Video Transcript for In-Depth Review of the Demco Recon 5th Wheel Trailer Hitch w/ Slider

Hi there, I'm Michael with etrailer.com. Today we're gonna take a quick look at this Demco Recon manual slide fifth wheel trailer hitch. Now this fifth wheel hitch is going to mount in your short bed truck so that you can tow your fifth wheel trailer. This does have the manual slide that will allow you to, when you are coming into a a tight situation where you're needing more clearance for your trailer, you can very simply get out of your truck, pull this into the slide position, and then that's going to allow this to slide up to 14 inches towards your tailgate, again, providing that additional clearance that you need so that you're not making contact between your trailer and your cab. And then once you get everything straightened back out, get back out, slide that back into the lock position so that the weight is distributed over your axle for your normal travel speeds. So this is designed for your six and a half foot truck beds.

This will work with your standard 12 to 14 inch wide pin box. It's not gonna work or be compatible with your rotating pin boxes because this is going to have kind of a its own pivot point. It's not gonna work with a rotating pin box. That would cause multiple pivot points, could end up causing a bind and safety issues. So definitely just want a standard pin box for this.

This is going to have a a very sturdy steel construction. It's made here in the USA. It does also have this rust resistant black powder coat finish, so that's gonna help prevent rust and corrosion. And that steel construction is going to give us the 21,000 pound gross towing weight. We also have a 5,250 pound vertical load limit.

Very simple to get this installed. The base rails and installation kit on your vehicle will allow you to very quickly and easily connect here. So we will take these pins and clips out when we're ready to get set up. That will free up our handles here so that we can open those in the unlocked position, set it down onto our above bed industry standard base rails and then move them back to the locked position and put in our pins again. So, because these are gonna work with your industry standard rails, they are gonna work with your Demco, B&W, Curt, Draw-Tite, Reese and other manufacturer's rails.

So very simple to get installed on those above-bed rails. And this is gonna be lighter weight than other models. It is approximately 220 pounds. So definitely not super lightweight. You'll definitely want a second set of hands at least helping you take this in and out. But this will allow you to remove easier so you can have access to your truck bed again and then put it back in place when you're ready to tow your trailer. Talking about the specific features here, we do have the wraparound single piece jaw that's gonna provide a nice secure connection for your kingpin. That's a 360 degree jaw to kingpin contact. So if I open that up there, you can see your kingpin's gonna slide back here. I'll use a screwdriver to demonstrate. Once your kingpin slides back, it's gonna hit that plate, it's going to trigger it to close and it will snap shut. So having that 360 degree contact is going to ensure less rattle and more security than your slide bar jaws. And you can see we also have this 3/4 inch thick solid steel locking bar that's gonna reinforce that connection with your trailer coupler. It's going to automatically lock in place when the jaw closes. To operate that, we do have our spring loaded handle here with the comfort grip that's going to allow for your simple coupling. And we also have the tethered safety pin here that's going to allow you to securely latch the handle in place. And it does have that tether on there so you don't have to worry about losing it. The head itself is a double pivot head that's going to ease your hookup and help to limit chucking. Pivots front to back and side to side. If I turn it on the side here you can see we do have these cushioned polyurethane dampeners that are gonna help to reduce your noise and absorb road shock. So it's going to give you a nice smooth ride. We also have the adjustable height setting. So as we're moving down here you can see we've got this pin that we can pull out and adjust the head to different positions to make sure that we're gonna have adequate clearance over your side bed rails. So at our highest point, we're gonna be about 20 and 7/8 of an inch. If we move down to the middle pinhole there, it'll be 19 and 5/8 of an inch. And our lowest is gonna be 18 and 3/8 of an inch. So lots of adjustability there. Make sure that it's gonna work for your setup. So if you are wanting to have the convenience of a slide hitch so that you can make those tighter turns with your short bed pickup truck, this is gonna be a great way to go. I personally think that an auto slide is gonna be worth the money so that you don't have to worry about getting out and manually putting this into the slide mode. But they are significantly more expensive. So if that doesn't quite fit into your price range, this is gonna give you that same clearance that you need for a much better price. And that completes our look for today. Again, I'm Michael with etrailer.com. Thanks for watching.