• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Trailer hitch ball sizes.

Coffee

Coffee

CH Owner
Staff member
I've got a little tiny trailer that uses a 1 7/8" hitch ball.

What size hitch ball do you people with larger trailers (toyhaulers) use?

Would a 6' x 12' enclosed trailer probably use a 2" ball?
 
Coffee;16190 said:
I've got a little tiny trailer that uses a 1 7/8" hitch ball.

What size hitch ball do you people with larger trailers (toyhaulers) use?

Would a 6' x 12' enclosed trailer probably use a 2" ball?
Click to expand...

The toy haulers take a 2-5/16" ball. The small enclosed trailer should be a 2".

Later,
 
OMG, I got a chill down my spine reading this. :eek:

A bud and I took a K75S and RT1100 to Daytona many years back. Good times, the BMW faithful in Bulow campground, yada-yada ...

We stopped in Savannah on the way home to fetch a dresser from his daughter's place. It was lashed between the bikes at the rear of the open trailer. Unbeknownst to us the 2" receiver was now unloaded. The Chevy S-10 with 1 7/8" ball meshed back in with the sea of I-95 Bike Week trailers streaming northbound. Trailer 101 grades were soon to be issued ... :thinking: :doh:

I was driving in pouring SC rain when the receiver floated off the ball. The trailer violently windshield wipered on the chains at about 3Hz for the next 30-45 seconds. For whatever reason I never touched the brakes and coasted to a stop from 70MPH as traffic gapped back a 100 yds.
lurker.gif
I later learned that hitting the brakes would have caused the trailer to jack-knife and may or may not have taken the S-10 with it.

The problem was obvious immediately, a tarp was extended from the S-10 cap to the bike's bars while we pondered solutions. The BMW clip-ons were strapped to the front of the trailer and loaded with every tool we had to get a modest bias on the ball again. An entire roll of duct tape was used to cocoon the receiver - trailer tongue. Tie wraps were added over the cocoon ball-receiver area. My bud drove the remaining 400 miles incident free. The S-10's rear end looked pretty special!

FWIW ~ I've got a 2" receiver on an open 5' X 10' steel homebuilt. Initial chock placement was done with a Mille R aboard. Tongue loading was finalized thereafter at 15% with a 2X4 and bathroom scale.






Daytona Trailer Weak final grade

failure.gif
 
Louge;16210 said:
OMG, I got a chill down my spine reading this. :eek:
Click to expand...

:lol:



I've not kept up on 'hitch ball' sizes. Many many years ago thought the options (in usa at least) were 1 7/8", 2". 2 1/8", 2 1/4". I'm renting a trailer from Uhaul to move a small car and it occurred to me that a larger size than the one I have (1 7/8") might be necessary. Thinking Uhaul prices might be much higher than the hardware store I went shopping but only found 1 7/8" & 2" and thought that was weird cause I distinctly remember a long time ago seeing 2 1/8" & 2 1/4". Bought the 2" in case that would work cause it was cheap and can return it.


Then it occurred to me that some toyhaulers are really BIG and was curious what sizes they might be using and started this thread and the first reply was 2 5/16" which I'd never heard of.

Then used google and found a wiki on hitch ball sizes :lol: but no mention of the 2 1/8" or 2 1/4" - just 1 7/8", 2", 2 5/16" and the class sizes I, II, III, IV, V.

Then I went back to the Uhaul web site and it says 1 7/8, 2", or 2 1/8" would work... so I'm even more confused - but I'm sure a configuration will be worked out and the car will arrive safe at the destination. :thumbsup:
 
At the risk of making you even more confused, trailer balls are also rated for maximum trailer weight. In these parts it is common to find 2" to 2 5/16" balls rated at either 5000lbs or 10,000lbs.

If you are truly trying to tow within the laws you should find the legislation governing the states you will be traveling in. Up here the laws vary slightly from province to province.

In BC we cannot have more than 500lbs hitch weight and 5000lb trailer weight without a weight distributing hitch (equalizer hitch). With a weight distributing hitch you can have 750lbs tongue weight and a 10,000lb trailer.
 
Yep I'm confused, but that is fairly normal for me.


In the end the 1 7/8" ball worked for what I needed today, car is indeed delivered to the destination :thumbsup:


Think I'll take back the 2" cause I'm not to sure it would ever be used.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top