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Custom brackets reduce the amount of drilling and time required to install your fifth-wheel trailer hitch. Brackets, base rails and hardware included.
Features:
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Today on our 2009 Ford F150 you're gonna be taking a look at and I'm gonna show you how to install the Reese Quick-Install Custom Installation Kit with Base Rails for fifth wheel trailer hitches.This is what our rails look like when they're installed. You can see they fit nicely in the bed of the truck and they're not really gonna take up much room. They're only gonna stick up about an inch to an inch and a half off the bed of our truck, which is gonna be great for giving us total bed access. Now you're gonna see some different slots here. These rails are nice because they're gonna work with different size hitches. The slots are gonna be for different weight classes.
One thing I do wanna mention, whichever hitch that you choose weight class, you wanna make sure you're not gonna exceed your vehicle's maximum tow capacity.This rail kit's gonna be compatible with CURT hitches, Draw-Tite, Hidden Hitch, Reese, Valiant, and Husky. But keep in mind they will not fit the Reese Elite series, Signature series, or Rally UVS hitches.Our frame brackets are gonna mount to the outside of our frame rails and they're gonna draw the above bed rail kit down and it's gonna pinch our bed in between the two. They're also gonna be a custom fit for your vehicle and have a black powder coat finish that's gonna resist any rust or corrosion.Far as the installation goes, it's pretty straight forward. You're just gonna have a few holes in each rail you have to drill. And it's gonna come with all the necessary hardware to get them installed.
Now that we've gone over some of the features, let me show you how I installed it.First thing we're gonna do to start our installation is you wanna go ahead and remove your spare tire. It's gonna give you a little bit more room when we have to go underneath the vehicle. Next, we're gonna come in the back of the vehicle, we're gonna set one of our rails inside and we're gonna measure from the middle edge of our bed up to the side per the instructions and mark it. Now we have a spray in bed liner, we are gonna have to cut this out, but I wanna get where my rail is gonna be sitting so that I can cut that out as close as possible to my rail. We want our rail, when we put it in, to be touching the metal part of the bed.Go ahead and mark it.
Same thing over here. Now while I have it sitting here, I'm gonna go ahead, I'm gonna mark the backside too. This is gonna give me an idea front to back how much distance I'll need. Now what I'm gonna do, make sure I got the same even space from side to side. That looks good there.
I'm gonna go ahead and trace this out. Go ahead and remove the rail. And we can see what we're gonna need to cut out.Next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go ahead and cut that section out. Now, it might be a little bit easier if you take the bed liner out, however we can't do that because our customer has it locked on each side. So what we're gonna do is you gotta lift that liner up off that bed so you don't cut into the bed itself. So I, you can see here, I use a couple one by fours, slid them underneath to get it off the bed. You can use two by fours. Anything to get it up. To cut it, you can use a Sawzall, you know whatever you may have. Utility knife is probably not gonna work on this, it's pretty thick. Dremel Tool with a cutting blade will probably work.Once you've laid your rail back in place you remeasure to make sure your distance inside your wheel wells is the same, and measure from your bed one more time. We're gonna go ahead and drill out our holes, quarter inch drill bit. We're gonna go to this second hole in on the front and the back. We're gonna drill right through the center. You wanna make sure before you do this you don't have any wiring or anything like that underneath the vehicle that you may damage.Once you get your outside holes drilled, we're gonna have one in the center we need to drill. You're gonna notice there's two holes. We're gonna do the one that's closest to the rear of the bed of the truck. Once you get that drilled, remove your rail and then we're gonna open the holes up. Per our instructions, we're gonna open them up to nine-sixteenths. I'm just gonna use a step bit that way I can open my hole just a little bit more if I need to. Completely up to you.Then I'll take one of my bolts, I just wanna make sure that it goes through freely. We don't want the threads to hang up. Once you get your other holes done, go ahead and take some paint and spray those holes. That'll prevent any rusting later on down the road. Then you're gonna take your one and a half inch by half inch carriage bolt, look like this, we're gonna ahead and just drop it in the holes. Now we can go outside, we can put our frame rails on.Next we're gonna be installing our hardware for our frame brackets. First you're gonna take your pull wire. What I suggest doing is take the end of it, put a little bend in it like that. We're gonna be using this hole and then in front of this hat channel, right behind our front hat channel, we're gonna be using this hole. There's a large hole about right center, right here, in the back of the frame that we'll be able to get our bolts through. So we're gonna take this end, we're gonna push it through the hole and we're gonna come out on the inside of the frame rail, or inside of the center of the truck through the larger hole in the frame.Then we're gonna take our one inch by half inch carriage bolt, spacer block that looks like this, and put them together. We're gonna thread your bolt onto the end of your pull wire. Go ahead and pass it through the hole and come out just like that. We're add two bigger size washers like this and two smaller ones. The small ones are gonna through this back hole, large ones are gonna through the front hole. So we'll take our smaller one and go ahead and slide it on through our wire. What it's gonna do, it's gonna fill that gap inside the frame so our bolt is tight. Now if this falls back in that's fine. You just wanna make sure you have that on there before you put your frame bracket on. Now we're gonna repeat this same process for the front hole.So you'll notice our hat channel here. To know you got the right bracket, each bracket's gonna be shaped like this. This part here is gonna fit around that hat channel so you'll know which side is the driver and passenger. The two holes, you'll have two holes on one side, one on the other. The two holes are gonna go towards the back of vehicle. You can slide it like this. Go ahead and get your . It's a little hard to see, but get your pull wires through the holes starting here on this back side. I can't get it by myself. This would be easier if you had a second person to help.Go ahead and pull off your wire while this is resting on it. Just be careful that your bracket doesn't slide off because your hardware will fall back down in the hole. Conical tooth washer and nut. And we're gonna loosely install that right now. We'll do that same thing to the front.Next we're gonna take the large spacer block that looks like this, with the round hole. You can see it's got a shorter side and a fatter side or a longer side. This longer side's gonna go out towards the outside of the frame. Gonna slide it on to the bolt. Conical tooth washer. You can see this one's galvanized. Put that one on the bolt, like that. And then the nut. We're just gonna loosely install these right now. Just wanna make sure they're in place. We're gonna do that same thing with this one here, which we've already installed. And then you're gonna repeat that process for the other frame rail.Now we'll take our two unassembled saddles and we're gonna put them in the slots. We're gonna be using this second hole in. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put them in place. I'm gonna grab the second part that's gonna on top just to make sure we're doing that before we drill out or anything. Set them in place like this. See how I have this one And then in your fifth wheel head, you gonna get a piece that looks like this. You just wanna make sure that that's gonna slide in. You just wanna make sure you got the right distance there. Okay. So we're good.Now what we need to do before we cut this or drill any holes, we need to measure to make sure it's centered in the bed. So once you've measured, you've got it centered, go ahead and mark it the way you did the back one, and go ahead and cut out your bed liner. We're gonna drill our holes the same way we did with our other rail, with the exception of this one. On the back rail it was in this hole, on the front role it's in this hole, so closest to the cabin. We're gonna do the same thing with this one on our bracket as we did with the back ones. Large spacer block, followed by conical tooth washer, and nut. That side facing in.We're gonna have some U shaped spacer blocks. They need to go in the lower corrugation. And what that does is it keeps your raised corrugation from flattening out. Stick it in. When you get your spacer block under each one of your bolts up here in the back of the bed, you're gonna go down underneath and you're gonna tighten and torque all of your hardware to specifications in the instructions.That'll do it for look at and installation on the Reese Quick-Install Custom Installation Kit with Base Rails for fifth wheel trailer hitches on our 2009 Ford F150.
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (53 Customer Reviews)
Custom brackets reduce the amount of drilling and time required to install your fifth-wheel trailer hitch. Brackets, base rails and hardware included.2011 Ford F150 XLT
Base rail instalation kit for fifth wheel hitch. Once you have the measurements for the rails in your bed. The rest is pretty simple. Follow directions and it'll all go together. Only issue is not being able to torque the nuts to the carriage bolts that come from the bed to the rails. I tried using a crows foot on my torque wrench. Couldn't get it. Other then that about 2 hour instal.
A friend & I started at 9am and had this in my truck at 11:30......We measured 3-4 times but evey hole lined up perfectly. On the 2010 truck frame yoiu do not need to take the spring bumpers off. On the inside of frame just above the bumpers is a large hole that serves the pupose of feed in the wire and then the bushing ,metal plate then the bolt We added large washers on the side of mount plate then lock washer then nut when mouunting plate to frame. We felt that the lock wash might not work properly if it was not on level surface. The holes are large to allow for movement and lock wash could be inaffective if it was not on flat surface.......Also ordered this item on a Tuesday was here on Friday...
Fast shipping. Brackets and rails fit perfectly. Took about 2 1/2 hours start to finish with basic hand tools and drill.
Perfect F.
12/12/2016
Still working perfectly after a year in service. Thanks
The ease of website navigation and the efficient service were second to none. The order shipped so fast and was delivered in two days. My only problem was the hardware in my assembly kit was missing three cotter pins. That was such a minor issue it is barely worth mentioning. I am so pleased with the product and the service. I will most definitely keep my business with you. Thanks for a great job. I will be towing a 30’ fifth wheel camper with my new Reese hitch.
Kevin W.
10/20/2018
My Reese fifth wheel is hitch is still performing flawlessly after a years worth of service. I appreciate your follow up and thanks for the great service you extend to your customers.
Installed on a 2014 F150.
It fits and works as advertised. Installation was tough, but this was mostly due to the truck having boxed frames and a 36 gallon fuel tank. Using a Pro series Hitch and fits snug. etrailer was great with communication from ordering to shipping.
They don't ship the parts together. Half of it showed up very late.
Works as described. Myself and a friend were able to install in about 2.5 hrs in a 2013 F150. Some nuts awkward to get to when tightening but otherwise a piece of cake. I already had a Reese 5th wheel hitch that came with my camper and it works great.
I purchased the pro series 5th wheel hitch. I never had any problems on the installation. Everything went together smoothly. I am very impressed with this product and I'm excited to use it. The service at etrailer was great and I'm looking forward to ordering from them in the future.
Product is excellent, though option 2 page needs more clarity, as the measurement, in my estimation should have been stated that it was from the rear of the bed to the REAR edge of the rail. I feel depiction makes it look as though it is to middle of rail. I also made measurement 51 inches to account for spray-in bedliner. the video of the 2013 F150 install does not show how one gets a torque wrench to work on the rail hardware.
Arrived quickly and order was accurate. Installation took about three hours, but that was doing the work myself with the help of my six year old daughter. The only complaint would be the difficulty getting to the hardware underneath the bed. The directions state to torque the bolts to a specific quantity, but there is no way there is room for a torque wrench with the socket on it. That is the only reason that I didn't give this a 5 start rating. I look forward to dealing with e-trailer again.
Great place , fast shipping . Reese install kit and all hardware were exactly what I needed!
Worked great, pulled 8K lb 5th wheel no problem.
We have ordered several products from etrailer. Always on time delivery at a great price!
Mark
5/31/2017
Always prompt with delivery and products are great!
Great product. It came in the allotted time. Etrailer was great to work with.one thing I liked was the courtesy message telling me it was at my back door. Five stars....
GOOD PROMPT SERVICE AND SHIPPING ALL EXCELLENT! - BUT MAKE SURE YOU VERIFY THE PART NUMBER YOU ARE BUYING! I ASKED TO ORDER A PART RP50081 BUT RECEIVED A PART RP50081-58 WHICH HAD A -58 NUMBER ADDED ON TO THE PRIME NUMBER RP50081, WHICH CHANGED MY PRICE POINT FROM $[XXX] TO $[XXX] SO I ENDED UP WITH MORE ITEMS THAN I ORIGIONALLY WAS WANTING IN THE FIRST PLACE. SO NOW I MUST MAKE RETURN PARTS AND PAYMENT ARANGEMENTS, SORRY AND THANKS MARK S.
Great product. I strongly suggest watching the installation video a few time prior to starting.
Outstanding, I ordered on line and made a mistake. As soon as I realized it I called and requested an order change. Debbie helped me with my new order and cancelled the on line order and saved me shipping charges. The equipment I ordered arrived very quick and was in excellent shape with good instructions.
I recieved 5th wheel rails within two days. Exellent delivery time. Read over the directions and can see this is very clear and can't wait to install it. I was also pleased with the quality of the parts. Plan to order my hitch in the near future. Thumbs up etrailer.
Item had very fast Shipping . Product was installed with out drilling holes. The instructions are very poor, instructions does not show where the rails go.
I have not used this yet however its pretty straight forward on installation, easy to install, ordering and shipping is really simple thank you etrailer team you know your stuff.
Fast shipping, The video with enclosed instructions made the install easy, the fit was right on the mark, all hardware was correct, no complaints. Thank you.
my product arrived as quick as expected and fit my application perfect . Directions were simple and easy to follow and video was very helpful, Thank you and your company very much, Sincerely Arthur Allensworth
Very easy install, only drilling was through the bed, used all pre drilled holes in the frame
Great customer service, great instructions, installed as stated.
Really nice product! Definitely impressed with how fast it got to my house. Will definitely use etrailer in the future!
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Greg
8/3/2014
will this work with an air ride setup