Pulling our NEW Trailer with the Curt Crosswing Hitch - How Does the Ram 2500 Hold Up Towing Heavy?

Hey everybody and welcome to the Truck King YouTube channel. So today a little bit different. We're going to be talking about this new hitch that I just got from Kurt. This is called the cross wing and this is a fifth wheel hitch but it's a little different than anything that maybe you've seen before. Right now I'm sitting in the back of my 2019 Ram 2500 and I'll get Steve to pan up and you can look at the new trailer that I just bought. So that's the Grand Design Solitude 310 and when I picked that up one of the issues that I thought I might have was that with the current typical traditional fifth wheel hitch I had I would need a sliding fifth wheel hitch. Because this uses the gooseneck ball as its attachment point this point here is actually five inches further back than the pin in the traditional fifth wheel and that five inches was enough that I can clear the cab on my truck at almost 90 degrees with the trailer. So no sliding hitch for me. Okay so right now the hitch is installed over the gooseneck ball but let me pull it off so I can show you how it works. Now right off the bat let me just say 60 pounds that's easy to move even for an old bugger like me. All right as compared to the old fifth wheel hitch which is over 150 pounds and though everybody always says oh you can pull it out when you're not using it everybody who owns one knows that you end up leaving it in because you take one look at it and go oh hell I'm not moving that thing and you manage to work around it 12 months of the year. However this thing honestly it pulls out that easy. So this is my attachment point I've got two pins they pop out and there you are and there you go. There's my fifth wheel pardon me my gooseneck ball and I can pull that out as well just that easy. This is the factory ram puck system so truly if I want my flat floor back all I do is I pull that out I put those pucks back in and away I go and now I can reassemble the whole thing. I should mention that these two plates here are loose so no need to fix them to the bed all they're really doing is spreading the load and once that hitch is on them they don't move. All I'm going to do now stick that on top of this bolt and that's what holds the entire thing in place. So I mean it's dead simple and it's light and again five inches further back no need for sliding hitch so honestly you tell me why I wouldn't want this. The other point of adjustment on this hitch is actually in the rise you've got three different positions which will give you and I'm gonna ballpark it here at about five inches up or down depending upon what trailer you've got. So once you get this set up to suit your trailer then of course you're going to see how much clearance you've got at the side of the truck but one main bolt very easy to do. I should also mention that you've got another point of flex right here in this hitch so you do get a little bit of that back forward action and then we'll take a look at the actual receiver piece that goes on to the trailer kingpin and you'll see how the rest of it works. Okay so this is the other piece that comes with the crosswing hitch is this receiver which fits over a standard kingpin it's right in there put in the two bolts that captures it on either side and then this is where the main attachment point is going to be to the hitch. Now you can see this is where it's turning and it even comes with a nice little nylon insert that's going to reduce any kind of friction there and I don't think I mentioned but the the unit is actually good for 20,000 pounds only 15,000 on my trailer so I'm good to go. Now we'll back it in and I'll show you how that hooks up. So just the one pin it's that simple out it comes so we haven't unhooked this yet but some of you will know that when you're trying to unhook from a traditional fifth wheel a lot of times you you can't get this handle out because it's under pressure so you end up having a little bit reverse a little bit forward that's one of the advantages of this single pin design so now that we have it let's back up lock it I need longer arms and now folks here we are on the road with that fifth wheel hooked up to dad's ram 2500 now we're going to get to how the truck is actually handling the weight and what all the numbers are but first let's just focus in on the hitch you've now seen how it goes into the truck you've seen how it operates and dad actually just spent an actual weekend in a real rv park so he just used it so I guess dad you know what did you like what didn't you like how did it work for you well as far as the hitch goes when you're actually underway there is really no difference between this hitch and my old hitch so at first I thought because it's sort of a narrow point of contact rather than sitting on the plate that might have some difference but not that I've really felt so underway like I said no difference so then that that takes us to the you know what are the advantages well the advantage is the weight of the thing okay 75 odd pounds so I can get it in and out by myself and secondly hooking up to it is significantly simpler from the point of view that you've got one pin that slides in this way rather than you know the clamshell jaws that go around the kingpin on the traditional fifth wheel hitch and the key reason I say that is because anybody that's owned that sort of a fifth wheel hitch with the clamshell jaws knows that you often have to forward reverse forward reverse to get the pressure off the pin otherwise you can't open those jaws not that it's a huge deal but guaranteed you've never been able to pull that release the very first time you usually have to either get back in the truck it's always helpful if you have a second person but with this thing yeah that pin pulls out easily and it goes back in easily because it's this v-shaped cradle that the lead piece falls into and it can't be in a wrong position that's really what I've found yeah even if I mean there is a learning curve you gotta sort of set them up nicely before you drop into the cradle if you drop it in too far away it does sort of bind its way in but to your point it still goes in and and that's the thing it's sort of like you can't do it wrong because eventually those two things will meet up so I thought it worked pretty well yeah you still got to get the height right of course um but as with the traditional hitch the only difference being is with the traditional hitch you could bring it down to a certain point and then back into it and hit the pin this one you don't have to do that because it simply drops down into that cradle so let's talk about the weights a little bit so what we're driving here is the ram 2500 so the three-quarter ton with the 6.7 liter cummins this is the regular output engine and this is a big horn so fairly low trim level and the payload on this truck is the pin weight on this trailer which is basically 35 foot is 2420 pounds so if you're that kind of guy you're gonna go oh my god it's overweight I'm of the opinion that once I put it on I will decide if it's overweight and frankly it feels good on here good from the point of view that it's it's fully loaded I wouldn't want to go more than this as far as pin weight goes but um we've still got compression on that rear axle it's nowhere near the bump stops so uh empty weight on the trailer is is 12,500 and it's 15,000 gvwr so again I think it's well matched to the truck wouldn't go bigger than this but for this trailer and that weight this truck is fine yeah I'd say the same thing I'd say that you know compared to your last fifth wheel um which was you know 4,000 pounds lighter three or four thousand pounds later you feel this trailer a lot more back there you're definitely you know working a little bit to make sure you're always keeping straight the trailer's not wagging the dog not pulling the truck but it's like you said well matched is the word I wouldn't want to go bigger either but you know what it doesn't feel sketchy that's always the biggest thing it's also not scary at all um you know this road we're on right now is kind of broken uneven pavement I don't find myself having to really compensate all that much for the truck and trailer combo yeah I uh I would agree just from first blush and this is my first time first time driving this combination I've only been driving now for about 10 minutes but I got no problem with this I could tow like this all day long well folks that's it for this video I think we've shown you everything you need to know about this kurt crosswing and you know what like dad said I think it's definitely a win-win going for this thing so if you want to know more about the new trailer dad just bought make sure you go check out our other channel tk powersports and rvs I'll put a link to it down in the description box and you can see a full walk around on this trailer coming up real soon and then as always while you're down below don't forget to leave us a comment let me know what you think of the truck the hitch and the trailer as always don't forget to hit like hit subscribe hit join to become a member and then come back here to truck king to see what we're testing next see you guys thanks