Question about fiver hitch rails and mounting

Nevadastars wrote:

Durb wrote:
The rails are the least of your concern. Check below the bed and see if your frame brackets are there. If the seller took those then you have an increased expense and installation costs. Curt rails do not come with fastening bolts, they come with the frame brackets. My bolts were carriage style bolts (smooth round head). The ones you buy from a hardware store are soft and may not be suitable for the rail application. I would check with Curt customer service to see if they use special fasteners. When I bought my Curt frame brackets they did not specify that they work only with Curt rails (as I remember).

The rear brackets are there, but not in the front. In fact it looks like it never had brackets in front which I thought was odd. There are no marks on the frame where they would have been. I recently retired from working on cars and trucks as a body tech by trade for over 40 years, so installing it should be no problem once I have everything I need. Like I said, my biggest issue is I did not want to add more holes into the floor and will do my research to find exactly how it should be properly mounted.

A suggestion: Since the mount for the back rail is already there, attach your rear rail. Put the hitch in it and slide the front rail under the hitch positioning it so that it is attached. This tells you where the front rail needs to be and where the hitch will be located. You can go from there for any adjustments that need to be made.

Here is a link to an installation manual I used to install a hitch several years ago. It's not specific to your application, but much of the information is standard for any hitch install:

Manual

Note: If you need installation bolts, Tractor Supply, Big R, and Ace Hardware will have them. Just be sure to get Grade 8 or above.