Curt E16 5th Wheel Trailer Hitch for Dodge Ram - Slide Bar Jaw - 16,000 lbs
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2025 GMC Sierra 2500
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2025 GMC Sierra 2500
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This hitch is rated for 16,000 lbs gross towing weight and 4,000 lbs vertical load, giving it the muscle to handle most large fifth-wheel trailers with confidence. The sturdy steel construction and carbide black finish make it a dependable workhorse that holds up over time. It's the kind of solid build you can feel every time you back in, hitch up, and hit the highway.
Hooking up feels straightforward with the auto-locking slide-bar jaw. Once the king pin slides into place, the rear steel tension bar clamps down to tighten the grip and minimize rattle or movement. That firm hold helps keep towing quiet and stable mile after mile, so you can focus on the trip instead of fighting noise or play at the hitch point.
Getting level towing is simple thanks to the 4-position height adjustment from 13 inches to 17 inches. The dual-pivoting head offers 10 degrees of lateral movement, making coupling easier even when the ground isn’t perfectly flat. It’s a flexible setup that helps you dial in just the right height for your trailer and keeps things lined up smoothly when hitching or unhitching.
When it’s time to clear your truck bed, this hitch breaks down fast. The head removes with just two pins, making it manageable for one person to lift it out. That modular setup saves strain and makes switching between towing and using your bed for other tasks much easier.
The Permalube pivot bushings help extend hitch life and reduce maintenance needs. Paired with an anti-rattle skid plate, they deliver a smooth, quiet ride with less noise from metal-on-metal contact. Fewer squeaks and less play mean more relaxed miles on every tow.
Alternate Instructions
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Hey guys, Kevin at etrailer and today we're gonna be taking a look at the CURT E16 5th Wheel Hitch. Operating this hitch is super simple. While your handle is down, it's not gonna be able to come out so it's locked in place so you know that your hitch isn't gonna be able to uncouple from your king pin. If you lift your handle up, you can kind of feel as you're lifting it up, it kind of pops up out of here so that you can actually uncouple. You can pull that slide jaw out, lock it in place and then you can also recouple up. So as you're pulling up to your trailer it is gonna tilt down.
You can come back up, it'll pop right in and automatically lock into place and then you can turn that handle back down to keep your jaw from being able to unlock. Now I do wanna say this is the basic starter run of the mill kind of model. It is a slide bar jaw, and typically when you have that you will experience quite a bit of noise quite a bit of movement, some chucking. You're not gonna have all of the added comfort that you will with some of the upgraded fifth wheel hitches. So if you look a little bit closer you can see exactly what I'm talking about.
So this one bar just goes straight across. It does not conform to the round king pin that's sitting in here, so you can kind of see it can kind of move just a little bit. Whereas with your single jaw or your two piece jaws it kind of wraps around it. Prevents it from being able to move. Prevents any of that noise and just gives you overall a better ride quality.
This hitch head can pivot front to back, which is gonna help with coupling and uncoupling your trailer but there is no rubber dampeners in this. There's no air ride anything. There's nothing to really kind of help with any ride quality. So if you are looking for a more comfortable ride or maybe you have some issues with the ride you already currently have this probably wouldn't be the best option for you. I'd recommend going with something that has a little bit more of a built up head on it that has some of those rubber dampeners in it.
So what this hitch lacks in its ride quality it does make up for in its ability to easily come apart. It's not as large as some of those upgraded hitches. If you pull these two pins, you can easily remove the head which greatly reduces the weight of this hitch overall so that you can easily get it in and out of your truck without having to have a second set of hands with you. As you can see, it does sit within our base rails. It really does not come past the center of the base rails at all. So if you need to store extra stuff, maybe you have a bunch of firewood some coolers, maybe you have a shorter bed and you just need to have some extra space in there for all the other stuff. You can kind of plan exactly how much space you're gonna have because you know this sits right within the base rails. Now this does come with two prongs right here that have a hole in it that's gonna fit about a three ace inch size pin through it. And now what you can do with that is easily lock your bar into place so that nobody else can come up and uncouple your trailer from your hitch. As far as installation goes, this hitch is super simple to put together. It is only for bolts, four nuts and then six pins. And honestly, you could easily put this hitch together within 10 minutes all by yourself. You don't really even need a second set of hands for it like you might with some other hitches. But let's go ahead and show you how we did it. Start off our installation, we're gonna be putting on our handle. Now when we put our handle on we wanna make sure that when we slide that bolt through that we can't undo our jaw here. Now when I get that on just to show you guys, when I pull this out I should not be able to pull it out while it's facing down. So we know that that little inner bar right there is not in the correct position. So we're gonna wanna pull this off. Actually, we'll flip it up first, we'll drop our bolt out and then we'll pull it off and put our handle back down. Now when I put my bolt through I shouldn't be able to pull this out at all. As you can see the jaw is locked in place, not until I go up, can I open it up. I'm gonna go ahead and tighten that bolt now that we have it in the correct position. You're gonna want to use two 10 millimeter sockets or wrenches. Sockets just easier in my opinion, but from there we can go ahead and start adding on our legs to our cross member. And on our cross member I personally prefer to have the coupling instructions on the same side as our handle. So that's what we're gonna use as our left side if we we're looking at it from the tailgate. When we're looking at our legs, we wanna make sure that that orange line is facing out. You also notice that you'll have your manufacturer sticker that has a serial number and the item code for that specific hitch facing out. Now the next important decision is exactly how we're gonna place these legs. There are four different height positions with our cross member here. Now this is really gonna depend on the truck and your fifth wheel. What you're gonna need to do is while your truck is level you're gonna measure from the bed of your truck down to the ground, and then you're gonna measure from the skid plate that's on your fifth wheel. And that skid plate is the part above your king pin. So that flat surface, because that kingpin is gonna come and sit and lock in the jaws. So we want to get where that height is while your trailer's level and the difference between the two is gonna be where you need to set your hitch. Now, if you have base trails already installed in your truck I recommend going ahead and getting your legs set up in it. It's gonna kind of help keep it more stable. That way you don't have wobbling all over the place, you just have 'em sitting there. Then you can go ahead and drop on your cross member and we can take our bolts. Now, typically when you're putting it on bolts, you'd think that you'd slide that through, slide the washer on and then your nut. But in this case, CURT only has you slip your bolt through and then use that washer on the inside cause there's a little bit of a gap between the leg and then the weldment right here. And that basically just kind of eats up some of that space. So I'm gonna slip my washer in place and push my bolt through, and we'll put our nylon lock nut on the outside. And then we'll just repeat this for the rest of the three spots. There we go. Now that I have all those in place we're gonna go ahead and put on our lock nuts. Now there is not a torque setting on the instructions for this at all. It just says to get until it's tight. But you can also just look up the torque setting for that size bolt along with its thread size and torque it down to that just to be extra careful. There is a nylon lock nut on this, so it shouldn't come off but in my personal opinion, I always prefer to just go the extra mile for the safety of it. But we can go ahead and kind of run these down a bit with our wrenches. On the bullhead side we're gonna wanna use a 21 millimeter socket or wrench. And then on the nut itself you're gonna use a 22 millimeter. Now with our legs in place we can go ahead and drop on our hitch head. Simply it'll sit it in just like that and then we're gonna have two pin and clips that we're gonna stick right through, that's gonna secure it in place. Last thing to do is just slip your pin and clips into the feet to lock into place in your base rails and then you'll be all good to go. Well, now that we've gone over all of the specifics of this hitch, I think that about does it for our look today at the CURT E16 5th Wheel Hitch. My name's Kevin, thanks for watching..
Ratings & Reviews
Sequel
9/9/2015
I still have no complaints I have pulled my 35ft fifth wheel camper multiple times already and it did great. I have since recommended etrailer site to everybody I know that needs hitches. Thank you again for making it so easy to order and install!
Don C.
8/26/2018
So far excellent!!!
Jerry C.
3/27/2014
This is a little confusing. Is the correct measurement 26 34 or 26 1/4 ??I installed a Curt rail kit a couple years ago. I do recall that if you use the instructiondimension...things line up better on a Dodge front rail if everything would have been about a 1/2 inch further rearward. Is there any way this can be clarified? I am starting on another install today. thanks.
Patrick B.
3/28/2014
Dan
8/28/2016
Real good, handles any camper and works smooth.
Robert
3/16/2020
So far really good. Thankyou
Alvin S.
9/21/2021
The E16 hitch is adequate. I get a lot of clunking when starting and stopping due to the straight locking bar style hitch. I wish now that I would have spent more money and got a hitch that had locking jaws that clamped around the pin.
Pat R.
4/24/2018
YES, THE HITCH IS STILL 100 GREAT, THANK YOU
Arron M.
2/19/2017
Another great item that has worked flawless. Would definitely buy it again!
James M.
7/11/2019
The hitch release handle is quite sticky. I have used silicone spray and last week applied some grease. Doesnt want to close all the way and needs to be coaxed into total closure.
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Julio
11/12/2018
More than 1000 miles pulling a 38 fifth wheel and still like new