BW RVK3300 Companion Position | F350 LB

[EddieK82]

Hello,

I've just received my Companion yesterday and I'm going to install it this weekend. I'm thinking of going middle position on the height and forward position. For members who have installed these before, would that be the way to go with a long bed? Or should change it to a different position? My truck is a 2x4 so it doesn't ride as high as the 4x4, I'm thinking I may need to set the lock higher. Any recommendations?

 

[Second Chance]

The main concern with fore-and-aft position is that the corners of the back of the truck don't contact the front of the trailer during turns. If you want to go through the exercise, you can measure the distance between the pin and front of the trailer and compare that to the measurements between the bumper corners and center of the hitch in it's various optional locations. As for height, it's nearly impossible to guess at which position on the hitch without height measurements for pin plate height (with trailer level), and truck bed height - knowing how much the truck will squat with the pin weight on it. The goal is to get the trailer level with 6 - 7" of clearance between the bed rails and trailer overhang. Most of us have to adjust things once or twice during initial setup.

Rob

Edited to change "truck bumper" to "back of the truck" since the front of the trailer slants in at the top.

 

[Steven@147]

Hello,

I've just received my Companion yesterday and I'm going to install it this weekend. I'm thinking of going middle position on the height and forward position. For members who have installed these before, would that be the way to go with a long bed? Or should change it to a different position? My truck is a 2x4 so it doesn't ride as high as the 4x4, I'm thinking I may need to set the lock higher. Any recommendations?

Ed, I run the Companion RVK for my Ram so I am familiar with the hitch and setting the arms. Your thinking is probably a good place to start, middle height and forward, but each rig setup is slightly different. Your 320 rig GVWR is 13995, A swag of the expected pin weight would be 20% of GVWR = @ 2799 or about 3000 pounds on the pin with the RV all loaded and read to go. As you said your truck is a 2x4 so it doesn't ride as high, and if first time hitching the rig, you don't really know how much the truck rear will squat with the pin weight on the hitch, so to get the RV and truck level when hitched you might have to go to the highest height position. Then you have to check the bed rail clearance, at least 6 inches is kind of the norm to keep the RV from hitting the top of the truck bed in a dip.
Arms forward would be good because if the rear squats to much when loaded, having the arms forward would place some of that weight back on the truck front axle.

For us we run 3500 pounds pin weight on Ram 4x4, our arms are set for over the rear axle and middle height, that sets the rig up to be level when towing and have over 6 inches of bed clearance.

Man I just read my reply, didn't do a good job of explaining, but what Rob said.