Bulldog Cast Head Coupler w/ Wedge Latch - 2-5/16" Ball - Flat Plate Mount - 20,000 lbs

Video Transcript for Bulldog Cast Head Coupler with Wedge Latch Review and Installation

Hi there, heavy haulers. Today, we're going to be taking a look at Bulldog's Cast Trailer Coupler Mounts with Wedge Latch. These are available in either a 20,000 pound capacity or a 25,000 pound capacity. This is going to be a great replacement or upgrade coupler, if you've got a flat plate style with mounting holes of four and a half inches, particularly if you have a different style that you want to change to, if you don't like your current style, or maybe you have a lunette ring on there and you want a more traditional style coupler. This is going to be a very heavy-duty option that's got everything you're going to need. The heavy-duty wedge latch on the inside is a very nice well machined piece, you can see here, and it operates very smoothly, making it easy to latch and unlatch your coupler.The release here on top does have a spot for a lock, so that way you can ensure your trailer stays connected to your vehicle.

And another purpose of this latch is one of the things that I don't particularly care is that you have to hold the handle up in order to connect or disconnect it. It will not stay up by itself, but if you have a locking pin, you can slide it through the hole in the handle here and that way it'll hold it open, making it easier to connect and disconnect your trailer because you don't want to be turning that crank while holding this all at the same time. We have pins and locks available here at etrailer.com, so you can get one that is going to be suitable for your needs here. You just want to make sure that your span is at least one and three-sixteenths of an inch, so that way it will fit all the way through.For our 20,000 time coupler here, it's going to have a tongue weight of 3,000 pounds. For the 25,000 pound coupler, you'll have a tongue weight of 4,500 pounds.

So depending on the trailer that you install it on and where you distribute the weight on the trailer, you'll want to take that into consideration. Both the 20,000 pound and the 25,000 pound coupler are going to accept a two and five-sixteenths inch ball, which is the standard for weights this high. So if you're just looking for a heavy duty coupler that's simple to use and will suit your needs, this is going to be a great option for you to use. I do recommend, however, Demco's EZ-Latch, as you can get similar weights here to the 20,000 pounds. This is rated for 21,000 pounds, but they're just a lot easier to use as far as hooking it up to your trailer.

With this style, you have to lift the lever up. If you don't have a pin, you have to hold it the whole time.You have to put the pin in, if you do have it, and then you can lower it down. And that's not a whole lot, but it's a lot easier with the EZ-Latch because you simply just back your vehicle up, place the ball underneath, lower the trailer down and it automatically hooks without having to release the handle. But now if you do need the extra weight capacity, the 25,000 pound Bulldog is going to be the better option for you. Now I've got both of these couplers here, so you could see the difference.

This one here is the one rated for 25,000 pounds and this is the one rated for 20,000 pounds. For the most part, they look almost identical, but you can see here that the 25,000 pound does have some reinforcement around the coupler. The trailer we're working with today is only rated for 14,000 pounds, so we're going to be putting the 20,000 pound coupler on it. So we'll just set the 25,000 pounds aside and I'll show you how to get those installed.One of the things you want to keep in mind is that it does not come with any hardware, so you will have to provide your own. We're going to be using five-eighths diameter bolts with a grade five rating. Here I've got a couple of different bolts, so you can see. These are both five-eighths diameter bolts, but the difference here is the one on the right is a grade five and you can determine that by the three dash marks on top, and the one on the left here is our grade eight and we know it's grade eight because of the six dash marks. We want to use grade five for this. So when you go to your local hardware store to pick up your hardware, make sure you grab the grade five. Here we have our old coupler and you can see it's rusted and a little beat up. It is still functional, but our customer is wanting something that's a little bit easier to operate. Once they get older, they tend to be a little bit stiff and hard to move, some things like to bind.The EZ-Latch, you can simply just drop it down on there. So we're going to be taking this one off here. There are four bolts that we have that hold it on, and we'll be removing those with a 15/16 socket and wrench. Now the hardware on yours may vary differently. And another thing I wanted to point out is the hardware that you're going to use. It is recommended by the manufacturer to use grade five bolts. The bolts that are currently installed in here are grade eight bolts. You can see here, the dash marks around the bolt. If you see six of them like you do here, that indicates it's a grade eight bolt. If it was a grade five bolt, you would only have three dash marks. So we're going to go ahead and remove these bolts now, and then we're going to be replacing them with grade five bolts. Using our 15/16 socket and wrench, we'll just remove those. Again, your sizes may vary slightly from ours.Now that we've got all of our hardware loose, you can just simply pull our coupler off and then we're ready to put our new one on. Now it's not a bad to clean the surface and if you want to, you can go ahead and put a fresh coat of paint on it, just to protect it against corrosion. With our old coupler off and our plate all cleaned up here, we're ready to put our new coupler on. There are multiple positions we can put it on here. We can go with a low or a high. We're going to be putting in the low position because that's where our original coupler was. So we'll just take our new coupler, line up the bolts, the bolt holes, on our coupler with the bolt holes on our trailer and then we're going to place our locking nut on the opposite side. You don't have to use a locking nut. You could also use just a lock washer and a regular nut, if that's what you pick up. And we're just going to repeat this for the three remaining holes.We're now going to tighten down our hardware. Ours here uses a 15/16 socket and wrench. Yours may vary slightly. Once you've got them all tightened down, you'll want to torque your bolts to the bolt manufacturers specifications. Now we bolted ours on because it does have five-eighths holes and it already has a four and a half inch pattern, so it lined up with our trailer perfectly, but you do have another mounting option. The gray primer that comes on it is a weldable primer, so if you have the skills, you could weld it yourself or take it to a professional to get it welded. It is also a paintable primer, so you could paint it. If you are going with the weld option, you want to make sure you weld it on before you paint it. I've gone ahead and parked our ball underneath our coupler here, so we can show you lowering it down. I'm going to go ahead and release the lever.Now, again, I mentioned that you have to either hold it up or put a pin through it in order for it to stay in the release position and then we'll just lower our trailer down. And you can see there, the ball that we're using is a bit old and used and rusty, but it still slides easily into the wedge latch on our coupler. And our leg is now off the ground. We'll pull our pin out and we are locked into place. Now all that's left for us to do is hook up our safety chains and our wiring and we're ready to hit the road. And that completes our look at Bulldog's Cast Trailer Couplers with Wedge Latch.