5th wheel hight

[M zoll]

Can anyone tell me what the clearance should be, between the bed rail and the under side of the 5th camper ? so you won't hit the bed rail and cause damage to it or the camper

[450Donn]

6 inches is considered minimum.

[shortlance]

Our 5er has about 6 inches and I have no problems

[RustyJC]

6" minimum - another inch or two for insurance if you can get it and still have the 5th wheel towing relatively level.

Rusty

[SmokeyWren]

Conventional wisdom is you need 6" clearance for pavement and 8" or more clearance for off road.

I had about 5" clearance, but I also had dings on the top of the bed on both sides. Didn't hurt the trailer, but definitely bent the top of the bed. Caused by turning while crosssing a ditch or dip.

If you stay on the pavement and don't turn while crossing dips or ditches, then 6" should be good. But lots of streets have a drainage dip between the roadway and the service station or shopping center lot, so turning into one of those places is when I needed more than 5".

If you don't have at least 6" while the trailer is level front to rear, then you must either raise the trailer or lower the truck. I had one trailer that had to be raised by "flipping the axles" so it would ride level behind a 4x2 SuperDuty. You don't literally turn the axles over, but you move the spring perches from under the axle to over the axle. That raised the trailer about 3 to 4 inches. And caused us to have to buy one step more so old folks could climb into the 5er.

If your tow vehicle is a 4x4, you may have 4" blocks in the rear suspension. On a SuperDuty, you can change those blocks for 2" blocks and lower the back of the truck about 2". Experience says you cannot have less than 2' blocks in a SuperDuty 4x4 because of driveline alignment, so you can't lower the truck to make it the same height as a 4x2.

[TXiceman]

We have towed a 5er with a minimum of 5" and no problems. I prefer to keep 6" as the minimum.

The 5er needs to be level as well.

Ken

[wingnut60]

Lots of possibilities/combinations that can cause clearance problems even with the 6" spacing. My 350 and now my 450 have plenty of clearance EXCEPT when turning/backing sharply, worse if uneven surface--the Morryde pin box has a flange on it that will contact my bed cover rails in this situation that I have to carefully monitor. Raising the trailer to its highest level helped. If I did not have the Retrax cover, I don't think the pin box would hit the bed itself.
Joe

[M zoll]

Thanks for the info. I will keep at least 6"