Bolt this wedge onto your Sidewinder (69220 or 68220) to prevent the Sidewinder's king pin from rotating in your B&W, Demco, or Husky fifth-wheel trailer hitch.
Features:
Note:Only compatible with Sidewinder part number 69220 which replaced 68220. Will not work with any other Sidewinder.
California residents: click here
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Hi everyone. Aiden near the trailer. Today we're gonna be taking a look at this Sidewinder Wedge Kit for your B&W, Demco or Husky fifth wheel hitches. Essentially what this does is it mounts behind the kingpin on your pin box and whenever you mount up and hook up to your fifth wheel hitch, it'll slide in behind that kingpin and wedge itself into the fifth wheel hitch here. That'll keep all of the pivoting action out of here so that your Sidewinder can accurately move and have that pivot point back here giving you more clearance from your cab. Now comparing this to the wedge kit that comes with your Sidewinder, this is going to be a more custom fit option.
You can see it's a little bit more tapered on the ends here which helps it get a better fit inside your fifth wheel hitch. It's gonna just give that more contact, dispersing that force more evenly throughout the wedge kit helping to reduce wear and tear on both your fifth wheel hitch and the wedge kit. Now depending on whether you've got your B&W or your Demco or your Husky fifth wheel, there's going to be a certain way to mount it and you can see that we've got two welded points on one side and then on the other side here, a single weld point. Refer to your instructions to make sure you get that oriented the proper way. For our B&W, it's going to be with these two weld points facing in towards the kingpin and towards our truck cab.
When you're mounting this up you wanna make sure you have the proper orientation. This raised section is going to be face up into your pin box and the recessed portion underneath is where our bolts will go. It does come with its own hardware so you don't have to worry about that. The mounting holes themselves are gonna be spaced apart two and a half inches center on the center, and then the diameter of the holes themselves are gonna be three quarter inch. Now they make these in a variety of different fits for different fifth wheel hitches.
So if you've got a different fifth wheel hitch be sure to check out the right one for you. But overall, they install the same way onto the Sidewinder. We actually had one of our experts, Kevin, go out and install one of them so you can watch the install process and see what that would look like. Just know that depending on whichever one you pick up it's going to be a fit for your fifth wheel hitch. So here we have a trailer with a Reese Sidewinder.
Here's the generic like rectangle shaped Sidewinder wedge kit that's typically gonna come with your Sidewinder. If you look back here, you can see the rotary wheel and what this does is it allows our wedge kit to kind of move back and forth so that we can kind of fine tune exactly where it needs to sit. So if I pull this pin out and I turn it so turning it counterclockwise here, if I'm facing towards the trailer, it's gonna push it forward more towards the king pin, and then if I put it back clockwise, we can get it kind of back towards the trailer. Now one little tip I do recommend doing is once you find that sweet spot of where this needs to sit so that it properly aligns in the head of the hitch, go ahead and just mark it. So like our neighbor today, they've already marked it. You can kind of see it, it's a little bit scratched up just from connecting to the hitch but there's a yellow marker on here so that way you know exactly where it needs to sit every single time. You can easily put it back to where it needs to be and pop your clip back in. But let's go ahead, we'll take this off and show you how to put on a new one. So here is our old generic Sidewinder wedge kit. Do you see right here, it has one less tab on it, on this part. This is gonna be facing towards our hitch cuz it's gonna kind of overlap the head a little bit and then it'll stop right about here. So with our new one, we're gonna copy that as well. We'll have that facing towards our hitch. And I'm gonna go ahead and just reuse the same bolts. So we'll go ahead and get down under our pin box. And right here's that little plate I was talking about that we can bolt into. Go ahead and place our wedge up here. Just hand tighten that in for right now until we get this fully set and then we can use our wrench. Once we have 'em pretty tight, we can go ahead and torque 'em down. (torque wrench beeping) Also, gonna go ahead and back this one up a little bit. This is a little bit larger than our last one so we're gonna need to push it out of the way. We'll hook up to our kingpin and then we'll go ahead and slip this into place, get it in the right position. Now that we're hooked up to our hitch, we can go ahead and start turning our rotary wheel and get it fully locked up in position here. Pretty tight. All right, once we got in the position that we like we can go ahead and slip our pin back in place and we're good to go. And hopefully seeing that install process from Kevin made this a little easier to understand what's going on. He did a great job walking through it and hopefully it gives you a better idea of what you're getting into. It's a pretty simple, straightforward process. The big thing is just again, picking up the right wedge kit for your fifth wheel. So if you're not sure what you need be sure to just look at the back of your trucks see what brand of fifth wheel you have and check on our website to make sure that you're picking up the right one for your fifth wheel. Otherwise, that'll do it for our look at this Sidewinder wedge kit for your B&W, Demco and Husky fifth wheels. Thanks for watching.
What I expected. Great quality.
Great company to work with!
I am giving it 3 stars because I was told, by etrailer, I needed it for my Sidewinder pinbox. You do NOT if you are using the pinbox with a Reese hitch. The Sidewinder comes with the Wedge kit bolted to it.
I received the part I ordered the 1st time, the gentleman that took the order did a great job. When I called to follow up people were awesome with customer service.
Had to take a metal file to remove some of the welded spots and paint for a proper fit. Manufacturer should take time for Quality control and proper fitment.
Having a Ram 3500 Megacab, short bed, I was terribly worried about hitting the cab with my Momentum toy hauler given it's 102" wide. My choice was slider or this Reese Sidewinder. I chose the Sidewinder and darn glad I did. It works as advertised and I can turn a full 90 degrees with about 5" of clearance between the cab and my front nose of the trailer. Some words of caution: this pin box is heavy! Get it professionally installed by your RV dealer. The wedges for your particular hitch will take some getting used too. Move wedge back to hitch, move forward to lock into place. Even still, I need to lay in the bed and have rigged up a heavy wire to assisting getting that wedge tight in the funnel. If you don't, the hitch will move on corners and you feel a big shift of weight.
Bottom line, I like it, it was the right decision for me and didn't take up any more payload than necessary unlike a heavy slider hitch. Recommended! And etrailer delivered on time as promised.
The Reese Sidewinder (20k) setup I use with my 2022 Ram 2500 with a 6.5ft bed has been fantastic! I paired it with the Curt A25 and the OEM puck bracket to pull my 43' 15500 GVW 5th wheel, and it does not disappoint. No need to slide my hitch or worry about cab contact for sharp turns. I can turn 90deg with no issues if needed and have experienced very little line up issues getting it hitched up (mainly a result of the factory air ride releveling before the king pin fully seated in the hitch head). Great engineering by Reese all the way around! For those who will ask, no additional trailer sway and no turning limitations.
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