etrailer | Demco Autoslide 5th Wheel Hitch w/ Slider Spec Review

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Speaker 1: Today we'll be having a look at the Demco Hijacker Autoslide 5th Wheel Hitch with slider for Ford Super Duty prep packages, part number DM8550024. Here's what our Demco Autoslide 5th Wheel looks like installed. Now the main reason you're going to want a sliding 5th wheel such as this one over other options on the market is that this is going to solve two problems that many of our customers encounter.The first problem that many of our customers encounter is that when they have a short bed truck such as this one, you don't have the necessary clearance between your 5th wheel head and the cab of your truck, so when you go to make tight turns you find that you run the risk of having contact with the cab of your truck to the overhang on your 5th wheel trailer. The second problem that people encounter is that when they purchase a slider in order to solve the short bed problems when towing a 5th wheel is that most sliders out there are manual control, which means every time you need to get into a maneuvering position, you have to get out of the truck, operate a handle in order to get your truck into the maneuvering position. This one, however, is automatic with this rack and pinion gear system, so whenever you need to make a turn, just make your turn and it will automatically move your 5th wheel head back without you having to get out of the truck to make any adjustments.With this one going into the underbed mount rails, it functions the same as the one with the above-bed rails. Here you can see as the truck turns it pivots inside the Hijacker unit.
As it pivots, it works its way towards the rear of the truck in order to gain more clearance. Here it is at a full 90 degrees. It's going to come all the way back that full 14" in order to give us more clearance to make sure we don't have any issues. As we straighten back out, it will go back straight and move its way towards the front of the Hijacker unit. Here you can see the rack and pinion style gears.
As the trailer turns, they rotate the unit in order to move it backwards.Another great feature about this slider is that it's designed to work with our Ford factory prep package puck system that came in our truck from the factory. We don't have to worry about installing any above-bed rails so we'll always have full access to the bed of our truck when we don't have our slider in place. There's no modifications required to the truck at all. It simply drops into place. You tighten your handles down and you're good to go.Inside of our 5th wheel head you'll find our 360-degree wrap-around jaws, which gives us 100% contact patch with our kingpin.
This will ensure that we have a very stable connection with our 5th wheel, and we don't have to worry about it moving back and forth. This will provide the security that we're looking for. On the top of our 5th wheel head we'll have our integrated capture plates, which will secure our pin box to keep it from rotating as our trailer turns. This will allow the Autoslide feature to work properly and cause our 5th wheel head to move back as we're turning so we have our necessary clearance.Hooking up to our trailer is a very simple process. We simply undo our safety pin here.
It's got a nice tether on it to keep it secure so you don't have to worry about losing it. You can grab your handle, pull it out, and your 5th wheel jaws will lock open so you can back up into your trailer. Then once the kingpin contacts the jaws, it will wrap around and close.For demonstration purposes of showing how our jaws lock around a kingpin, we'll be using a Demco 5th wheel lifting device which is available separately on our website. You can use one of these so you can easily remove your 5th wheel assembly from your bed of your truck using a cherry picker or a hoist of some sort. You can see we have the full 360-degree contact around our kingpin.This 5th wheel hitch features an 18,000 pound max trailer weight rating and a 4,500 pound vertical load limit, which is the amount forcing down from your kingpin. Not only does our head have the ability to slide back a full 14" as we're tight maneuvering situations to avoid any contact with our cab, but our head is also adjustable as far as height. It is adjustable for a range of 15-1/2" to 16-3/4", where we have it now, all the way up to 18-1/4". This will allow us to tow a variety of different trailers, depending on the height of their pin box. This way we don't have to worry about having an unlevel trailer as we're towing it, or one that's going to make contact with the bed sides of our truck.Our double pivot head will give us a smooth ride over rough terrain. Allowi