etrailer Ball Mount Kit - 1" Rise or 2" Drop - for 8,000 - 16,000 lb Hitches

Video Transcript for etrailer Ball Mount Kit Review EBMK2216

AJ: What's up everybody, it's AJ with etrailer.com. Today we're going to be checking out the etrailer Ball Mount Kit. Now, this is great for if you're starting out, you maybe don't have your own trailer and you need this kit just to get going. It's going to come with two different ball sizes to help you out. You have the two-inch ball size right here, it's rated for 10,000 pounds and you have the two-and-five 16th one that's rated for 20,000 pounds. Another thing to keep in mind is your vehicle and what you're towing.

Do you need a rise or need a drop This shank allows you to do both.I'm going to show you. I've already taken this apart here. This would be the two-inch drop and if you installed it like this in your hitch, this would be the one-inch rise. So you can see it sitting up higher. They would meet where the trailer comes in.

Either you needed up here, or if it was down here, you'd flip it around. Every vehicle is going to be different though. Some trucks are way higher than others, some trailers sit lower than others. So if you don't think that the rise and drop is right for you on this ball mount there's plenty of other options. I have another one here to show you how much of a drastic change there is actually.

This one's got an eight-inch rise and a 10-inch drop. This shows you no matter what you need, you can find the ball mount that'll work for you.Something else to think about is how often do you need to switch these out Maybe you have one trailer you primarily use that uses this one, and you have a smaller trailer you've got to tow once or twice, maybe only in the summer, you'll need this one. And that's fine and you can do it, but remember that you'll have to tighten this down and torque it to the shank here. So you're going to have to break it loose to get this one on there, and then torque this one down the same way and that can be a pain in the butt. You could just buy another ball mount here and then you'll have it ready to go.

You'll have both of them torqued down, you can use whatever one you need.Both balls are steel construction with a chrome finish and the shank itself is a black powder coat finish. So if you leave in the back of your truck, in the hitch, it's going to hold up against all those elements. And when you're ready to use it, just slide in your hitch. You line up the hitch pin hole here, we get our pin and clip, just a standard pin and clip it comes with, but it's good it comes with it because if you bought this kit, you probably don't have one. You slide that through and add your clip on this side and now your ball mount's in place.Now you can get a different anti-rattle hitch pin here to take a little bit of a bounce back and forth out of there and you can even get a locking pin. That way you can leave it on there and you don't have to worry about somebody just coming up and taking it. With it installed you're going to take a look at the ball you have installed, the shank, and the hitch on their weight ratings. Now I know the shank is 16,000 so if that happens to be the lowest one on all three of them, then you want to follow that. Even though it can hold up to the elements I recommend taking out your hitch when you are done. Throw it in the back of your car or use the bag you got, you don't want to leave it here and accidentally run into it. You can hit your leg on this one, this hitch is higher than normal so usually, if you're worried about your shins, or if you're going to put groceries in, you're going to run to it that way and that's going to hurt.I took the ball mount out of the hitch and now I'm going to go and store it in its bag, which I think is a great addition to this whole kit because if you go to throw this stuff in there by themselves, the ball can roll to that corner, the hitch pin could roll to that corner or just end up getting lost and this is useless without this. So I like keeping it all together in this bag that has room to spare so you can put some extra tools in there. If you have an anti-rattle hitch pin that you want to tie it down with a ratchet or something, you can keep that ratchet in here so you can have it anytime you need it.I think the bag is a good quality. I know some customers we're questioning it online. I think it's going to hold up fine. It doesn't seem like it's going to easily rip or nothing's going to puncture it and go through it. The handle is nice. I don't feel like it's giving way or ripping loose or anything like that. It's just all good to keep it all in one place and put away where you need it.Let's take a look at our team discussion we had about this kit.Yeah, they actually have space for other stuff in there too so you can, we said it in the video, you can put some extra tools in there too. That way everything's all together if you have to go searching for something you can switch out inaudible 00:04:05 like that. So no handle on the bag, but it's still, oh there is. AJ: Big handle like this. I guess you carry it like that, but then it all shifts down. Yeah. I mean, either way, it's all going to clang together. AJ: Right. Speaker 3: So you can almost hang it somewhere though, I guess. AJ: Yeah. Yeah. I wonder how much that webbing would hold though, if you end up hanging it AJ: It's pretty sturdy but yeah I mean, if hanging something heavy that could fall out and hit somebody, I guess, depending on where you put it. Yeah, I was thinking it might pull away from the bag at some point. AJ: Yeah. Speaker 3: There was a review that mentioned the bag looking cheap. Does it look pretty durable to you AJ: Oh yeah, it seems durable. I wouldn't say it's cheap, I mean, the only thing I would say against it is it's not padded on the inside. We actually shot a review on the CE Smith Ball Mount Bag and this one got padding on the inside so it's just not as bad when you slam this down on the tailgate. If you slam it down on the tailgate, this one has the padding to where it dulls it a little bit, at least, that puts a little more confidence, I think for me anyway. Yeah. AJ: And the padding helps keep everything in place too with this like you saw when I lift it off it shifts really easily because it's just a big open bag, which is good. You can fit definitely more stuff in this etrailer bag than you can in the CE Smith one. Speaker 3: Is anything missing I mean it seems like you have everything that you would need to tow other than maybe if you prefer the locking pin. AJ: Yeah and the only other thing I can think of, which I guess it's optional is an anti-rattle bolt or a device like that to be fit on there. They're limited by the ones that go around it because this is not a hollow shank so it's heavier and you can't put the little device in there to line up with the hole, but we did some the other day that you can slide across there and it tightens it up in the hitch. I'd say that might be useful if you don't want the side to side movement and all the noise but I mean, that's optional. You don't absolutely have to have that. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, but we do have the etrailer one that's just the collar that goes around it. AJ: We do. Yeah. Grab a hitch lock too. AJ: Yeah. So as far as people who are going to be using this, I mean, you got to be pretty close to level already with your trailer, right AJ: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I don't know how many people that is percentage-wise if most people fall into that already. I mean any more with the size of trucks out there I would think a lot of people typically need more of a drop than that. I guess the thing that kind of threw me is just that it's heavier duty too because wasn't this altogether 16 K Speaker 3: Yeah. AJ: I believe so. I mean the two-and-five-16th inch ball is probably rated higher, but I thought it was 16 K. So, we're looking at a heavier duty setup and yet I wouldn't think it would work on a ton of trucks. I mean, depending on your trailer. AJ: It's not something you can universally buy or generically buy, you have to specifically know what you need for your truck and your trailer, they're changing so much. Yeah. I guess the other thing that, I mean, it's nice that you get the two different sized balls, so, okay great, if you have two different hitch or two different trailers perfect but some of the kits that we have actually come with the ball torque down and that would be really nice to have. AJ: Yeah. That's what I was thinking too because being here so long that people bring them in to install or whatever, it takes a lot to torque all these things down. So there's not a hand-tight kind of thing, so you don't have the tools to do that so you bought this kit, is that when you figure out that you need those extra tools to tighten it down and you can't do it with the stuff and you have Maybe. And the reality is if you need something with multiple ball sizes, there are multi-ball hitches too that you could get where it's already welded on or torqued down, depending on what you get and you could just take the entire ball mount out and flip it over to get support. AJ: And pull out some side things, spin it around, and you got a different ball size rather than tightening and loosening these different ones every time you switch them out. I can't imagine anybody would want to do that, often anyway. AJ: No, I'm going to figure out how it fits my trailer and that's how it's staying forever. Yeah fixed inaudible 00:08:46. AJ: I think I'll get another bag if I need something else. Yeah. I'd probably switch them out one time and then just come back and buy one of the multi-ball hitches. AJ: Yeah.The etrailer kit is going to be a great way to start towing and it comes with all the pieces you need to get started and a little bit extra like the carrying bag or something like that. I hope our look at it today was helpful.