Add 5th wheel to pull larger RV

Your regular 5th wheel should do the trick. Same pin size… the lights will need to be tied in off the truck lites. Rv are wired different from semi trailers. Add an electric brake controller and away you go. I got one that plugs inline with the 7 way and runs off an app on my phone., works perfectly.
Mine is not a 5th wheel trailer but it’s the best pulling pickup I’ve ever had.

 

I dont have a photo but i used mine to pull my friends 5th wheel when his 1 ton broke down and he had to get it home. No modifications at all and i just picked up one of these 7 Pin Round to 7 Way RV Blade Trailer Adapter Connector Wire Harness for the lights and borrowed the brake controller off my ram. Super easy. Plan to add a 6 pin round to my lonestar when i get my RV to replace my shack that my landlord managed to back a #### combine over and got finished off by the windstorm a few weeks ago lol.

 

now that's a nice setup!

 

Trailer is a toy hauler so the road bikes come along back there.

 

That's an interesting looking adapter...never seen one before. So all the lights on an electric brake trailer will work correctly off a J560 outlet using it?

How do you add an electric trailer brake controller to a truck with air brakes and get the electric brake signal into the 7 way plug? That circuit of course doesn't exist on a J560, but is part of a 7-way RV plug, along with a 12V hot line which I'm also pretty sure a J560 doesn't have. The trailer brake wiring is usually integrated into a pickup truck's factory wiring to where you just quick connect a wiring pigtail from the brake controller to a loose connector under the dash. (Newer pickups you don't even need to do that...everything's there already.)

You can hook a 5th wheel RV to a heavy duty 5th wheel hitch, but not having the side-to-side tilting hitch head would likely damage the trailer frame over time. They aren't designed heavy duty enough to take that type of tweaking and flexing over uneven pavement and driveway transitions without some side to side flex in the hitch. Even the up-and-down jouncing of the stiff air ride rear suspension could be bad for it. I've seen air brake tractors with clever setups for light duty RV hitches, either in place of the heavy duty hitch, or installed on the frame behind it to where they had both.

 

They did on his trailer at least yea. cant promise every single trailer will, but on this jayco it was literally plug and play. As for the brake controller its not hard. I installed it the same way i did on my ram. Run a positive with a fuse in it to the battery and a ground wire. Run a wire to the brake light wire and then pull the ABS wire on the truck side of the pigtail and cap it, and temporarally stick the wire into the abs slot on the pigtail. Same signal that turns on your brake lights activates the controller and runs a signal down the abs line which matches to the blue line on the trailer.

Wasnt exactly a pretty setup granted but for the 200 odd miles i yoinked the trailer it was fine and easy to take apart when i was done. When i get my own trailer i plan to make an alternate plug so i dont need to un and redo the wireing.

As for the trailer frame being damaged, the 5th wheel on my friends pickup is also fixed with just up and down movment and he has pulled the thing for years now. Could be it damaged the frame on some but afaik its fine, or at least it seems to be after 10s.of thousands of miles. so dont know what to tell you.

 

Tell me about the mods to the tractor to put your Jeep on it. Can you post better pics of it?

If I could figure out a setup where I could pop our Jeep on the back of my tractor just for vacations I'd do it in a heartbeat. I've always studied the Clayton Homes trucks around here that have a ramp on the back and they piggyback their chase trucks back to HQ at the end of a haul. I'd love something like that that bolts on to my tractor just for personal trips. I've also thought about just buying an old pup trailer (28'?) but that's too involved and I couldn't take it in any CG's or National Parks, etc.