Curt Custom Fifth Wheel Installation Kit - Dark Gray Finish

Video Transcript for How to Install the Curt Fifth Wheel Installation Kit - 2024 Ford F-250 Super Duty

It's Brad here at etrailer. And today we're taking a look and installing the Curt custom fit fifth wheel rails on a 2024 Ford F-250 Super Duty. This is what your rails are gonna look like when they're installed on your truck. And they're a really nice color. I like the gray. And this is pretty standard for in-bed rails for your fifth wheel to attach.

It's rated at a 40,000 pound max capacity. So really, you're gonna be limited more so on the fifth wheel that you put in here or what your truck is capable of. So the fact that your rails are gonna be able to hold up to pretty much anything you throw at it is really nice. And overall, the great thing about a rail kit like this means that when you don't have a fifth wheel installed, you really don't lose that much of the bed. As you can tell, it doesn't stand up that much.

It's not gonna stop you from putting two-by-fours or sheet of drywall or anything in here. And that's kind of the glory of that fifth wheel rail application. Now, being that it's ISR standard, it's gonna work with a number of different fifth wheels. There's a bunch of different slots here, and it should work with just about any of 'em that you already have or maybe want to purchase. Our neighbor today is using a Curt A20 fifth wheel, great option.

There's a lot of different options out there, and knowing that you can put pretty much anything in here is a good peace of mind. Something else you might want to pick up while doing this installation is going to be in-bed wiring. That way you can plug in your 7-pole in the bed of the truck without having to drape it over the tailgate and that way you can get all your lighting functions. Something else that I like about the gray finish, not only does it look good, but with the carbide finish on it instead of your traditional paint or powder coat. The carbide does hold up quite a bit better, you know, out in the elements.

So long term I don't expect this to break down or have any rust or corrosion. And speaking of that, being that this is an aluminum bed truck, it's nice that they do include some barrier tape to put in place. That way you don't have dissimilar metals making contact with one another. So that's also gonna prolong, obviously, the lifespan of this. So this is custom fit for the Ford, so that means that it's going to bolt up directly to holes that are already in the frame. And they'll say there's no drilling required, but obviously, you're gonna have to drill holes to get everything, well, all the hardware passed through. But overall, this isn't a horribly hard kit to get installed. They say it cuts installation time by half from normal universal kits. I don't know if that's necessarily the case, but really, it's not that bad of a kit. And the Ford really doesn't give you too many struggles as far as space where some of your other manufacturers of truck can get really tricky when you start to torque everything down. But really, there's no surprises with this, and I think that's the great part about the installation. And once you have it installed, you'll be able to get your fifth wheel hooked up and hit the road. So speaking of that installation, let's take a look at that. I'll walk you through all the steps to make sure you get it installed. First thing you're gonna wanna do before beginning any installation of our rails is gonna be taking down the spare tire and also the heat shields that are around the spare tire. It's gonna really open it up, allowing us to have a little bit more room to put everything in place and get all of our hardware tightened down. Now, if yours doesn't have a heat shield, then we can move right along, and we're gonna grab our side rail and get that in place. If you have fender liners, it's also probably a good time to get those removed so we'll have a lot more access. And putting the rails in place, you'll see that we have the two mounting holes that are gonna sit, you know, horizontal up against our bed. And the two holes, those should go towards the front. And we're also gonna have these flanges kind of go towards the outside. So as we put this in place, grab two of the large hex bolts and flat washers from the kit. And depending on the year of your truck, this is a 2024, we're gonna be using one of the holes that's gonna be a little bit different. So normally, on the older ones, we'll use the forward hole, but on this one, we'll use the middle hole, pass the bolt with the flat washer through. Do the same on the rear hole. So once you get your bolts passed through, you can go ahead and get the other side set up in the same fashion. And then we'll head underneath with our serrated flange nuts to get those loosely put in place. On the passenger side, it's gonna be a little bit different, but we will still have those two holes on the horizontal plate going towards the front of the truck. And as we put this up, we'll just get the holes aligned. We don't need to completely tighten this just by hand, we wanna make sure that it's secure against the frame. So go ahead and get all of those serrated flange nuts on the four bolts you passed through. Now with those in place, I hand tightened them down. I didn't completely crank them down because there is a little bit of room side to side, and we want to make sure that this is dialed in properly because this is gonna set the tone for the rest of the mounting. So what I've found, I did some quick measurements of where our rail would be and to center it up with this bed support here, it's gonna be 4.5 inches back. So where that puts us, a little helpful tip, you can use the front side to kind of get it aligned. We'll be using the front side of our side bracket to get it aligned. You'll see right now, I have a finger width in between the bed support end, just that little flush in there. So I'm gonna move this forward to where that is pushed up against there. And that's gonna be, you know, something that we'll use as our reference on both sides. Now, when we're gonna be putting a center punch in the back hole to start drilling out, just make sure when you are doing that to push the rail up against that portion. If you want, you can snug these down, but just push up on the rail so it's a direct shot. So with our rails put in position, I'm gonna push up, and with the center punch, mark the center location. Now, I understand that using the center punch is a good way to see where it's going to align up, and that's really what we're trying to do. But this is a brand new truck, and even with our hole punches, I wasn't really able to see the dimple that it created. Also, if you have a spray-in liner or if you've used your bed at all and there's dimples or pits here and there, it's gonna be next to impossible to really determine exactly where it's at. So I am gonna use a small drill bit to create a small pilot hole where we used our center punch, and that's gonna give us that visual cue to get our rail aligned. Now with those pilot holes drilled, now is a good time to grab our rear rail. They're gonna be the same. But we'll put this in place, make sure that it should be on these outside holes. Now, obviously, those holes are slotted, and even with the center punch, sometimes you can be a little bit off. But to make sure that everything's squared up properly, what we're gonna do is measure from the end of the bed and then to the end of the rail. That way it's gonna be even. And then we're also gonna check the side. I found that just measuring from the end, we're coming right at 29 3/4 on ours. Now, yours may be different depending on your bed length, but just making sure that it's even across the board. And I'm using a chalk marker. This makes marks, but they come off instead of using a paint marker. It's a little bit cleaner. But making sure those holes are pretty well aligned is gonna be the first step. The second thing we want to do is measure side to side. So same thing, just using the wheel well as a reference, I got 3 3/4 on this side. And on this one, it's about 3 7/8. So I'm gonna bump this over, get those evened out. And having those reference marks that I made with the paint marker also helps just kind of keep this aligned. And once we're really happy with it, I like to box off the ends with this. That way when it does shift or when we move this, we know exactly where we want to get it back to. Another quick reference would also be using the center hole in the rail. Just make sure it should be in this dropped portion of the corrugation pretty well centered up. So again, once you have everything aligned, this is when I like to box this all out, make sure everything's good. So I'll mark just kind of the outside edges across the length here just so we can get that aligned back later. Now, once I'm happy with all of that, what I'm gonna do is mark out the rear center hole here, and then we're also gonna mark row two, as they call it, which is gonna be towards the cab. And we're gonna be using the same outside holes. They say to check for the bed support to make sure it's aligned. So those bed bolts that are below this rail, it sits in the middle. And the bed support's pretty wide, so this puts us in a good spot. So I'll mark these out on both sides as well. Now with those marked out, we can move our rail, and we're gonna just put small 8-inch pilot holes through the remaining marks that we made. Since we have everything lined up where we need to have it, they do say to take the side rails out, and I would imagine that's so your drill bit doesn't make contact. But based on where we drilled, it should be centered up. I'm gonna leave mine in place, I don't think it's gonna cause any issues. And we're just gonna go back to each of these holes and enlarge them with a 9/16 drill bit. And something I'd recommend is grab one of the carriage bolts from the kit to have handy, and that way when you drill it, you can make sure that that passes through nice and cleanly. And then we'll come back, get some of these burrs knocked down and clean it up. We will just go through and repeat the same process of enlarging those on the remaining holes. And we'll just go through and clean up any of the metal shavings. And before we go any further and get everything mounted up, we do need to put our barriers that we have. These are gonna be just the stickers that go onto the rails, also anywhere where hardware is gonna make contact with the bed. And the reason being is Ford uses aluminum beds, so dissimilar metals can cause easy corrosion from building up from having those dissimilar metals. So having a barrier to prevent that from happening is gonna prolong, obviously, the lifespan of all the metal that we're working with. So we do have 'em for each of the rails in each side. And then we also have these ones for when we put our hardware in place. So let's get the rails at least covered for now. There is a portion that you can peel back, so we'll get one end put on there first, just make sure those holes are aligned. And then as we lay that down, lay this out, and then we can peel the rest of the sticker back, and it should go into place. Now we're gonna focus on row one, so those furthest back holes. And as I mentioned, we have these decals as well. So we don't want any of that, you know, metal to touch our aluminum. So we'll just take these and get those pretty well aligned with the hole. And then just put those on nice and clean. And do the same thing for the outside too. And I'm gonna also just go ahead and do those on the remaining holes 'cause we know we need to put these in place so might as well get 'em all knocked out. We are gonna grab two of the longer carriage bolts and one of the shorter ones. So as you can see, it's pretty close. It's not a huge difference, but we're gonna be using the shorter ones in the center hole. So I'll get that passed in. And you'll see that since this is in the middle of that bed corrugation, there's a gap here, and we wanna make sure as we tighten, it's not gonna crunch the bed. And the same thing goes for underneath as we tighten things. So anywhere whether you have a gap up top or a gap below, we're gonna be putting spacers in place to account for that. So we have a thick spacer, we're gonna slide one of those in place. And then a thin spacer that should fit both of those in there. And again, this is just to close up that gap as we tighten it down. So just make sure it's seated properly. It should sit in that corrugation pretty evenly here. And then just make sure your carriage bolt is pressed down. And then on the outside ones, we're gonna be taking the larger carriage bolts, and then we'll drop those into place. Underneath the truck, if you haven't taken your side rails off, go ahead and do that because we are gonna want to put, again, these barriers on the bolts that we've passed down. So on our center one, I've just kind of threaded it onto that section. You can then peel this off, and that'll create the barrier against the aluminum. And on our center bolt here, pretty easy, we're just gonna take the spacer, that's a rectangle like this with the circular hole, and you can set it however you want. But we'll take our serrated flange nut and we'll get that threaded on. We will then put the barrier tape on the outside bolts that we have passed down, doing the same process as we just did on here. And it does seem easier to thread on the sticker a little bit further in than peeling off and trying to feed it over the bolt, whatever works here to get that against the metal. I might just press this up for now, get it flush, and then I can push that carriage bolt back down. Put our side brackets back in place. And just like we did up top, we wanna make sure that as we tighten down our hardware, that our bolts aren't gonna crush the bed against the bracket. So we have the combination of spacers just as we had before. But we're gonna slide this in place and just make sure it seats in the pocket of the corrugation. So you can slide those in and just line 'em up to where they sit in this groove. And then with those in place, we'll then take our spacer block that we have, that's a rectangle with the square hole, we'll thread that or place that on the bottom of the bracket and then we're gonna finish it up with a serrated flange nut. So we'll repeat the same process on the other side. For the more forward holes that we drilled out, we're gonna take the hex bolt and a split washer and then drop those down. And these are gonna go into the bed support. And this might be something. If you have an extra set of hands that can stay in the bed, I'll show you why once we get down there because we'll be tightening these into handle nuts and it's nice to have someone that might be up here to be able to twist that to get it started. The bolt going into that channel, we're gonna need to feed up our spacer as well as the handle nut. And that's where having that extra person in the bed up top to thread that in is gonna help us out quite a bit. Because this is gonna make contact with aluminum, instead of trying to feed this up on the thread, I think what I'm gonna do is put this on the block and that way when we feed it on and tighten it down, it should be pressed against that metal. So I think this is the easiest way. I will get this lined up in place. And then with my extra set of hands, I'll have them thread that in so we can get this started. What I've found to be the best method is put two bends, that way you can get this drawn up over this lip but still have a handle on it. And I taped the block around the handle nut, and that way it's all one piece just to line up the holes. And then just make sure. Obviously, you got a cut through that tape there. And from there, I had my assistant just tighten up from the top side. And once it got started, that's good to go. So at this point, we have all of our hardware loosely in place. And at this point, we're gonna want to grab our fifth wheel base and our other rail so we can determine exactly where that needs to go. So we have our base and I dropped that into our rear rail, and now I'm gonna just raise this up and then take our front rail. We should already have those galvanized stickers on there. And then we're gonna get this aligned to where we can drop those in. What we like to do here is you pull the fifth wheel base towards the front and then you take the rail, and you should push it towards the other one. So if you need to a dead blower, I'm just gonna using my shoes to kick this along here. But the main thing is, you know, this is gonna make sure that it's gonna be a tight fit. A lot of times when you go to drop these in, it's gonna work itself with the powder coat to where it drops in nice and easy, but this is gonna settle it up nice. Now is also a good time to measure side to side. So go ahead and do that, make sure it's centered up. We're gonna be marking out the hole towards the front of the truck in the center and then be doing the outside holes. And then from here, it's going to be just drilling out those pilot holes, and then we can take the base off, move our rails, and then enlarge 'em just as we did before. It should be pretty much the same as we did on our rear rail. The hardware's gonna be slightly different as there is no handle nuts to have to put in the bed frame. So if I come up with anything different than what we saw before, I'll let you know. Now, I have my carriage bolts in. And just to keep everything from shifting, I'm just gonna put the fifth wheel base back in place. And then we're gonna go underneath. And just as before, just remember the spacers and all the stickers. If you are short on stickers, I've come up with a little bit of a solution. Once we put our spacers between the bracket and the frame or the bed of the vehicle, what we can do is just take one of these, cut it in half, and then just notch it out the same, you know, diameter here as our spacer block. And that way when we put this up, you know, it'll still be covered against the aluminum. It also makes it a little bit easier than having to thread this over that bolt. So that's how I'm gonna go about it. And then we should be good to go. So we'll go ahead and get all the rest of our hardware in place. With all of our hardware in place, now it's time to go back and tighten and torque these. So if you wanna go with an impact or a ratchet and get them all tightened down first, go right ahead. But when tightening them down, we wanna make sure that we're doing the rail bolts first, and then we're gonna leave the frame brackets for last. So just make sure you're doing those last. Also the torque setting's gonna change. And something else to consider is those hex bolts from up top, make sure you're torquing those down. So we'll go through and get these all tightened and torqued. Ready. Now, for the horizontal frame bolts, I do recommend putting a 15/16 wrench on the head of the bolt and then use a 15/16 socket to get this torque down. Now, it is a higher torque setting, so just make sure you're adjusting accordingly. With all the hardware finally torque down, all that's left to do is put up your spare tire, load up your fifth wheel, pin it in, and then hook up, and hit the road. That was a look and installation of the Curt fifth wheel rails with the custom fit installation kit on a 2024 Ford F-250 Super Duty.