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.

I sure wouldn't tow a 5er with the front bed rail bolted only to the bed. Possibly the seller removed the rails for liability reasons. I have an 04 Dodge with a long bed so comparisons might be weak. There is a hat section bed support centered under the correctly positioned front rail. The forward and rear bolts are on either side of this support. The rear bolts are secured through the Curt frame bracket. The other bolts including two in the center of the rail have heavy square washers that overlap the hat section flange. The Curt instructions were very exacting about were to position the rails so that your kingpin will ride over the axle. Maybe you can download an installation PDF.