Andersen Ultimate 5th wheel - dents in bed
After 4 years with the Andersen ultimate 5th wheel hitch, I have had my first experience with two small dents in my bed. There was a lot of bed rebound when I loosened the hitch. I emailed Andersen ...
Forum Discussion
WTP-GC wrote:kohai wrote:
1. Did I not torque it down right this trip? What would I have done wrong? I know this trip the two front bolts ended up loose at some point during the trip. I can't fit my torque wrench in to torque the top bolt when hitched with the adapter reversed to check it after wait is on it.
Your first thought is where you should start. You need to get a crow's foot adapter, which will allow you to get that top bolt torqued. When I used a AUH, I had the adapter reversed too and the crows foot works prefectly. Then you can tighten down the 2 side bolts ONLY after the top bolt is torqued.
At this point, remove the the coupler sleeve on the bottom and rotate it 90 or 180 degrees so that you can have some un-grooved material to tighten the side bolts against.
FWIW, I now use a B & W Companion (single point attachment). It has the bed corrugations spacers, but they are the only part of the hitch that makes contact with the bed. The actual hitch frame itself is literally millimeters away from making contact. The AUH doesn't have these, but it has a much larger frame footprint that spreads the weight across multiple bed ribs. It is no normal nor should be expected for the bed to have dents or deflection. Even if the B & W frame made full contact, it would still not be as many square inches of contact as the AUH.
Very helpful, thank you! I'll try a crow's foot adapter. I looked at the Companion when I first started but being a newby I wanted something lighter to put in and out. I'm surprised Andersen hasn't come out with some spacers -- it seems easy enough to implement.
