Video Transcript for How to Choose the Right High-Low Adapter

Hey, everyone. Ryan here at Etrailer. Today we're gonna be talking all about high-low adapters. You know, we will cover what are they, why are they used and how to figure out if your flat tow setup could use one or not. This is a high-low adapter right here, and what it does is it plugs into the hitch on your motor home and changes the connection point height from where your tow bar is actually going to get inserted and hooked up to that high-low adapter. Everyone's set up is gonna be a little bit different.

You may not need to bother with a high-low adapter at all, but from my experience, we set a lot of these flat tows up, and almost every single one of 'em benefits from a high-low adapter. In many cases that two to four-inch drop. You might be thinking, well, what's the whole point of this Why do I need to change that connection point height, right Well, the vast majority of tow bar manufacturers recommend that their tow bar be pretty much level whenever you're pulling your vehicle behind your motor home. That way it'll perform correctly. You know, you'll get the best towing experience.

Your vehicle will track better, and you won't have, you know, premature wear on your expensive tow bar. As far as I know, pretty much all of 'em out there recommend that the tow bar have connection points no greater than three inches. So you want the connection point on your towed vehicle and the connection point on your motor home's hitch to be within that safe zone. The way to figure out if you're gonna need a high-low or not is really simple. Ideally, you could take your motor home, park it on flat ground, take the vehicle that you're gonna be flat-towing, pull it up, about like this, about how you have it hooked up,, and you're gonna take two different measurements, one of 'em being from the center of the hitch pin hole on your motor home down to the ground and from the center of the attachment point on your base plate down to the ground, and if that difference is greater in three, that's when you need to start looking into these high-low adapters.

So for example, today our motor home's hitch height was 24 inches. The base plate on our Jeep, that was at 18 inches. So we had a six-inch difference, and that's well past the three-inch safe zone that we're looking for. So we opted to use a four-inch drop, lowering that connection point down to 20 inches. Now we only have a difference of two inches between our base plate and the center of our hitch pin hole, keeping us in that safe zone and allowing us to have a tow bar that's going to ride level and perform as it should.

When you take your measurements, and if both vehicles are within that three inches, then you're good. You don't need to bother with a high-low adapter. For those of you that are trying to get all the parts set up for your flat tow, and you don't actually have your base plate and everything installed yet, sometimes what you can do is check the instructions for your base plate. Some manufacturers, not all of 'em, will actually list that height and kind of give you something to work with there and go off of. So that's always an option for you to get you going in the right direction. Now, for those of you that come to find out, you do need a high-low adapter, there's quite a few of 'em out there. It's a pretty simple concept, a bunch of different sizes that you can choose from to kind of fit your needs and get you in that safe zone. Something that I've personally ran into when using a high-low adapter is the safety cables kind of falling short, and what I mean by that, whenever you use a high-low, it's going to add, you know, that extra space in between your flat tow setup. So your safety cables will have to stretch out a little bit more, and if yours are already on the tight side or a little on the short side, you know, you might run into an issue there with them breaching because you do want. You know, when everything's fully extended, you're still gonna want slack in your cables. You know, you don't want these things super tight. You know, that way when you make turns or whatever, there's some play there. In our case, ours we inchesre just a little on the tight side. I think we would've been fine without doing this, but what I did was just use some heavy duty D links here, and that bought us an extra, you know, three or four inches or whatever and just gave us a little more breathing room there, but if yours are definitely on the tight side, and you need extra length for sure, if you already have a set of cables, you know, you don't necessarily have to buy a whole brand new extra-long set. You can always look into extensions. So these ones are made by Roadmaster here. There's a bunch of different sizes of these as far as length and capacities, and that would buy you that extra space. You know, you'd put these onto the safety chain openings on your hitch, and then you'll have another connection point where you can take your safety cables' ends, clip 'em on there and extend them out. At the end of the day, you know, it's a really simple component. A lot of times it's overlooked, but it's really important to use a high-low adapter if your particular situation calls for it. You know, keeping that tow bar level, you'll get a lot more miles out of it. It's just going to, you know, provide you with a much better flat towing experience, and you're doing things the right way. So you know, if you need one, really consider picking one up and getting everything dialed in, but you know, hopefully kind of shed some light on the high-low adapter situation and helps you figure out if you can benefit from one or not.