We received our Curt 16K slider on Monday and finished installing it Tuesday evening. Took the rig for a test drive and had too many chunks, clunks and movement for our taste.
I called Fox RV in Chippewa Falls WI (Montana dealer) and asked if a 1/2" travel on the king pin to hitch was normal. They said yes, but if more, to have it checked out. I called Curt Tech Service and Keith offered to look it over if we brought the rig to the factory. Since I am on vacation, (has anyone noticed that MN/WI has been VERY Wet and RAINY for the entire past week!) and we didn't have anything better to do, we drove the 90 miles to have them look it over.
Keith brought out Ben, (in the rain!)the product developer and they measured the king pin catch and said it was on the outside of the specification and they would replace the hitch head. They measured and brought out a head with a smaller tolerance, which will result in less travel of the pin, inside the head.
We also have a nasty "beer can" (DH drank from LARGE beer cans
). That clunk turned out to be the hitch sliding in the tolerance where the hitch attaches to the rails. Ben said that the hitch was installed exactly as intended
, and to reduce that nasty sound, we could loosen the rails and move them as far to one side as possible, which would reduce the tolerance, but also make it a bit harder to remove the hitch from the box, (due to less tolerance). We may do that, not sure yet.
I also asked if they had any plans to reduce the difficulty of tightening the bolt on the under bracket that is above the gas tank. Ben said we actually had a set of Draw Tite brackets (OOPS!)and that Curt used a "U" shape bolt that made it a bit easier to tighten that bolt. We had purchased the hitch and rails from etrailer.com and the site didn't list a brand for the rails. We thought we were getting Curt brand rails.
Bottom line is: Curt Tech Service and Product Development, Keith and Ben, were very nice and accommodating and we left as Happy Campers! They answered all of our questions, did I mention the rain??, and were very pleasant. They we also MUCH younger than us and could jump in and out of the truck box with ease!
The new truck,Chev 2500HD with Duramax/Allison, and the Monty handled great on its maiden 180 mi round trip. (We're sleeping at home, too much rain!)
Happy Hitching!
Judi