Hitch balls that is. Freaks. Had a minor scare today. I was out picking up a car with my new-to-me trailer. First run with it. PO told me it was a 2" ball. Drove it home and to my shop, maybe 100 miles of highway etc. Drove 100 miles into PA today. No problems. Started winching up the car and the minute the front wheels put weight on the trailer, it popped it right off the hitch. Took me a minute but I realized I had the wrong size ball. Needed to be a 2 5/16". Ran down to a hardware store, picked up the right size and all was well. Thank god it happened then and not after the car was already loaded. The lock had enough grip on the 2" ball to hold it on until I put some force on it. I was lucky. I was also very stupid for taking his word and not checking the size myself.
lucky guy! had my trailer on a friends truck and his was a 2" ball and my trailer 2 5/16 also. the guy at the place we were getting car from was loading with a forklift (had a wheel lift attach.) and that went smooth. we were parked downhill and as soon as we took off all hell broke loose,trailer tongue came up and foward bending his tailgate almost in half! fuck he had used his tow dolly and his help didn't change the ball back. i was sick about the tailgate until he said most of the damage was already done 3 days before when his trailer did the same thing.
I check my balls first thing every morning. not sure what that has to do with trailering a car though.
You think thats bad, I once hauled two cars on my trailer which has a 2" hitch on it several hundred miles with no problems untill I got home and went to pickup some stuff from a friend of mines house well he had the stuff already loaded on a trailer for me but when I backed up to it he noticed my ball looked to small so we checked it and someone had swapped out My BRAND new 2" ball for an old 1-7/8" ball but I never checked it untill then because I thought it was the ball I had put on it. Thank god nothing happened but it could have It kind of pisses me off that someone swapped balls on my truck but its my fault for leaving it unattended in parking lots for long periods of time while I'm gone driving somewhere. Whats worse was the smaller ball was only hand tight so it would have been really easy to come off. One of those WTF moments.
Don't forget to make sure the nut is tight as well. I had one that was tight when I left but when I got the trailer back home the ball was held on by only a couple of threads.
You're lucky that they at least replaced it with another. FWIW, you can often get away with a 1 7/8 ball on a 2 inch hitch in an emergency. Just keep the tongue weight a little on the heavy side. Reminds me of the old Brooklyn trick from back in the day. You'd swipe someone's battery. A few days later, you grab the new one, replacing it with their original.
why the hell isnt it standardised over there? I think its been twenty years since i saw anything BUT a 50mm (2") ball in this country..
have a buddy who was haulin 2 cars to moterey for an auction. both mint condition muscle cars in total of 140k for both ... he had been working 20 hour days to get them done , picked up thje car hauler and trailer already set up not knowing the wrong ball was on .... towed em both up the coast from l a pulled the first car off and the trailer did the same thing ... damn lucky ... moral of the story dont trust others work or word
I was going to say that I had BILLET BALLS but that shit won't fly around here. And I sure as hell don't want to admit that I have VINTAGE BALLS cause they hang way to low. So try this "I have different trailers and a mixture of ball sizes and drop hitches and a couple of different trucks. I would say to put a dab of red paint on the 2-5/8th hitch and put the same red on the ball. Then put yellow paint on the 2" ball and some on the hitch too. This will stop the mix-ups. But under no circumstances should you ever paint your BALLS BLUE >>>>.
i've got big ball's!!! and thats why i always cross the chains too when i was a kid same thing happened with a triler and the cross chain saved the tounge from ripping the class A hitch from the frame.
Hm I have a triball hitch with all of em' 1-7/8'', 2'', and 2-5/16'' that you just flip depending on what you need. Good investment if you have a fairly regular height riding truck. Plus it costs about the same as all the balls plus hitch and you don't have to worry about them coming loose or having to even put them together. "Just slide in and go" .-Weeks
I took the word of a friend saying his trailer had a 1 7/8 ball.Towed the empty trailer 800 miles and it bounced off a 70 mph with a convoy of rigs behind me.OH SHIT! The safety chains broke and that sucker was all over the interstate.Man you should of seen the rigs swerving to avoid hitting it.It finally went off the highway through a fence and out in a field. That was my lucky day because nobody got hurt.I was glad my roadster wasn't on it yet. NEVER AGAIN! Always check ,don't take someones word. I was young and stupid! I hate trailers!
Have you checked the capacity of the hardware ball? There are many different weights, some are as low as 5,000#. This IMHO wouldn't be enough for a car trailer. Also the ball size is stamped on the top of the coupler. Good idea if you have different trailers to have trailer specific hitches as that prevents these things from happening
Funny how some things just stay together "because"...I had a buddy drive about 3 hours North of me to buy a Horse trailor and two horses, he comes to drop them off at my place for a few days till he gets settled, and I hear this "clunking" as he's backing the trailer up, about the time I think to say something to him, he goes over a little berm in my pasture, and the trailer pops off the ball. He stops, we look it over, and yep, 2 inch ball on his truck, and a 2-5/16th hitch. Can't belive he did the 120 miles (Colfax to Oakdale)-loaded with the horses too), without issues.
I carry one that fits my towbar and I bought one that fits the one trailer my friend has that uses a larger one, so I can haul either of his trailers or my towbar. Don't really need the three-ball one, it's probably handy, but the ones I see for sale I see at Harbor Freight, and somehow I suspect having the wrong one from anybody else is better than their right one.
Similar story. We were hading north with empty stock car trailer, 2" coupler and 2" ball. Out in the passing lane, up a hill going around a slower driver, when, the trailer decides to go on its own. Should have seen the eyes on the driver beside us, when the trailer does its dance on the safety chains! Slowed down easily, as we were heading up hill. The ball had come out of the receiver, then vibrated the lock bolt loose so that the ball released from the coupler. Oh great, no ball. Looked back, there it was up on the deck of the trailer. Now, no nut. Walked down the hill, and on way back up, found the nut. We stopped to check the tightness of that nut every hour or so the rest of the trip.
After having the dealer install a hitch on my truck, I went to the local U-haul to get a ball and trailer. Drove 600 miles to pick up a car. The guy I was buying the car from, noticed the ball was loose. Turns out U-haul installed the right ball size but the threaded shank was too small. Fortunately, the guy had a shop and milled a sleeve to take up the slack. Gave U-haul a piece of my mind when I got back.
Had some city people out to the folks farm last week to use the horse trailer. They screwed around awhile and came asking what size ball it used. They said 1 7/8" was to small and 2" was to big. I had to tell them i had no idea and walked away. they left without the trailer to find someone else. Thank god, accident waiting to happen.
The message of most of these posts is. DON'T trust what someone else did or said when it comes to the tightness of the ball and whether or not the ball and coupler are the same size. When tightening the hitch ball I always use a cheater bar. It's about 4 ft of well pipe big enough to fit over the handle of a 24" pipe wrench. It has a bend in the handle from being used this way over the years. Using this technique I've never had one come loose. IMHO there is no such thing as to tight concerning hitch balls.
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