Matching my 24RL 5th Wheel Height to my Truck

I recently solicited suggestions on how best to raise my Wildcat 24RL to match the height of my 2WD Dually Dodge truck, and got many helpful suggestions.

I am reporting back after deciding how to do it, and how it worked out in case others may encounter the problem. No way was anything I did unconventional or revolutionary, but in a way, that's why I am posting, so others will feel comfortable following the cookie-cutter steps. It truly WAS so easy a cave man could do it, though it would have been nice if the components had been commercially available.

"Modern" 5th wheel RVs seem to be higher than older ones to begin with because truck rails are higher than they used to be, but my 2008 Wildcat was still too low to get me the minimum of 6" rail clearance with my stock 2003 truck.

I needed roughly 1.5" to tow level with 6" rail clearance (which was above the truck's tail lights since the 2wd dually truck naturally sits nose low vs. the 4wd dually that sits level).

I searched everywhere for factory-made lift blocks, but ALL were too wide for my 5er's 1 3/4" wide leaf springs. Checking w/ RV dealers revealed that many had either done lift-mods themselves, or had farmed it out for customers to whom they'd sold 5th wheels, and none indicated any problems reported by customers later. They all said a 1 1/2" lift should have zero effect on the stability of the trailer based on their experiences.

I sourced new U-Bolts from a local racing supply shop for my 3" diameter axles that were coincidentally 1 1/2" longer than my stock ones. That was the easy part, and at $5 each was cheap.

I was hoping to find 1 3/4" rectangular steel tubing w/ 3/16" wall thickness to build my spacers, but the closest I could come was 1 1/2" (square) w/ 1/8" wall thickness, which I thought to be minimal. I paid the steel supply shop to cut me 4-4" lengths (since their cut-off saw was better than mine), so the cost for steel was about $10 total, including the tubing and strapping for the end caps. I cut lengths of 1 1/4" X 1/8" steel strapping to fit tightly inside the 1 1/2" tubing, and welded the pieces recessed 1/4" inside the tubing to reinforce my spacers.

I called around, but no one knew the size pins and holds I'd need to use for the spring-pack bolts that served to hold the leaves together and locate the axles on the springs, so I dropped one axle and measured. I was surprised that it was 5/8" (all of the RV dealers thought it was 3/8" or 1/2").

To accommodate this, I drilled 5/8" holes through the tubing top-to-bottom to make sure alignment was maintained, then cut cheap Grade 3 5/8" bolts (4 cost me under $2) down to length so 1/2" of the unthreaded portion projected from the hex-head to engage the holes in the axle spring pads. I inserted the bolts from the inside out in the tubing and welded the heads to the tubing inside to secure them before installing the recessed end-caps.

Here are before-and-after photos to show how the job came out. In retrospect, I would have made the spacers a bit longer than the 4" pads on the axles, only so the narrower-than-spring spacers couldn't rotate past the U-Bolts if they got loose (low probability). After I run these a few thousand miles, I may tack-weld the ends of the spacers to the axle spring-pads. This would secure them while making it easy to grind-off the welds should I ever want to return my trailer to stock height.

Overall, installation was an absolute breeze. I was afraid that the axles might shift when dropped and make one-man installation difficult, but it was really easy, with it taking only 15 minutes per axle-side to install the parts once I had my trailer raised (w/ 1/4" tire-to-ground clearance to remove the wheels).

The pictures of the lift blocks aren't "beautiful" as I was too lazy to get my MIG gas bottle re-filled, so just stick-welded the items, and didn't stress much about getting all of the weld spatter and slag off the welds. Maybe next time...

Before


Lift Blocks


After

It looks very good. Thanx for the photos.

Hi Bob,

Glad to hear you got some ideas from here and you were able to get your lift job completed.

Good job, I might try that

Looks very good.

Follow-up-

First trip w/ lifts successful.

No problems, U-Bolts stayed tight, and trailer towed fine.

Best part was getting 17mpg towing the little 5er. It was flat terrain from Dallas to San Antonio and back, and I kept the speed 56-58mph both ways, which seems to be a sweet-spot for my engine (about 1800rpm).

Headed out to Phoenix next month (2500mi RT), and we'll see how that works out.

Bob