B and W Turnoverball Underbed Gooseneck Trailer Hitch Installation - 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 2500
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How to Install the B and W Turnoverball Underbed Gooseneck Trailer Hitch on a 2020 Chevrolet Silver
Hey guys, Shane here with etrailer.com. Today I have a 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 2500. Now I want to walk you how to install BMW's under-bed gooseneck fifth wheel trailer hitch receiver. Having this setup is going to allow you to utilize your bed space when you're not pulling a trailer. But on the other side of that, it's going to give you your gooseneck hookup, and you can also install a fifth wheel slider with this same setup. The benefit of having this setup being able to use either a fifth wheel or gooseneck is maybe you pull a gooseneck trailer through the week, and then you have a fifth wheel that you want to pull on the weekends.
This being a short bed truck, I would recommend if you're going to go to the fifth wheel side, is to pick up the companion fifth wheel slider, and that's by BMW also.The ball is going to be 2-5/16", you're going to notice it has a square base. It's going to have holes on all sides, so it can go in any way, the square base is going to keep the ball from twisting inside of the hole. You'll notice that the edges here are kind of curved. What that does is, while this is in here, it allows dirt and debris to fall out of the bottom and not get caught inside of there. Weight capacities for this, we're going to have a 30,000 lbs gross towing weight.
We're going to have a 7,500 lbs vertical load limit, which is straight up and down on the ball. So you want to make sure you check your vehicle's owner's manual, make sure the vehicle can withstand that amount of weight. You always want to go with the lowest number between the vehicle and the hitch.Another nice benefit to this, is this is a turnover ball. So what we can do is we take this when we're not towing a trailer, slide it down inside and you can see it's nice and flat and against our bed. We come over here and our safety chain loops or safety chain hooks.
You can see here, they're in the lower part of the corrugation, so they sit nice and tight. So if we're still want to put plywood, drywall or anything in here, we can still maintain the use of the whole bed. They're going to be spring loaded, you can see they stay nice and tight down to the bed when we're not using them. And if we're going to put a hook on, we got to hook to our trailer, you can see they're not going to stay raised up in the air. Again, pulls our hook even down tight to the bed.As far as our handle, it's very simple to use, it's going to have a nice rubber coating on it.
To lock it open, you simply pull it out, twist and it locks open, it allows you to put your ball in the upright or stored position. To unlock it and slide the pin over, you just twist it back and let it go and it's going to lock that device in place.Overall, my professional opinion, if I was looking for an under bed hitch, I would go with BMW. The construction of it is outstanding, all the components are a really, really thick steel. It's going to have a nice thick gray powder coat finish that's really going to hold up well against rust and corrosion. And this one is very simple to put in, it's pretty simple and straightforward. It's going to come with all the hardware, there's not going to be any drilling or major modifications. The only thing we're going to have to do is our two holes for each of our safety chain loops, and our hole right in the center. Everything else bolts together, right to the frame rails, again, very simple, straightforward to put in.To start your installation, it's a good idea to remove your spare tire. We can do this and we can start a couple of different ways. You can start underneath the truck and there's going to be a heat shield, you have to lower your exhaust and stuff like that. But what I like to do is start up here with a hole I'm going to put in the bed, that way I'm not going back and forth a bunch of times. In the back of the bed, we're going to measure from the edge of our bed, make sure it's not to tailgate, from the edge of the bed per the instructions, right up the center, and we need to Mark that.Keep in mind, if you have a drop-in bed liner, which is a plastic one, you need to remove it. Does he have a spray in bed liner You want to add on that measurement for the thickness of the bed liner. So I'm going to add on a 16th to an 8th of an inch to my measurement when a mark on the center rib, just going to put a little dot. Then what we need to do is measure between our wheel-wells, divide that in half, and that will be our center mark. Next I'm going to take a 4" hole saw bit, with the drill bit, and I'm going to drill this hole out. What I like to do is take a piece of plywood, use that bit, put a four inch hole in it and use that as a guide, so that when this starts hitting the metal, it doesn't bounce around. And it makes it easy because you can step on this board, and once it wraps around that bit, it makes it a little bit easier.If you don't have this border, you don't have a way to do this, you just take the drill and put it behind your ankle like this, or behind your calf. When you're doing it, it'll keep this from kicking and hurting your wrist.Now what I like to do is take a file and file off the edges of the bars. We'll clean it up and then we're going to take some spray paint and spray that edge, that bare metal to keep it from rusting and corroding later on.We're going to take a 13 mm socket, and we're going to remove this heat shield. We're going to have a bolt straight up here, and then we're going to have one right up here. We'll set this aside to be reinstalled later. We'll take the same 13 mm socket, we need to remove this heat shield. We're going to have a bolt right up here on top, one on the other drop brace over there, and you're going to have two on your passenger frame rail. Once you get it loose, we are going to remove this one, this one will not be reinstalled.On each side of the vehicle, we're going to take a T15 Torx bit and we're going to remove these three screws. We're going to pull back our wheel well liner and what we're looking for is these two holes here, and you have two more right here. These are going to be are welded, I'm sorry, threaded holes for our brackets. What we need to do is we're going to take some lubricant, we're going to spray each one of those holes and take a tube brush like this, or a wire brush, and we're going to just make sure we don't have anything caught inside of those holes. Get any dirt or anything like that out so our bolts don't cross thread.What I like to do is once I get the holes cleaned out is find where they are on top of the frame rail and put a little mark on each of them, right in the center. That way, when you go to put your cross beam up, your bracket, you kind of are in the area of where those are going to be. Let's say what we're going to do is we're going to get our two members and these four brackets. We want to get the cross member and you'll find a welded seam in there. We want that to be in the center of this bracket. This bracket is going to slide on the end like this, and when they match, the hole, we want to center it in that oval hole.We're going to take a long X bolt, it's a 5" X bolt, we're going to go through the bracket to the other side, in both holes. And then we're going to put on a flange nut, we're going to tighten, 15/16 socket wrench, we're going to tighten everything down and then we'll come back and torque it. You want to make sure when you tighten this down, there's no gap here, so just make sure it's flat, this bracket's flat against your cross-member.We're going to take our cross member, this is going to be our forward one, we want this part of the side bracket facing down. We're going to go over our exhaust on that spot to work it on. Find your mark, so that it inaudible 00:09:23. Let that set up like that, let that rest on your exhaust. So now we'll take our other side bracket, we're going to slide up between our exhausts and our frame and we're going to match it the same way we did the other ones. Keep in mind, if you have any wires or anything over here, and make sure you don't get those caught inside there. Again, we're going to line up our holes and then we're going to run the same combination of hardware through those.Once you get these bolts installed, you're going to repeat the process for the back one, with the exception is rolling in a hand, tighten the bolts, we're not going to torque one side down. Once you get your rear one in, you're going to have a plate like this, it's going to go on the outside. We're going to take another 5" bolt, we're going to pass it through so that the threads are on the inside. We're going to take it and slide it back like this. We're going to do the same thing for our front one. We'll slide it like that.This is our head or center section, you'll notice this gap here. For a short bed truck, this gap is going to go towards the front and our hatch channel on our bed is going to actually sit right inside of this. If you have a long bed, all you're going to do is take this and it's going to be on the backside. You always want the handle to be on the driver's side. So however yours is, you just slide out like that and slide it into the other side. Since we're going to be installing it like that, again, we want it on the driver's side. We're going to get two bolts, slide them down just like that, plant this nut.Now we're going to take our center section, want to get it lined up and slide the bolts through like that, and that'll hold our center section up. Take a flange nut on each one, and we're going to hand tighten them. Next, we're going to install our frame bolts, rolling in to tighten that down about that much, and the reason we leave one side loose is so that we can kind of spread that bracket out a little bit or slide it, so we can get these installed, all four holes on each frame rail.So, what we need to do is up in the bed of the truck, we need to get the hitch, the center section pulled up tight against the bottom of the bed. What I like to do since most people don't have a hoist, is take a couple of boards, you can take a two by four, and go straight across your bed rails if you want. Do this, take a strap and hook it on the pin. You can take a small two by four, go across two blocks like this, and we can use that to get it pulled up tight and we can get down and start tightening the hardware. First, we're going to tighten the four bolts holding our center section into our cross members. We'll use a 15/16 socket wrench to do that. I will take an 18 mm socket and we're going to tighten our M14 bolts that are going into our frame rails, and come back and you can tighten your six remaining five-eighth 00:13:29 bolts on your cross members.Once we get all of our hardware tightened, we're going to come back and we're going to torque it in the same sequence that we tightened it down. Again, you want to make sure you're using the specifications that are listed in your instructions. Once we get everything torqued down, come back in the bed, you can remove your hoist or whatever you use to lift your center section up, and then you want to go back and double-check all of your hardware. Go ahead and go through it again, same sequence, torque it again just to make sure nothing has loosened up while you had it pulled up tight against the bottom of the bed.Next we're going to install a handle. Now, it'd be easier if you take this, pull your pin out, kind of lock it in the open position. We're going to slide our handle out and we want this ring, so the open edge is down on the bottom side and it's going to be on the front side of this one. You see this We want it to sit like this, so it'll make it easy to get your bolt through, slide it out, and lock it open. Take your bolt, am going to slide it through the bracket, and on the opposite side and follow it with a nut. Then we're going to tighten it down, the 13 mm socket.Now what we're going to do is we're going to drill out for our safety chain loops. We're actually going to be using these two holes on each side and they're going to be opened up to eleven sixteenths. But what I like to do is take a small bit, make sure we get centered on the hole, and then we're going to go up top, and I'm actually going to use a step bit from the top side down, that makes it a little bit easier when drilling them. Once you get your holes to the correct size, again, come back, spray paint, spray the bare metal, let it dry, and then you can insert your safety chain hook inside. What do you want to make sure, you want to make sure they're going to move freely, and to make sure they're not going to get hung up on the edges. So, if you need to go a little bit bigger, you can.Next we're going to get some Christmas tree Springs like this, you want the wide end going up. We're going to slide it over top of the bolt, then we're going to have a lock nut that's going to go on. We're going to install one of these on each one of the bolts that we brought down for our safety chain hooks. We're going to take a 15/16 socket, we're going to tighten them nuts, just enough so that the bolt hit is flushed with the edge.Then we can install our heat shield for our spare tire. Keep in mind, we will not be installing the second one. Then you can put your three bolts back in for your panels or your wheel wall panels. Now, what we need to do is on our driver's side, we need to trim it out for our handle. So what I like to do is just kind of mark it, we can use a utility knife or you can use really anything, this is just cardboard, should cut pretty easy. Kind of see how I have it cut here, this makes it easy when getting your hand in there to grab it and to lock it. With just a little slit here, it's hard to get just your fingers in there and grab it, it kind of makes it a pain, so this allows you to get your whole hand in there to grab it, unlock the pin and to lock it back in place.Once you get that cut out, go ahead and reinstall your spare tire and you're ready to go. That's going to do it for a look at and installation on the BMW Gooseneck Fifth Wheel Under-bed Hitch on our 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 2500.
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Colby
5/24/2020
How exact do you have to be on the 4” hole through the bed? Is there some adjustability to the center section? I am nervous about that part.