I have a 04 3500 SRW and need to get the 30035 reese rails and the extra bracket installed. I did my 02 F250 myself. Looking at the instructions looks kinda painful! Anyone out there have any hints on installing these rails?

Thanks

 

Or the correct instructions to drill the frame in the correct locations. I drilled mine and no probs 25+k on it.

 

I had the Pullrite Hitch installed and they didn't have to drill the frame. Just need the right brackets.

 

Check out the PUllrite SuperGlide it's the best and most expensive but worth it. Pictures are posted under #45. ;D

 

I have the Reese bracket kit with a Hidden 18K fiver hitch. Works great. One thing I noted - - I could only get 1" in front of the axle - - I wanted 2, but it pulls like a dream.

 

I helped a friend put in his Reese rails a few weeks ago in a '03 LWB SRW 4x4. He bought the bracket kit for the new style trucks and we just measured from the rear of the bed, drilled down through the bed, and put them where the instructions showed. Pretty simple install, even with fishing the bolts through the inside of the frame.

I don't see why anyone couldn't do this themselves.

 

Any pictures? I am supposed to get a Husky hitch a through in with the trailer. Anyone got one of those?

***** just used this free download to check the spelling works geood, eh?
http://www.iespell.com/

 

Bironside, I have a Husky 16k on my 03 3500. Had it installed at Outdoor Travel in Burlington. Frame holes are drilled offset so frame strength is retained as much as possible. Any hole weakens the frame. I've pulled my fiver about 8000km so far and everything seems to be ok. For the couple hundred bucks to install at least I have someone to go back on if somethings goes wrong.

A friend of mine was doing a driveback for a dealer last fall. He was coming up from Florida and had to hit the brakes..no brakes so he took the ditch and hit a tree. The 36' fiver came straight into the cab. The hitch had only been bolted to the truck bed not the frame....Kinda scary thought!!!

 

My Dealer is camping in style,whitby, there is a RV show in Feb in Toronto which I am going to go to, so I will have a few good questions for them. Are you using a brake device like prodigy?

 

I have the Husky (made by Valley Industries) 15K 5th wheel hitch in mine. I installed it myself. I did drill holes in the frame- have not had any problems pulling a 12,000lb 5th wheel.

I did my homework though- I spoke to a Valley engineer at the factory- he reported that Dodge had installed the Husky hitch at their "proving grounds" and they did not have any complaints. To be honest, no bigger then the holes are- it does not hurt the frame.

Besides, how many times have you seen a truck (any brand) pulling a heavy load down the road and the frame buckle?? Probably none...

 

Bironside, I have a Tekonsha contoller. Had it for 6 years on 4 different trucks pulling horse trailers and now the fiver. Never had a problem. We'll be at the Toronto show at the Congress Center as well. My wife is looking at moving up to a 32-33' fiver....so my money is gone for this year!

 

So much for the pretrip inspection eh?? 5th wheel and brakes are both part of it. Hope he wasn't hurt.

 

You're right but not sure how many people would actually crawl under the truck to see how the hitch was mounted. He should have done that though on an unfamiliar truck/trailer combo. Brakes actually did work. He was half way home from Florida before this episode. A brake line let go!

Surprisingly he was not hurt. A few scrapes and bruises. I saw the pictures. The rig was a mess.

Lessons learned!!!!!

 

All,

We worked on this problem about two months ago. Here's the research we posted in usenet back then. Thanks,

Tom

___________________________________________

We recently bought a 2004 Ram 3500 dually for full-time 5th-wheel
towing purposes (5'er yet TBD.) We thought that having the 5'er hitch
installed would be straightforward, but it turned out to be somewhat
of a challenge; yet a happy ending was found.

The hitch brands most often mentioned in these forums seem to be
Reese, Draw-Tite, and Hidden Hitch. These are all owned by a single
company, Cequent Group:

http://www.cequentgroup.com

We went to our large local Reese dealer intending to have him install
the Reese 16k 5'er hitch, but he refused to do the work. This was
because of Dodge's fairly stern technical warnings with respect to any
alterations to the new tubular frames used on 2003-2004 RAMs:

http://dodgeram.info/tsb/2003/13-001-03.htm

The Reese dealer quoted the above technical bulletin as his reason. He
didn't want to assume liability for our truck's safety after drilling
our frame to install the hitch. He was hopeful that Reese would come
out with some RAM-specific no-drill brackets in 2004. However, our
calls to Reese tech support found that they had no such product
planned.

Via the Cequent site, we looked at the other hitch brand product
lines. It looked like we had a chance when we saw the following Hidden
Hitch brackets:

http://www.hiddenhitch.com/Products/...essoryID=50040

Described graphically in:

http://www.hiddenhitch.com/images/pr...ions/50040.pdf

However, it turned out that these no-drill brackets only fit the 02-04
Dodge 1500 series and 03-04 Dodge 2500 series; not our 3500.

By pure luck, Valley Industries was mentioned in some of our searches,
and we recalled them as a reliable long-term hitch maker:

http://www.valleyindustries.com

More importantly, they had a considerable variety of no-drill hitches
and fittings for our truck:

http://www.valleyorders.com/Valley/P...gi-bin/IPA002R
EXTSES=EX64251829&EVENT=selModel%28changed%29&VEHY R=2004&VEHMAKE=Dodge&VEHMOD=Pickup

After studying the instructions for the Valley underbed system (UBS)
and scissor-clamped 16k hitch provided in:

http://www.valleyorders.com/ISheets/70630.pdf

http://www.valleyorders.com/ISheets/70660.pdf

We decided to go with it. Although on-line prices for Valley parts
70630 and 70660 seemed to be around $1200, Trick Trucks in Winchester
VA installed the hitch in our Line-X'd bed for $899.60 including tax.
We haven't towed anything yet, but it's a pleasing hitch to look at –
just four 2.5" holes in the bed (no rails) and when the hitch is
removed, plastic plugs fill the holes and leave a pretty flat bed.

This result is not intended to critique anyone who has had other
hitches installed in new RAM's by standard drilling or welding. Good
installers are not going to do anything really unsafe. But this Valley
solution avoids any warranty problems that an unscrupulous Dodge
dealer might bring up if any frame defects happen down the road.