Arrives before Christmas To see if this custom-fit item will work for you please tell us what vehicle you'll use it with.
Want a premium, US-made hitch that can be removed to leave your bed totally free? Check. Need a slider to get you through those tight turns? Check. How about the option of towing a gooseneck trailer when you're done with the camper? You got it.
Features:
Specs:
Note: This fifth-wheel trailer hitch is not compatible with Sidewinder or Revolution king pins. Do not use any device that changes the pivot point of your trailer's king pin with this hitch.
With the Companion from B&W, you get a heavy-duty fifth-wheel trailer hitch that mounts in your truck bed by connecting directly to the included Turnoverball gooseneck hitch. No modifications are required to your truck or trailer. And no additional parts are required for the system to work. When you're done towing, the Companion can be removed for complete bed access.
The included Turnoverball serves as a sturdy, custom base for installing the Companion in the bed of your truck, but it's also one of the most recognizable gooseneck hitches on the market.
Gooseneck Specs:
With the B&W Turnoverball underbed gooseneck trailer hitch you get the best of both worlds. When you go to tow a gooseneck trailer, the Turnoverball creates a sturdy, dependable connection with your trailer. And when you're done towing, you can stow the ball upside down in the hitch to get full bed access and a clean appearance. When you're ready to tow your fifth wheel trailer, just install the Companion in the ball hole in place of the gooseneck ball and lock the post in place using the built-in handle. You can remove the fifth wheel when you're done towing, leaving your truck bed open once again.
This kit is custom designed for your vehicle. The gooseneck hitch body bolts to existing holes in your truck's frame. While some modification is required - you will need to cut a 4" diameter hole in your bed for the hitch ball and drill holes for the built-in safety chain loops - there is no need to weld onto or to drill into your frame.
Once you have the brackets and center section installed, set up the operating handle. This handle is designed to be accessed from the rear driver's-side wheel well. On the end of the handle is the heavy-duty steel pin that secures the mounting post of the Companion (or the base of the gooseneck hitch ball).
The 1" thick jaw on the Companion is precision machined to provide a tight, sturdy connection. And unlike slide-bar models, the rounded 2-piece jaw on this fifth-wheel trailer hitch inhibits rattle and movement by securely wrapping around your trailer's king pin, resulting in easier hookup and a safer, quieter ride.
In addition to the sturdy jaw, the Companion has durable polyurethane bushings built in to provide a smoother, more comfortable towing experience. These bushings sit on top of the pivot arms that support the fifth-wheel head. Because the head is resting on a padded area, it is able to pivot without clanking. The ability of the head to pivot - both front to back and side to side - along with the trailer also helps to limit the chucking that may occur with a more static hitch.
The dual jaw on the Companion is operated by a simple-to-use cam-action handle. This handle allows you to quickly and easily release the jaws on the hitch, even if you are on uneven terrain. If any binding does occur between your truck and trailer, the jaws may remain closed after you move the handle to the open position. But because the handle is unlatched, there is nothing keeping the jaws closed except for the binding pressure. Therefore, simply driving your truck forward will be enough to force the jaws to open.
The cam-action handle is held in the closed position with the included pin and clip. For extra security, you can replace the pin with a sturdy padlock. The shackle on the lock you choose should have a diameter of 5/16", height of 3", and a width of 2-1/4".
Most often used on trucks with 6' beds, a slider helps to eliminate clearance problems during slow-speed turns. When you are towing a fifth-wheel trailer, your hitch must be situated on the cab side of your truck's rear axle. However, at slow speeds you can use a slider to slide the fifth-wheel hitch (and the trailer) toward your truck's tailgate and past the rear axle, creating enough space between the cab of your truck and the trailer to permit less-restricted turning.
The slider that is built into the base of the Companion allows for 12" of fore and aft travel to give you the clearance you need.
The Companion's pivot arms are what allow the hitch to be adjusted front to back as well as up and down for optimal positioning. As a result, this hitch can accommodate the height of your trailer and also help to give you some additional cab clearance. To adjust either the height of the hitch or the fore/aft positioning, just attach the hitch's pivot arms in the desired location on the base.
The hitch head installs on top of the pivot arms. When you have the head in position, simply secure it to the arms with the included pins.
Alternate Instructions
California residents: click here
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Today on our 2017 Ram 2500 we'll be installing the B&W Turnoverball Underbed Gooseneck Trailer Hitch with Custom Installation Kit, part number BWGNRK1384. All right, here's what our gooseneck looks like installed. As you can see, it's designed to work properly with our factory setup on our truck here. There was really no modification to the truck, just a couple minor drilling locations, and then it bolts in place where the factory prep package will be. Now that we've shown you the underside, we'll show you what it looks like on top. All right, here we are in the bed of the truck, and you can see what it looks like installed. As you can see, the only part we have really sticking out is our ball, 2 5/16 inch ball.
This is it in its towing position. Now, one of the great features about this system is when we're not towing a trailer we can store our ball upside down in our hitch. This way it's readily available for when we need it. With it stored like this we don't have to worry about anything falling down inside the hole and being misplaced while we're driving down the road. The only thing we'll have sticking up will be our little safety chain loops here which, as you can see, when they're spring loaded and they retract down, they don't stick up above the channels in our bed very much, so we still have full access to the floor of our truck.
Now the ball, when it's stored upside down is easy to remove. Just grab the little pin hole here, pull up, pull it back around. Now, this hitch has a 30,000 pound max gross trailer weight rating and a 7,500 pound vertical load limit. You'll want to consult with the owner's manual of your Ram 2500 and not go over those limits. Our ball is secured by a spring loaded pin mechanism which has a handle on the driver side wheel well of the truck. We can show you how that operates.
Now, when we want to remove our ball for putting in the stored position or for flipping around for towing, you pull out our handle, slide it towards the front of the truck, and it locks open our pin. Once we have our ball flipped around all we need to do is push towards the back and it springs itself shut and secures our ball in place. Now, what I like about this gooseneck that sets it apart from others on the market is that on some applications on some trucks we can store our ball upside down in the bed, so we don't have to worry about it taking up our valuable bed space. We're ready to tow, we can flip it back over and have it ready to go. Also, this gooseneck utilizes a lot of the existing factory attachment points on the vehicle with no bracketry or rails needed to be installed, it bolts in place fairly easy. Now, one thing to note on some Ram trucks there's a stabilization shock mounted on top of the differential.
If you have that in place you don't want to store your ball upside down. If you did that it could contact that and damage the shock or the differential. I believe that's only equipped on two wheel drive trucks, though. Just make sure your truck doesn't have it before you attempt to place your ball upside down. Now that we've gone over some of the features we'll show you how to get it installed. We've already removed our spare tire here for video purposes. Now, for a little bit more room to work we're going to remove our heat shield here for our exhaust and our exhaust itself. Our heat shield has four bolts that hold it in place. There's two on the back side over here, 10 millimeter and then there's two more 10 millimeter right here in the frame. Now we're going to remove our exhaust. In order to do that we need to lubricate this exhaust hanger right here with some spray to help it slide off easier. Just use some lubricant that you have laying around your house. Then you can use a pry bar and pry it off. All right, with our exhaust hanger off we can loosen our clamp up now. Our clamp is located right behind our muffler section here on our exhaust. Has a 15 millimeter nut, so we'll loosen that up. Now we can just take our tailpipe section twist it, and work it off. Now we'll take our template here and we'll insert it in this large round hole in our cross member. Place it flat against the bottom of the bed of our truck, and we'll make a mark where the hole is. Sometimes you might have to use a ballpoint pen or a fine tip marker. I'm using a ballpoint pen because that's all I have. Okay, where that mark is we'll now make a pilot hole using a small drill bit. Okay, we're up in our truck bed now. Our pilot hole here, we'll go ahead and drill this out with a 3 1/2 inch hole saw. Okay, you can get the center section out by sliding it to the side, pulling it up. We'll just vacuum up all of our bits here from the bed liner. Now we'll use some black spray paint and go along our edge here where we cut so you won't have to worry about the bed rusting over time. All right, now we'll take our passenger side bracket here. This is our handle that holds our nuts in place that our gooseneck head bolts to. You'll want to make sure that the nuts here are on the top. We'll slide it in between our bed channels here on top of our bracket. On our driver side we have this wiring harness here. It's clipped into the frame with two plastic push pins. We just pry up on it, remove those, and we'll slide our handle underneath the wiring harness. Now we can go underneath. Now we want to make sure our handles, the nuts go through these holes. To do that, line it up with your fingers. The same on the other side. Now we'll take our plastic spacer and insert it between our cross member here and our bed. Just come up, push it in place, slide it in position. Sometimes you just need to tap it in place. Okay, now we'll take our gooseneck head with our handle assembly on the driver side. We'll raise it up and secure it with the included hardware. It's helpful to have an extra set of hands to help hold it up while you secure it. Take our bolts. We'll get it started a few turns, then we'll get a wrench and tighten them down. We'll just go a few turns on all of our bolts to make sure they're not going to cross thread on us. Then we can snug them down with an impact. We made sure our gooseneck center head is centered inside of our center frame. We'll tighten down our bolts with a 15/16th socket. Now we'll torque all of our bolts to the amount specified in the instructions. Now we'll take our two carriage bolts and install them on our latch pin handle. We'll take our handle, slide it over our frame above our brake lines. We'll take the handle now, slide it up onto those bolts and secure it with our flange nuts. Now we use a 15 millimeter socket to tighten these nuts down. We'll torque them to the amount specified in the instructions. Now we'll take our ball, making sure that our pin is in the locked position, slide it into our socket. Notice it's not going to go in all the way because the pin's in the locked position. We'll use this as a guide to place our template on for drilling our safety chain holes in the bed of our truck. Okay, since we have a three quarter ton truck here versus a one ton, we'll be using the outermost holes. Make a pilot hole. With all four of our holes made we can take off our guide and remove our ball. Once you have all of our pilot holes made we can enlarge our holes in the bed to 1/2 inch. With our bed drilled out to 1/2 inch diameter now, we'll continue on down through the cross member. We'll do the same for all four holes. Just like we did around our big hole, we'll put some spray paint down around our smaller holes for our safety chain loops so we don't deal with any rust. Now we'll take our safety chain loops and drop them on down. We'll go underneath now and install our hardware to secure them. All right, now we'll take our springs, slide them over our U bolt on our safety chain loop with the big end facing towards the top of the bed, and we'll thread on our lock nut. Now we'll use the 3/4 inch socket and tighten these nuts down until they're flush with the bottom of the bolt. Now we'll take our exhaust and reinstall it. Now we'll go ahead and reinstall our heat shield. Now on the driver side of our truck right by our handle we went ahead and cleaned off a spot of the frame right here to put our sticker in place. We'll just take our sticker, slide it onto a flat spot of our frame, and this gives us our operating instructions for our gooseneck. That completes our installation of the B&W Turnoverball Underbed Gooseneck Trailer Hitch with Custom Installation Kit, part number BWGNRK1384 on our 2017 Ram 2500.
Fast service
great product, shipped fast!
Arrived on time with no issues
All the answers I needed. Thanks so muc h!
Only one half received. Bottom rails damaged in shipping, being returned. Was going to pick up a trailer with my old truck this weekend, and needed this hitch. So I am sure the metal is quality, but for me it is useless scrap with out the bottom part. So now sellers are waiting to sell a trailer to me that I cannot get for another month. So much for depending on pro shippers to do it right.
great product
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