow's foot to get access to it and then torque it down. With our bed rail brackets torqued down to the frame brackets, now we'll go ahead and tighten and torque our frame brackets to our frame. We'll use a 5/16" socket for that. We're done with our driver side. We'll do the same thing on our passenger side. With the hitch bolts all torqued down, we can go ahead and reassemble the rest of our truck. We'll put up our exhaust, our heat shield for the spare tire, the spare tire, and the tires and wheels. We're going to put our exhaust back up. I'm going to go ahead and pull it back up with our strap and then work from the front towards the back. This one might be easier to just to take off and put on. Sometimes, it helps to use a screwdriver to help guide it into place to get it started. Once all the hangers are re-installed, we can go ahead and take our strap off, and we'll go ahead and put our heat shield back up for our spare tire. With that, that will finish it for our install of part number RP50066-58, the Reese Quick-Install Custom Base Rail Installation Kit for fifth-wheel trailer hitches on our 2015 Chevrolet Silverado 3500 Crewcab. .