Reese 5th Airborne 5th Wheel Air Ride King Pin with Sidewinder Review
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Review of the Reese 5th Airborne 5th Wheel Air Ride King Pin with Sidewinder
Today we're going to be taking a look at the Reese 5th Airborne Premium Line 5th Wheel Air Ride King Pins with Sidewinder. The 5th Airborne system really does a great job of kind of killing a couple birds with one stone. The first thing we're going to do, we're going to move the pivot point of our trailer from our main king pin back 22 inches. This is going to allow us a lot easier time of making up to 90 degree turns and maneuverability without having to use a slider system. We don't have to get out of the truck and back in the truck, all that kind of stuff. This is all in one system. It also has a built in shock right up here at the top.
This is a airshock. Fully adjustable right here for the two bolts. We'll move it back for higher ton weight. Move it forward for less ton weight so you can really customize your ride. This is going to help to reduce the chucking that we get or that front to back movement by about 60 percent.
Also, the up and down motor, the verticle load that we get right down on our fifth wheel by about 40 percent. This is going to help out a lot to reduce that wear and tear that we're going to get on the coach's frame and it's also going to help to reduce those vibrations inside and keep anything that we do have stored inside there nice and safe. Here you can see our king pin right here on the front. That's going to slide into the fifth wheel just as normal. We'll just back right up to it and allow it to latch. Right behind that, we have the adjustable puck.
This is going to take up that space that normally comes back and slides along that kingpin. It's then going to slide on the outside here so when we turn, it's going to hold this nice and straight allowing our pivot point here to do all the turning work for us giving us that additional 22 inches for maneuverability. Another great thing about this sidewinder, they use a C channel design for this. What this is going to do is strengthen it up quite a bit and offer more stability than what we get out of a standard pin box. All the work happens right here between the sidewinder itself and our rotating turret that's going to sit right on top. There's several options of these to fit many different pin box widths and even spacers which we've used in this application to help take up any of that extra room and give us a really nice fit. The fifth airborne sidewinder is a really heavy duty piece equipment here.
We're going to have a full black powder coating that's going to go completely across it. It has a one piece, kind of a streamlined design here. We've got fully welded seams. Each of our connection points are each of the areas where two pieces of metal will come together essentially building it into just one nice big strong piece. Our king pins going to connect into any of our standard fifth wheel trailer hitches and it's going to allow very easy hookups and disconnects no matter what angle that we're on. Now that we've gone over our features of our 5th airborne sidewinder, let's going ahead and hook it up to the truck and see how it's going to improve that maneuverability as opposed to the standard fifth wheel that we started with. Here's a perfect situation where that sidewinder is really going to come in handy. You're trying to get backed into a spot and you can't quite get that full rotation simply because if we do, we're going to wind up crashing the camper into the back of the truck. Nobody wants to start their camping trip this way. As we back up here, just take a look at how much maneuverability we've got now. We can really put this thing on any angle we want. All the way back to a really true 90 degrees here without having to worry about any contact. 22 inches really makes that big of a difference in this setup. You can see we can bring her out the other way and straight on down the road. Now let's try our U turn. Now when we tried this the first time with our standard fifth wheel, it took nearly this whole area to get this truck and trailer combo turned around. Now that we got our sidewinder in place, check out how nice and tightly it's going to turn for us. Now that we've seen just how handy it really is, that's going to complete today's look at the Reese 5th Airborne Premium 5th Wheel Air Ride King Pin with Sidewinder.
Info for this part was:
Video by:
Andrew K
Video by:
Zach D
Video Edited:
Dustin K
Installed by:
Randy B
Test Fit:
David F
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Rick P.
6/15/2021
I have a Ram 1500 with Ramboxs. I am going to be upgrading to a 2500. I like the Rambox cargo storage system on the 1500 - very convenient to keep tools, battery cables and jump box, tow strap, etc. My question is this: Would a 2500 with the Rambox system be a deal breaker for pulling a 5th wheel? If not can you tell me which Reece king pin/ hitch system I would purchase to accommodate? Thanks!