Video Transcript for The Low-Down on the TowSmart 1-7/8" Hitch Ball

Hello, neighbors, it's Brad here at etrailer and today we're taking a look at the TowSmart inch and 7/8 hitch ball. This one's gonna have a inch diameter and be rated at 2,000 pounds. This chrome-plated ball is gonna be a great option for some of your smaller trailers that require an inch and 7/8 for the coupler, and being rated at 2,000 pounds, this is gonna be some light-duty towing, whether it's a small utility trailer, maybe jet skis, kayak trailer, something along those lines. But this is gonna be a great option for a lot of different ball mounts. You have a two-inch shank length. So from the bottom of the ball to the bottom of the shank is gonna be two inches.

So on a standard ball mount like this, it's gonna be perfect. It doesn't leave a whole lot of threads here, which is good. That way those don't get corroded up over time. Now, it's important when hooking up to a trailer to not only take a look at the ball that you're picking up, but also any of the other components. So our ball is rated at 2,000.

Our ball mount is rated at 6,000. The hitch is only rated at 2,000. And also, we need to check what the vehicle's capable of towing. So throughout all of that, take the lowest number and that's what you're gonna want your max towing capacity to be. You'll see that there's flat spots on the ball and that makes it easy to put a wrench on here when torquing it down, keep everything nice and level, and also be able to get that torque setting without the ball spinning around.

And speaking of that, you are gonna have to torque this down on your ball mount and I'll show you exactly how to do that. Now, if you're swapping your ball out on your ball mount or you have a new ball mount that you picked up, either way, this ball comes by itself, so you're gonna need to torque it down to get it installed on your ball mount. Now, a trick that we use, that way you don't have to use a vise, is grab your ball mount, put it in your hitch sideways, and determine which way you want rise or drop. But either way, you want the head of the ball facing towards the passenger side and this is just gonna make it easy with that torque wrench to be able to push down to get that torque rather than pulling up. So we'll thread this all together and there's two grooves on the top of the ball here.

That's gonna allow us to put our wrench on here so it doesn't spin around. So I try to get the laser etching to face you and it just looks a little bit cleaner. Inch and 5/8 on the head of the ball. And then our 1 1/2-inch socket on our torque wrench. So we'll slide this over. And the torque settings are found on the tag that comes with the ball. And if you need a torque wrench, you can generally go to an auto parts store and rent one for free. We do have them available here at etrailer. A half-inch torque wrench is gonna get you the torque setting you need here. So we'll just keep this wrench in place and then start to torque this down. (clicker beeps) Once you get that clicker beep, you've officially installed your ball on your ball mount. And that was a look at the Tow Smart inch and 7/8 trailer hitch ball.