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

Video Transcript for Reese Quick-Install Custom Base Rails Kit Installation - 2016 Ford F-150

Today on our 2016 Ford F-150 we're going to take a look at and also show you how to install the Reese Quick Install Custom Base Rails and Installation Kit for Fifth Wheel Trailer Hitches. Part number is RP50087-58. Now to begin our installation on the bottom of our rails here we need to place on the galvanic strip. This is going to protect against any corrosion. You can see it's pre-cut to where our bolts will pass through there fine with no issues. They come in strips like this.

It's kind of a universal strip. You want to center the middle hole location here with the middle hole in the rail, and then apply it from there because these will have a little bit of overrun. See on the end there how it kind of hangs over If you start at one end you might run into an issue where your holes won't line up. Now, it's not the end of the world, you can just cut some notches out, cut it with a cross in each one of them, but save you a little time if you center it up with that hole. We want to do this on each of our 4 lips on our base rails here. Then we can just trim those off at the end there, just like that. You'll have some smaller galvanic strips as well.

That's going to go anywhere that we've got steel to aluminum contact there in the bed, just to prevent corrosion, so keep that in mind. Now with our strips in place we're going to get our rear rail mounted into position. We'll measure up from the rear of the bed. We need to be at 28 and 3/4 of an inch. It's going to take you a little bit.

You really want to take your time in getting this positioned properly. First we'll establish where that 28 and 3/4 is on each side. When you move one side you're probably going to move the other side, so double check it there. Now we're going to measure out from each wheel well here. We need to get it centered on the truck. All right, now what we'll do is mark our hole locations.

We're going to use the very outside hole here in the rear of the rail. Then we're going to come to the front side and we're going to go over to the third hole location. Get that marked as close to the center as possible. For the middle hole here we're going to use the rear hole for the back rail and then the same holes here on the outside. Now we can move our rail out of the way, center punch those locations and we're going to drill them out with a 1/8 inch drill bit. Now, as you drill out your holes you want to make sure that you don't run into anything that may be underneath the bed as well. Once we've got our holes drilled it's a good idea to vacuum up the shavings so you don't track it around the bed and scratch it up. Now we're going to get our side plates installed here. We want to use on the driver side, we'll want the double holes to be forward. You can see we've already got one of our galvanic isolators in place here. We may have to position a couple on the front; we'll see when we get there. Anywhere that the steel makes contact with the bed again, you want to make sure that you drop that in place. 2 holes forward and those lips or those tabs that stick off, those go in. We'll get our hardware in position. To do that we're going to use a pull wire. You can see we've got a hat channel here, a hat channel here. We're going to be using this large hole, we're going to be using this hole to attach. Take our pull wire that's going to go in, and there's a larger hole inside the frame rail. You'll see it's going to come out right there. We'll go in there and take a look at where that came out for you. Now we've got the tires off of the vehicle. It just makes it a lot easier for you to see. This wouldn't be a requirement in installing it. They do recommend lowering down the spare tire. We also removed the heat shield, again, that's just so you can see. It's not a requirement to do the installation, so keep that in mind. Here you see where that's come out that large oval shaped hole. Just beware that you've got brake lines there that you don't want to do any damage to. We're going to slide on the thinner of the spacer blocks. This one's going to be a little bit longer. Once that's slid on we'll thread on our carriage bolt just like that. It's a good idea to feed these in separately. We'll bring them back and they're going to come out of the hole the inside of our frame rail there. Once we've brought that through you're going to slide on the smaller round hole spacer block. It's thicker, but it's smaller in overall size. That gets slid on. Take our pull wire off there. Slide our bracket in place. Now we've got a conical tooth washer that's going to slide on, and we'll thread on a hex nut. This is just going to be loosely for now. Now, for our forward hole location we're going to do the same thing with our pull wire. We want it to come out of the same larger hole. It's a little bit further back there, but it'll reach. Now we'll slide on the round square hole spacer block. Now, you want the square hole on that round block to be at the bottom here so we can rotate that until it's at the bottom and it's going to fit into that larger hole that's right behind it there. Sitting just like that. Now we're ready to pull this fish wire off and we'll place on a conical tooth washer and a hex nut here. Again, this is just loosely installed. All right, now we'll head over to the passenger side and repeat that same process. Now for the forward attachment point here on the passenger side there's a large heat shield that's in the way. We tried to leave it in place as we did the installation, but the U shaped spacer blocks are getting hung up on this fabric, so we need to get rid of it. I'd like you to keep that in mind for when you're doing your install, you may also want to do the same thing. It's got a real sticky material on the back of it and our spacers just won't slide across the top. We're going to get rid of that. You can see where our block is actually just stuck there; no way to get it in position. Just pull that down, just taking out a small section here. That's your first bed corrugation. It'll go through the second one, and then right on that edge is where you'll cut it. Now we want to do a quick visual inspection. We want to look down through our 1/8 inch hole here and we want to confirm that it lines up with the hole that's in our frame bracket. Once we've confirmed that we're going to get our 5 holes enlarged to 9/16 of an inch. Now we're ready to re-position our rear rail here. We've got the U shaped spacer blocks, and those are meant to go in the low side of the corrugation. Since this dips down here and our rail's going to sit over it, we're going to place that one under. Going to do the same thing for this position and for this position all the way across. Now, just like before where our U shaped spacer is going to make contact with the bed we need to have a galvanic isolator in place. Put that right over our hole there. Give that a little trim, and I'm going to do that in my remaining locations here because all of my spacers are going on top. Now I'm just going to kind of pre-position my spacer blocks here. The ones on the very outside, right in that area, they're not going to go fully around our bolt. It's just kind of the way it lines up; it's not a terribly big deal there. What these are going to do is when we start tightening down our bolts it's going to prevent us from crushing the corrugation on the bed. With those positioned over our holes, start bringing our carriage bolts down through the top through those hole locations. You can see those are going to be positioned there so when we tighten down we don't have any crushing affect. Now, the ones that actually go through the frame brackets here, you might have to wiggle them around a little bit from the top, or actually go down and move your frame bracket to allow those to come down through. We can go down there now and take a look at it. Now at all 5 locations we're going to go around and place on a conical tooth washer. The teeth of that need to face up towards the bed, and also one of our hex nuts there. We can go around and do that at all 5 locations. Now we'll use a 3/4 inch socket or a 19 millimeter, and it's time to get all these snugged down. What we're doing here is, we want to prevent our rail from moving. Now the forward attachment points here, those are right over top of the frame rail. You probably have to use a wrench to snug these down, and then a cat paw 00:12:22 would be ideal for torquing it later on. Now we're going to get our fifth wheel put into place. You want to put in place whatever you're going to be using. If you're using more than one accessory, fit them both. What we'll do is put our back tabs in that back rail, then we can position our front rail under it, push it in snugly, and mark our locations for our holes. Allow that to come down in our slots and then the tabs that we have here in the front, we're going to put those in the same hole location we put on our forward rail. Now we just force back on that so we have a nice snug fit. Now we need to center it to make sure we've got it in the same location on both sides. All right, that looks good from side to side. Now you might have to pull back your isolator there, that galvanic material. We'll have to get our center of our hole marked for each of our 4 locations. On the front rails you're going to use the third hole in from the outside in all of our locations there. 2 on this side, same spot on the other side. For our forward location we're going to be using the hole that's on the front to be closer to the cab here. Now for our middle hole location here in the bed, that's going to be the only one that's sitting down in the corrugation, so this one's going to need one of the galvanic isolators there. Take our spacer block and put it over. Of course we should clear the middle of that out so we can get our bolt through it. You can placed right there on top, set our rail in place over the top of that, and we'll start putting our carriage bolts down through. Now we'll just go under and repeat that same process that we did on the rear rail, putting on our conical tooth washer and our hex nut. However, on our 2 outside bolts on each side we want a U shaped spacer in between the conical tooth washer and the bed with one of the galvanic isolators applied. Just fold it over, it's a little bit bigger than it needs to be. Just want to make sure that the side that you've got the solid coverage on, that that's facing up. Now it didn't say in the instructions, but our rear bolt for that rail is right here, and the forward bolt's right here. Really the only way to get these in place is going to be to slide them in from the front back to that rear bolt. We'll have to have that forward bolt out of position there so we can just pop it up and out. Do that on both sides. Once we have that in that slot, a small screwdriver or a pick allows us to bring that back. Just want to make sure it goes around that bolt. Now for that location we'll place on our conical tooth washer and a hex nut. At that point we'll just go back up top and put that bolt down through, put another U shaped spacer in, another conical tooth washer and nut. Now with the rear in place we've brought our forward carriage bolt back down and in. Get that spacer slid around our bolt. That's going to get the same hardware. Now we're going to go through and get these all snugged down. Once they're snug we're going to torque them down to the specifications that are listed in our instructions. Now once our rails are torqued down we're going to move out here to our side plates and get those torqued down. Do the same thing over on the driver side, we'll be ready to drop in our favorite attachment and start hauling. Now with our spare tire back in position that's going to complete our installation of the Reese Quick Install Custom Base Rails and Installation Kit for Fifth Wheel Trailer Hitches, part number RP50087-58 on our 2016 Ford F-150.