B and W Companion Fifth Wheel Hitch Installation - 2018 Ford F-350 Super Duty

Products Featured in this Video

B&W Companion OEM 5th-Wheel Hitch for Ford Super Duty Prep Package - Dual Jaw - 20,000 lbs

3525 reviews

Code: BWRVK3300

Retail: $1,989.28

Price:  $1,199.00

• Fifth Wheel Hitch
• Fixed Fifth Wheel
• OEM - Ford
• 5000 lbs Vertical Load
• 20000 lbs GTW

• Double Pivot
• Standard - Double Jaw
• 16-3/4 - 18-3/4 Inch Tall
• B and W

Specially designed to attach to the receivers in your factory 5th-wheel towing prep package, the Companion OEM features a dual jaw for excellent jaw-to-king-pin contact and a cam-action handle for simple release. Easily remove for full bed access.

Do you have a question about part BWRVK3300?more information >     

How to Install a B and W Companion Fifth Wheel Hitch on a 2018 Ford F-350 Super Duty

Speaker 1: Today on our 2018 Ford F350, we're going to take a look at and show you how to install the BMW Companion fifth-wheel hitch with a prep pack. Part number is BWRVK3300. Most people are going to choose this style with the prep pack because you're not going to have to take up the room in your bed to get the rails going across the front and the back. If you have the prep package, this is definitely the way that you want to go, get something that's just going to drop in, pivot the arms in place, and you're set. You're ready to tow. When comparing the Companion to other drop-in style fifth-wheel hitches, this is by far the most popular.

It gets excellent reviews from our customers, we have excellent experience with it here in the shop. It's really well built, everything goes together the way it should every single time.It's constructed of really good quality materials. You've got in my mind one of the best powder coat finishes on it. You don't see these chipping like what you see with some of the others. And all that's done right here in the United States.

The handle offers a really easy to use design. I like that you can reach it from over the side rail of the truck. Even if our dual jaws have a little bit of tension on them, it has a cam design here. You pull the pin, then as we pull our arm forward, it gives us plenty of leverage to make sure our jaws unlock fully. The jaws are mainly where your trailer's going to be held.

Of course, some of the weight's going to be down on the shoe. They take a lot of care in making sure that this is machined very well.You can see as we bring that closed that we've got 1" thick jaws. They make 360 degrees of contact and it's perfectly round. It's designed to hold that kingpin on all sides. That's going to eliminate a lot of that forward and back, or the side to side that you can get with other models.

Some of them just have a single jaw that maybe comes around the rear or a pin that comes behind the rear. It can add a lot of movement to your setup. We'll just use a mock kingpin here to give the idea of how it's going to work. As you back up to your trailer, you've got full surround like we talked about, and with the weight of your trailer, it's actually going to close the lever here for us. You can see I don't quite generate the force your trailer will, but that's going to come closed. We've got a good, secure kingpin connection there. No side to side or forward to back.You can see we do have the accommodation here, not only for a pin, but a lock. That'll help to secure your trailer to the fifth wheel, keep it from ever coming out. The same can be said for the prep packaging arms. As you close those, you can lock those to ensure that your kingpin's not going to disappear. We can just take our pin and clip, slide it back in and secure it. If you decide to, you can replace this clip with a lock to keep everything secure.To keep everything smooth, even over rougher or hilly terrain, you can see we're going to have full articulation front to back here, but also side to side. With the hydraulic piston on the side, that helps to get our shoe level back out, so it gets our trailer back squared up, and then in the event that our fifth wheel we're to be pushed forward, we've got that spring there that's not going to let it go past this point. So as we're backing up to our trailer, will be easy to connect each time.As far as weight ratings go, we've got a 5,000 pound vertical load limit, that's the maximum downward force we can put on the Companion. It offers a 20,000 pound gross trailer weight rating. That's the total weight of your trailer and anything you load up on it. Check the owner's manual on your F350 to see what its total rating is and don't exceed that.Here's a good look at the polyurethane bushings that make the contact point between where the head sits down and on, and our base. Polyurethane's going to be much longer lasting than rubber. It doesn't tend to distort or hold a memory. That's going to give us good, long-lasting performance. By softening up that contact point, we're not going to feel the trailer on the back of the truck quite as much and we're going to reduce a lot of the noise.The companion also offers a full range of adjustment here. We have our arms set currently in the forward position, but if we we're to switch this side to that side and vice versa, we're actually going to move this point rearward just a little bit. That can give you extra space between the front of your trailer and the cab of your truck. We're also going to have height adjustment here with our four bolts. Behind this there're going to be three bolt holes to choose from. So you can set it at its lowest setting up to its highest setting. That's going to give us 2" of adjustment.With the prep package in your vehicle, you are going to take the rubber caps out of top to begin your installation. Simply a screwdriver or this is just a plastic trim panel tool. Just going to pop them up and out, set them aside so you can replace them when you're done. Now we'll grab our base. You want to get it up in position. We typically put these in two pieces. You take the head off, makes it a lot easier to work. If you've got two guys, you could probably get it in here in one piece, or maybe you're just really tough. What we need to do is release our latches down here at the bottom. It's got a clip there that holds those handles closed.Then we're going to rotate them out. Just like that, and do that on both sides. You're going to see the lug right down here. It should be lined up forward and back with the truck and in line with the truck. We'll get those slid down in each of the holes. Now we need to test our handle. You can see we're trying to turn it. It's a little bit too tight. It won't close for us. Check this one, it's the same way, so what we'll do, remove the cotter pin here. We need to loosen this castle nut up just a little bit. There it goes. That went in pretty well. A little bit of resistance, so we'll tighten up just a notch. That seems to be good. You don't want it to just slip in real easy, but you also don't want it to be so hard where you have to tap it in or anything like that. We'll call that one good. Put our cotter back in, spread it out. Now we'll do that to the three remaining locations and get those all set.We need to get the spring put on. That's going to keep our head level while we're hooking up and disconnecting. This just slides over the steel here. We want the top of the spring to be about 1/2" below the black right there. Now we can put the head down on the base. You can see you're going to grab the handle on each side and the snug fit, just wiggle it a little bit as you go down. Just like that until those handles will go down. We'll slide our pins through each side and get those secured with our clips.That's going to complete our look at the BMW Companion OEM fifth wheel hitch for the Ford prep package, part number BWRVK3300, on our 2018 Ford F350.