Video Transcript for Demco Recon 5th Wheel Hitch w/ Slider Spec Review

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. This is a brick wheel hitch that will mount in your short bed, GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado 2500 and 3500. So you can tow your fifth wheel trailer. This does have the manual slide on it, so it is going to make sure that your short bed truck can pull your fifth wheel trailer and still make those tight turns when you need to, by moving your hitch back up to 14 inches. So basically when you find yourself in a situation where you need to make one of those slow, tight turns, you'll get out, you'll move the slide into the slide position here and that will allow you to very easily slide that back up to 14 inches so that you have that greater clearance.

You're not gonna have to worry about making contact with your cab and your trailer. And then when you get straightened back out you can slide that back into the lock position there where it will sit above your axle so it'll distribute the weight appropriately for your highway speeds and make sure that everything's gonna be safe again for you. Now, this is going to fit with your standard 12 to 14 inch wide pin boxes. Keep in mind this is not gonna be compatible with your rotating pin box. So if you've installed a rotating pin box on your trailer so that you can kind of accommodate your shorter bed this isn't gonna work with that to give you more.

It would create two pivot points which could cause safety issues and that sort of thing. So you wanna make sure you've got a static pin box in order to operate this properly. This is made here in the USA of a sturdy steel construction. You can see it's got nice black powder coat finish on it. It's gonna help resist rust and corrosion.

That steel construction is gonna give us the gross towing weight capacity of 21,000 pounds. It also has the vertical load limit of 5,250 pounds. So keep that in mind. make sure that that's gonna work for your setup. This is designed specifically for your 2020 and newer GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado 2500 and 3500 with the OEM prep package.

And the reason for that is our legs here are side rails. These are designed to fit into your factory puck system. So I've got these loosely installed right now so that's why they're kind of wiggling around. Once you get them firmly installed, you'll be able to pull up that pin and just pulling that lever, I don't know if you'll be able to see the way that's turning that foot so you can have it in the open position. Just set it down into your factory puck system and then push it in. That's gonna put it in the lock position. You'll pass your pin through and you'll have a nice solid connection to your factory prep system. So very simple to get installed. It's dropping right into those four pucks, and this is a little bit lighter weight than some other options. So it is going to be relatively quick and easy to get installed and to take out if you're needing to have a full bed access again. So a little bit lighter than some of your other options. I will say when you're comparing this to say like an auto slide, it is gonna be a little bit more work having to get out, unlatch and allow it to move into that slider position rather than your auto slides which will do that automatically for you. But auto slides are significantly heavier so it'll be harder to get in and out. They're also gonna be significantly more expensive. So if it just doesn't fit into your price range, this is still gonna give you that slide adjustability so that you can have that room that you need to make sure you can make those tight turns without denting your cab or making contact with your trailer. If we move into the specifics of our hitch, we do have the wrap around single piece jaw that's gonna provide a nice secure connection for you. Having that 360 degree jaw to kingpin contact is going to ensure less rattling and more security than your slide bar jaws. I'm gonna use a screwdriver here to kind of simulate your kingpin. So as you're backing your truck up to your trailer that king pin's gonna find its way back to this back plate here which is going to trigger it to close, snap shut. And then with it shut you can see we do have that three quarter inch thick solid steel locking bar that's gonna reinforce that connection with your coupled trailer. And that's going to automatically lock into place when the jaw closes. So you're gonna have a nice sturdy connection. We can operate that jaw with our spring loaded handle here that's got the comfort grip and that will allow for simple coupling. You can see we have the tethered safety pin that's going to allow you to secure the handle in the open or the closed position and it's tethered to make sure that you don't lose track of that. Our hitch head is a double pivot head so it's going to ease hookup and help to limit chucking while you're traveling. This will pivot front and the back as well as side to side. If I am able to turn this to the side a little bit, you can see that inside here we do have the cushioning polyurethane dampeners that help to reduce noise and absorb road shock to give you a nice smooth ride. Again, working our way down, we do have the adjustable height setting here. So we've got a big pin that we can pull out. There's three different adjustment holes here. So at our highest point it is going to give us a hitch height of 22 and one eighth of an inch. Our middle setting will be a height of 20 and seven eighths of an inch, and then at our lowest setting it'll be 19 and five eighths of an inch. So make sure that that's going to work for your setup, give you adequate clearance over your bedside rails. So overall, a really nice option here. If you don't want to pay for the convenience of an auto slide this is still going to allow you to have that clearance for a more reasonable price and it is gonna be fairly simple to take in and out. Of course, it does weigh over a hundred pounds so you'll definitely want to have a second set of hands helping you with that. It's not something you can do on your own but it is gonna be a little bit more, a little easier than some other systems. So that completes our look for today. Again, I'm Michael with etrailer.com. Thanks for watching.