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Durable steel ball has a 1-1/4" diameter x 2-3/4" long shank. Built-in wrench flats ease installation. Chrome finish resists corrosion. Fine threads provide strong grip. Lock washer and nut included.
Features:
Specs:
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Hey, guys. it's Jake here with etrailer. Today I'm gonna show you how to put a new ball on your weight distribution head. Now, to explain a little bit about why you would need to go through this process. First thing is, if you're just like our situation and you need to put a ball on your kit that did not come with one, that's the reason you'd have to do it. If you take a look at this one here, you can see some marring on the ball itself.
And as time goes on, that is only going to get worse, because you'll have little pockets where dirt and debris can hang out in rocks, and stuff like that. They'll get trapped in there, and then when you go to put your trailer down on it and you drive for a couple hundred miles, it's gonna keep grinding that down. And then what was a two and five 16ths ball is no longer two and five 16ths. That's gonna cause more wear on the ball, more wear on the coupler, and just more wear in general. So having a nice, clean setup is definitely gonna help you get down the road safely.
Now, another reason you'd go through this process is if you had a camper that, or a trailer, that had a two inch ball on your weight distribution, and you're upgrading to a two and five 16ths. That's gonna be another reason why you would want to go through this process to swap out this ball. We've got our two and five 16ths ball that we're taking a look at today. We've actually got a new Reese weight distribution head here. And essentially, to start the process, you'll need to do one of two things.
You'll either need to put your ball in a vice, like we have here. There's two flat sides on the edge of the ball. You can obviously see we have it flipped over here. You'll want this upside down if you have a vice that's this heavy. Now, the torque setting for this is going to depend on the size of the shank.
Ours is an inch and a quarter shank. You wanna make sure that that matches the hole in your weight distribution. But you wanna match the torque specs for the size shank that you have. Usually, when you get the ball in your package, it'll say what to torque it down to. So since we're putting it on this, we're gonna take our head, flip it over, and set it on there just like that. Now we'll take the lock washer, slide it over, followed by the nut. We'll thread this down all the way by hand till it's tight. Now, no matter what size shank that you're gonna have on the ball, you're gonna have, it's gonna be a pretty high torque setting. So you'll need to either rent a torque wrench. We've got this four foot torque wrench. It comes in handy when we're doing this kind of stuff, but maybe check with a local shop. They may be able to torque it down for you if you get it assembled. Or you can typically rent one about this size from your local auto parts store. So now we'll just need to take our wrench, and torque it down. Now, what we ended up having to do is, we've got a large socket here, and we're using a inch and 13/16 socket. That's what you'll need to fit over that nut. We're using an extension, because the head of our torque wrench is not able to fit in here. When you're using an extension to do this, you wanna make sure that it is going to be an impact, because otherwise, if you use a chrome extension, it's going to twist. But this should not twist. And we'll get it tightened down. With your ball torque down properly onto your weight distribution, that's gonna do it for the installation.
Customer Satisfaction Score:
99% were satisfied with this product
1% of customers were not satisfied
Ratings & Reviews
David T.
3/20/2018
Still a great ball. No rust.
Kl
8/26/2015
Still holding strong.
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Erik D.
12/24/2018
keeping it greased, its worked fine and still has its chrome plating