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You tow a 5th wheel but still use your truck bed for lumber or pallets. This system gives you a complete 5th wheel hitch with a custom underbed mounting kit, then breaks into three pieces when you're not towing so it takes up less space to store.
This Demco Recon Stealth separates into three sections when you need to remove it from the truck bed. That changes the job from pulling one large hitch to lifting smaller sections one at a time. The base also folds down when the hitch is not assembled, so it does not leave the same upright profile in the bed. If you add a compatible Demco MOLLE panel kit, the disassembled sections can be strapped at the front of the bed for storage in the truck.
The included Curt underbed kit installs beneath your truck bed and gives you a solid mounting point for the Recon hitch without adding above-bed rails. It also functions as a Double Lock gooseneck hitch, using dual locking pins to secure the 2-5/16" ball in place. That design adds an extra layer of holding strength compared to single-pin setups while keeping everything contained below the bed.
Once the fifth wheel hitch is removed, the bed is clear for hauling materials or equipment. The gooseneck ball can be removed or flipped upside down and stored in the hitch, and a rubber cover seals the opening to keep out dirt and debris. Safety chain loops stay flush in the bed, so nothing sticks up when you're not towing.
The hitch head uses a wraparound jaw and locking bar that fully enclose the kingpin. That tighter fit cuts down on the movement you can get from looser coupler styles at the hitch. The head pivots front-to-back and side-to-side, which helps it stay aligned as the truck and trailer move through turns, dips, and uneven ground.
The upright uses stacked pin holes so the hitch head can be set at different heights. That lets you match the trailer to the truck more closely instead of towing nose high or nose low. The hitch connects directly to the underbed mounting point, so the adjustment happens at the hitch without changing the setup underneath.
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Today on our 2017 Chevrolet Silverado 3500 we're going to be taking a look at, and I'll show you how to install the custom underbed installation kit for Demco Recon 5th Wheel Trailer Hitch.It's going to be a complete underbed system. The only thing we're going to have in the bed of the truck is our safety chain loop. The ring, as you can see, safety chain loops are in a lower corrugation. And our ring sits flush with our raised corrugation. This is going to give us total bed access.We're going to have a frame bracket on each side that's going to attach to the frame. Our cross braces are going to attach to the frame bracket to secure our hitch into place.
Each bracket is also going to have a nice black powder coat finish to resist any rust or corrosion.There's also 5th wheel options if you have a 5th wheel trailer. It will drop right into place. Now that we've gone over some of the features, let me show you how to get it installed.First thing we wanna do to start our installation, we're going to remove the spare tire. We've gone ahead an already done that. We're going to do things a little bit out of order from here.
Rather than going directly into the truck and doing the things we need to do under there, while we have our truck down, we're going to go ahead and take the fender liners out.We're going to take a T15 star bit and we're gonna have 11 star head bolts we need to remove to get our fender liner out. They look like this. And then we'll just pull our fender liner out.Before we put in our cross members, take your bolt or your hardware and see if you can thread it in by hand. If you can't, then the threads need to be cleaned out. What happens is, when it goes through the process of painting, paint gets on the threads inside of there.
You don't want your bolts to cross thread so we need to take a tap and clean off our threads. You're just gonna make sure your tap matches your bolt threads. Now you just want to make sure you clean them out. And take your bolt and you should be able to hand thread that bolt down.We're going to have two bars like this. These are going to be our cross members.
They're going to stretch from one frame rail to the other. One of them has a little groove in it. I don't know if you can see it very well. It has a little notch cut out in it. This is for your gas tank on your driver's side. We're going to start here on our passenger's side though, and slide it over. We're going to slide it like this. We have our second bracket, this one's going to go towards the back. We're going to be in front of this hatch handle. But the one that does not have the notch is going to go up against it. So, we'll go ahead and slide this across just like that.Let's go ahead and turn your cross members to where your bolt holes are at the bottom of the bar. That's where we're going to put in our frame brackets. See the long side here, this is going to face towards the back of the truck. So, that's how you can tell which side goes to what. We're going to take a hex bolt, lock washer and a flat washer and go ahead and get these installed on our cross member here. We're just going to get those finger tightened for now. We're going to take our cross member, or our brackets, and we're going to slide them up until our holes match up. Now, two holes on our bracket it's going to match up with the holes in the frame.We're going to take our pull wire and we're going to take a carriage bolt, along with a spacer block. Take our pull wire, we're going to go through the hole and there's actually a larger hole on the inside of the frame. We'll bring it out that hole just like that. Thread your bolt onto your pull wire. Put your spacer block through the hole first, make it a little bit easier. Get that bolt through just like that. Go ahead and remove your pull wire. I wouldn't just pull it off, and try not to stretch it out too much because we're going to need to use it again. Once you get it out take your flange nut and we'll loosely install that. Now we're going to do the same thing with this hole. With this hole there is actually a hole on the other side of the frame rail right behind it. So, it'll make it pretty easy to get through there.Now we're going to repeat the same process on the other side of the vehicle. Except this front bolt we're going to have to go through this hole on our frame instead of the inside one because our fuel tank is sitting there.Once we have our hardware finger tightened we're going to take this template. This is how we're going to mark our hole in our bed of our truck. You see an arrow with an F on it. That means goes towards the front. We're going to take the flat side it's going to go up against that bottom of the bed. We're going to take our hex bolts we're just going thread them into place. We want this centered.I'm going to take a small drill bit, I'm going to drill a pile hole right up through the bottom of my bed. Now we can remove the template. You can see where our hole is here. Going to take a 4" hole saw bit. What I like to do to make this easier because the T-tone here when it hits this metal this is going to jump around. Take a piece of plywood and make yourself a 4" hole. I'm going to use that as a guide for our bit. Line it up on there. Then we can take this just like this and we'll drill out a hole.Now I'm going to take a file, this is up to you. I'm going to file down my edges to knock off any burrs that are there. Once you get it done this doesn't have a bed liner in it, so what I'm going to use I'm just going to use a clear coat and cover up this bare metal. That'll help reduce any rusting later on down the road.We're going to have our chrome ring that goes right on top of our lip here. You can install it before or after. I would say before is going to make it easier. But, you just have to watch when you're putting this center section up through the hole try not to scratch it.Now what's nice about the curt goose neck is they're going to give you this rubber ring to fit right on the inside edge of this. It's going to be split on one side and it also has a adhesive in the middle of it over here in the back to help allow it to stick into place. We'll just work our way around, get that piece of it on there. Just like that.Next we're going to take our head assembly, or our center section. You can see how it's offset, you want this to be towards the front of the vehicle. We're going to take a hex bolt, lock washer, flat washer and what I'm going to do is I'm going to put one in on each side to hold my head in place while I install the remaining hardware. I'm going to see if I can do this by myself. Get one in. There. Another one back here.So you can see I was struggling a little bit, but maybe better to get an extra set of hands to help hold it up there. But I did get it in by myself. Now we'll go ahead and do that same hardware combination on the remaining holes.Next we're going to tighten and torque everything to the specification instructions. We're going to start with our center section. We're going to tighten and torque those bolts first. Then we're going to tighten and torque our side plates to our frame reels. Then the side plates to our cross members.Next we're going to drill out for our safety chain loops. You can see we're going to have four holes here. We're going to use the two in the drop corrugation which is going to be this inside two. So you can see how our corrugation on our bed, this is raised, this is lowered. We're going to be using the one, two inside ones that go in this drop corrugation. Because we want that safety chain, the top side, to sit down inside of here level with the raised corrugation to make sure that we have total access of our bed.We'll take a drill bit and we're going to do a pile hole first. Then once we're done with our pile hole we're going to come back with a 1/2" drill bit and drill out the rest of the way. So you can see how I have one in. It's in my lower corrugation. You can see how easy this slides in and out. We're going to have a spring that we're going to put on the bottom side of this. So we want to make sure that, that is going to do that. So, what I did is we're going to finish it out like I said with a 1/2" drill bit. You can do it either way. If you have a step bit what I'm going to do is I'm going to go just slightly bigger than a 1/2" so that we make sure that slides in and out of there, it doesn't hang up on the holes at all.Then don't forget to coat your bare metal with that clear coat or whatever paint you may be using. Underneath we're going to put on a flat washer, we're going to put on a spring. Another flat washer, and then a nylon lock nut. We're going to do the same with this one, and do the same thing with this side. I'm going to take 3/4" socket and what we want to do is we only want to tighten the nut to where the head of the bolt is even with it.Now we're going to take our handle and we're going to slide it in either from the driver or passenger side, it doesn't matter which side it's matter of personal preference. You can use it on either side. We need to go from the outside of the vehicle, though, slide it in over top your frame rail into the center section. Next we're going to take our locking pin, go ahead and slide it into a receiver and we're going to have a couple of washers, we're going to try just using one right now. We're going to use a large string. We're going to slide that in there like that. You can see there's guides on your hitch. We'll want it up.Then we're going to line up the hole. You can see that hole there in that rod, we're going to line up that hole with this hole in the top of that pin. Once you got the hole lined up insert the bolt and we'll put our lock on the back.We'll take a seven millimeter socket, eight millimeter wrench and we'll tighten our bolt and nut down holding our guide rod. There. Now what we're going to do, because our kit comes with a second washer we're going to go ahead and pull our rod to make sure that our locking pin comes out all the way. If it doesn't what we're going to do is we're going to take this off, add another washer onto it to give us a little extra room.Once you've got everything installed, you've checked it to make sure you've got everything tight, everything's working correctly go ahead and reinstall your fender liners, your spare tire, and you're ready to do.Once you have your liners back in place, you can see where we have the handle installed, and actually our liner would have covered it so I just took my utility knife and just cut a section where we're able to pull that through really easy.That'll do it for the look at, and installation on the Custom Underbed Installation Kit for Demco Recon 5th Wheel Trailer Hitch on our 2017 Chevrolet Silverado 3500.
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