TorkLift Camper Tie-Downs - Custom Frame Mount - Front
TorkLift Camper Tie-Downs - Custom Frame Mount - Rear

Video Transcript for TorkLift Rear Frame-Mounted Camper Tie-Downs Installation - 2017 Chevrolet Silverado 3500

Connor: Connor here today at etrailer.com. We're going to be taking a look at and showing you how to install the Torklift Custom Frame-Mounted Camper tie-downs for the rear of a 2017 Chevy Silverado 3500. So in regards to camper tie-downs, which are going to be used to secure a truck bed camper to your bed, you have a few different options. We have the ones that install inside the stake pockets. And we have the ones that actually mount to the frame, which is what we have here. Now, the ones that mount to the frame are going to be a much better option.

They're going to be easier to use, and they're going to look better. As you can see here, we're going to have the insert installed into the receiver, which means we're ready to go ahead and hook up our truck bed camper, and attach it with our turn buckles here.We have two slots here on either side. We can use either one depending on the setup of our truck bed camper. And then if we remove our truck bed camper, maybe for the winter, we're not going to be doing any camping, so we can go ahead and take it out of our truck bed. The great thing about these tie-downs are we can go ahead and remove this insert here, so we can go back to a factory look.

So another big benefit of the frame-mounted tie-downs as opposed to the stake pocket mounted tie-downs is we're going to have much more adjustability here. Number one, if we take a look at the receiver tube, which is installed on the truck here, we're going to have two different configurations for short bed or long bed trucks. And if we take a look at our insert here, we're going to see two different sets of holes here. Now, again, this is going to allow us to really sort of perfect our configuration that's going to best suit both our truck and our truck bed camper.So the different holes here are going to allow us, if we have a truck, we have a dually truck we're going to have those large rear fenders. And we're going to need more clearance for our turnbuckles so we can get them out away from the vehicle.

That's what this other adjustment hole is going to be for. But if we have a single rear wheel model like we see here, we can go ahead and snug these up. Now, granted, there are going to be some other instances where we may need to use the longer offset on a single rear wheel truck or vice versa. It's all going to come down to what truck bed camper you have, and the turnbuckles you're using. So we're really going to be able to get a nice custom like install.

It's going to be best suited for our truck and truck bed camper. So in regards to installation, these are going to be a custom fit here for our vehicle.They're going to be very, very easy to install, and we're not going to need a lot of mechanical experience or a lot of different specialized tools in order to be able to do this. It's definitely something you can do at home, by yourself, on the ground. So keep in mind, there's going to be quite a few different rear and front camper tie-downs for our truck, depending on the configuration, such as the bed length, the cab size, if you have a single or dual wheel model, as well as a couple other things here. So make sure you use our fit guide to ensure you're getting the proper fit. This particular rear tie down here is going to be specific to models with the Torklift Magnum 30K trailer hitch. So now that we've gone over some of the benefits and features, let's go ahead and jump right into installation, and show you how it's done.So the first step of our installation here, we want to come over to either side of our trailer hitch here. As you can see, we're going to have an L bracket that's attaching our trailer hitch to the bottom of the perch for our lease spring. So we're going to have two bolts holding this on. We're going to have a 7/16 bolt up here. And we're going to have a half inch bolt down here. Now we need to go ahead and remove the nuts, washers and lock washers on both of the ends of the bolt here so we can remove this L bracket. So for this top one here, we're going to need an 18 millimeter socket. Now we're going to use a 19 millimeter socket, and we're going to take off that other bolt there. We'll come around to the backside, grab the end of our bolt here. We're going to have another one up top, and then we should be able to remove this bracket.So now we need to go ahead and fish some hardware down into the spring perch here. Now we can actually already go ahead and use one of the bolts that we have that we're holding our L bracket to the frame here, but we're going to need to install another one here on the other side. In order to do this, we're going to be taking our 7/16 inch bolt that comes with our kit along with our half inch conical tooth washer, going to place that over like so, then we're going to follow that up with our spacer block here. But before we do this, what we want to do is you want to take our fish leader here, our wire leader. We're going to go ahead and insert the coiled end through that hole there. And then we're going to push it through till it comes out the other side. We'll show you that hole next. So here's the hole on the other side here, as you can see, we have our spare tire. It's going to be this large opening here that we can pull our bolt leader out and attach our hardware.We want to make sure that all of our hardware stays combined, meaning that the spacer block and conical tooth washer stay on our bolt. Because the next thing we're going to do is we're going to take the other end of our pull wire here and we're going to fish it through that hole there, making sure that all of our components stay together. So now we'll come out on the other side here. We'll try to pull this all through at once. What we may do is we may go ahead and tape this all together so it stays in place when we're pulling it through. So I do want to make a note here that while we're pulling our bolts through, we're actually going to be pulling this one through first, so our bolt here doesn't get in our way. But, since our customer already had this hitch installed, and we're installing the tie-down bracket second, we don't want to pull that bolt back out, so we're just going to leave it in place.Therefore, it's going to make it little bit harder to get this one aligned, but it will work with this other bolt in place first. And there we go. Now that we have it pulled through, we're going to go ahead and remove our bolt leader here, making sure we don't damage it, because we're going to need to use it on the other side. So now that we have our hardware in the spring perch here, the next step is to go ahead and take our tie-down bracket, and install it on the vehicle. Now keep in mind, we are going to have two different configurations here for our tie-down bracket. There's going to be a short bed configuration and a long bed configuration. Now this particular truck here is going to be the short bed. So what we need to make sure of is that our square tube here, our square cross tube is going to be installed closest to our rear wheel as opposed to the bumper. So we're going to install it like so.Now if we had a long bed, this tie-down bracket would go on the other side so that our square tube is going to be over here closest to our rear bumper. So let's go ahead and install this now. In order to do that, a little trick here, because we need to install hardware on these bolts here, but we don't want to push them back into the spring perch. So we're going to take one of our half inch bolts here, along with a half inch flat washer. We're going to come around to the backside of this trailer hitch, and insert it through one of these two holes here. And the reason we're doing this is, we're going to use that to hold it in place while we secure the top two bolts. We want to be extra careful again that we're not pressing those back up into the spring perch. So if we start with the top one there, that should hold everything in position to where it doesn't fall.We're going to go ahead and put a half inch flat washer, a half inch lock nut, and then a hex nut here to hold it in place for now. We'll go ahead and just tighten that up finger tight. We'll go ahead and install the bottom one now. We're not going to tighten these down just yet. We're just going to use them to help align the bolts up top. So now we're going to take our 7/16 inch hardware. So there's going to be these smaller 7/16 inch flat washers, our lock washers, and we'll follow that up with our hex nut. So let's go ahead and get those on both of those bolts now. So what I like to do is once I get those first two washers on, I like to go ahead and use one to pin the bolt to the side there, so it doesn't get pushed back up when we're installing our nut. Then we can finger tighten all these bolts here to help us with that last one.So I'm just putting some pressure there on the side of our lock washer to hold both of them on the bolt and to hold the bolt so we can get our nut on. Now we're going to come back with an 18 millimeter socket. We're going to snug these two bolts up. Then we're going to use a 19 millimeter socket and wrench to snug those bolts up. You do want to make sure that we alternate back and forth when tightening these down. Now, we're going to go ahead and tighten these first two bolts here down to the specifications in our manual, and then we'll work our way over to these two here. Now keep in mind. These are seven 16 sense bolts. These are half inch bolts, they're each going to have a different torque value. So now finally, we can take our tie down insert here. We can go ahead and insert it into the receiver that we just installed on the truck. Then we can use either hole here, but it's really going to vary depending on our turnbuckle and truck bed camper set up. So it doesn't really matter for now.I would however recommend some adjusting once you get everything set up. So we're just going to go ahead and insert it into the first hole there. Take our little snapper pin here, come around the back side with the keeper to lock it into place. Then finally, we're going to have some stickers in our kit here, which are going to help us. When we have these off inside the vehicle, one's going to be labeled to rear our front. They're obviously going to have a sticker for front that way. When we are ready to get set up, we can easily identify which tie-down insert is for the front or rear. We'll go ahead and just place that on the center of our tie-down insert. Just like that. Now we can go ahead and repeat this process on the other side of the vehicle. And that'll do it for our look and installation of the Torklift Custom Frame-Mounted Camper tie-downs for the rear of our 2017 Chevrolet Silverado 3500.