Teach Me RV! How to hook up your Fifth Wheel!

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hi I'm jr. with Keystone RV Center Greencastle Pennsylvania off i-81 exit 1 want to talk to you today real quick about hooking up your pickup truck to a chaparral 5th wheel any fifth wheel in history this is gonna be pretty much standard for today we're gonna be talking specifically about the demco 21k you're to see other demco products this will cross over too and you'll probably able to adapt it to different 5th wheels in the industry but just for legal purposes this is only for the 21 k demco first thing we're going to do before we even back up to the fifth wheel make sure you drop your tailgate it's gonna sound silly but you need to make sure you do it there's enough dented tailgates out there if you don't believe me look through the campground next thing we're going to talk about it I'm going to cheat and use Ford's beautiful easy stuff here no they're not painting to say that I'm just getting older so it's a lot easier this one the jaws are closed we're going to open that is my grab and hold this make sure that our pen is out because if you have it set in here that's not going to be able to allow the handle to slide across and auto lock on there we also have a sliding fifth wheel hurt hitch version so we want to make sure this is pinned in the forward position we do have the pin proof here if you're hooking up in an oddball angle and you need it slid back please go ahead and do that the one nice thing with the depth no hitches you can slide them by hand that's right Reese go ahead get jealous now so again make sure it's pinned in the forward position we're going to talk about what you're going to be looking at while you're backing up to this it's good to have somebody off the back but you can't always have that so today we're going to show you what you're gonna be looking at from that front seat to get this lined up correctly alright guys we'll see you inside legal has told me that even though we're in a parking lot I should be buckled so you should be too anyway when we're backing up what we're going to be looking at is mark if you pop over that third bet middle seat there the middle headrest you see how the demco hitch has that little bit of a notch in the middle there kind of like a support mark where you go ahead and turn your parking aid off for you see how we've got that lined up now I'm looking over my right shoulder not turned around and look into my left that's going to give me a better line of sight to make sure I'm lining everything up so as we come back to it I'm gonna stop us right there so you could see what the hitch should look like on the outside because the question always is how high is the right height everything like that now on this Ford it's got this beautiful off-road status if you have not figured this out yet it'll show you marking you can see that wow that's awesome works good with the camera so it'll show you what angle your wheels are turned at so once you've got it where you want to be coming straight back I still look at that to make sure my wheels are straight because this truck has a turn radio it actually doesn't have any turn radius you probably could have this wheel turned all the way to one side and it would still come straight back but it does help so you can make sure you line that up perfectly straight how many times we see somebody they got the wheel just turned slightly off in their drift and drift and drift and so that'll help guys let's jump out here and let's see what we need for height when we're hooking up if you notice on the front of this fifth wheel here we've got a little bit of an angle what that's gonna match up with with this so we want this fifth wheel not so that this plates coming in level on this you want it to ramp up a little bit on that doesn't have to be super drastic but we want a good good ramp up there that way we don't what we call high hitch where you're actually sitting about a half inch high that can mess the jaws up on the inside of the hitch so when you're coming back you're gonna run this up on there just a little bit what your student for is at the base here as long as this kingpin is anywhere within this opening you are perfectly fine it will force itself in now of course you want to make sure you chock the wheels you're on somewhat level ground whether you use a leveling book or leveling shocks leveling Chuck's wheel chocks the yellow wheel chocks or you use the X chocks from us either one of those is going to be perfectly fine a lot of guys are gonna say oh you can just back up to with no no locks on it whatsoever you can but you're betting that it's not going to roll backwards I don't want about a $500 deductible that it's not gonna roll back so let's go ahead and pack up the rest of the way we'll show you how to lock everything in [Music] alright guys now that we've hitched up to you notice this demco allows the handle to slide completely across first thing I'm going to do I'm gonna drop this pin in right there lock it in place next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to connect my breakaway and I lock mine right onto there I prefer the bungee breakaway if you guys have not seen our RV gift video please check that out you'll understand this a little bit better now you can see with this on here it could bind up when you're backing up having that bungee elastic breakaway cable does make it really nice so then at that point I'm gonna grab my set up way now on all our company trucks we have the 7-way in the bed if you own a 5th wheel and you don't own this accessory stop down and see us we'll get it put in for you we'll get you a price quote based on the vehicle these things are great it keeps the cord reminding up it keeps from our tailgates getting shaved and last but not least close the tailgate let's go out here and show you how to operate the legs on this Chaparral all right guys you're going to come in your front storage space on chaparral so you're gonna have on the newer ones you're going to have this auto level with a completely simple eyes of control panel press on the up in the down arrow at the same time you're gonna see a little green light come on and then we're gonna press up to go up and down to go down so we're going to retract these legs up a great contact with round a little bit the reason for that is so we can do a pool test to make sure everything's hooked on there correctly so we're going to get it to right about there both of them off the ground slightly now we're going to jump back into the truck we're going to activate the brake controller and we're just going to pull forward to here to make sure that that hitch is locked in correctly we're going to drop the tailgate I know you've seen me put this tailgate up and down up and down but I'd prefer to do that because walking around makes it easier all right guys let's jump back in the vehicle it's the next what I'm going to do is I'm gonna reach down now our brake controllers built in here if you have an aftermarket one you should have it right about here you should still have some kind of pinch lever to hold together to activate the brake controller do that I'm going to drop it down into first gear I'm gonna release my foot off the pedal brake and you're gonna feel the brakes on the trailer grab about a second to two seconds later you saw mark it a little bit nervous there the camera would have been on him and I'm just gonna add a little bit of gas make sure that that hitch is grabbing trailer brakes are working everything is good to go there now folks I'm gonna leave the truck run I'm gonna do my final walk around with my headlights on I've already ensured that my trailer brakes are working so we're gonna go ahead and get this thing going through a full walk around again by yourself so we're gonna be using four ways not turn signals see you out there the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to look at these cap lights now they are LED lighting zhan these Shaffer ELLs it's a great feature so I just want to make sure they're working I got two good lights there I'm gonna make sure that I put my pin in for my hitch I'm gonna double check my breakaway that's locked in there double check my sliding hitch feature shut my tailgate go ahead and lift up my one leg come back over here to this that guys still on I'm gonna press retract all and it's gonna bring them all up automatically for me check my clearance light there I can't light up top do my baggage door lock Chuck my hot water heater is closed my cap is closed for my short poured sewer hose connection is made jacks are up wheel chock is removed white down there is fine I got flashing lights there we will make sure we got to tell Luis and Jason to put a dealer plate on it before they take it loose and Jason are going on a friendship retreat this weekend so we do have to make sure they get that done other lights working we got flashing on both all the lights up top or functioning right down there is ladders in your wheel chocks already been pulled from this side handles closed doors closed steps are up front storage partners locked clearance light civilian clearance lights good in the baggage stores there's good to pull this last one up and will retract these the rest of the way make sure they're all the way up folks that's all there is tune in for our next video will show you how to unhook this thing [Music]

Channel: Keystone RV Center

Views: 162,800

Rating: 4.8614402 out of 5

Keywords: Greencastle, Pennsylvania, RV Dealer, RV, Recreational Vehicle, Camper, Camping, Travel Trailer, How To, Instructional, Keystone RV Center, Keystone, Kampers, Demonstration, Trailer, how to, rv 101, teach me rv, rv101, educational, instructional, hook up, hitch, fifth wheel hitch, fifth wheel, demco

Id: sTpElM7cF98

Length: 10min 28sec (628 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 09 2018