Curt Class III Drawbar - 3/4" Rise, 2" Drop - 10-1/4" Long - 7,500 lbs

Video Transcript for Curt Ball Mount Review

Hi there, heavy haulers. Today, we're gonna be taking a look at CURT's line of 3/4 inch rise, two-inch drop drawbars with a one-inch hole for its shank. We've got the 8 1/4 inch length model here hooked up to our trailer and installed in the hitch. And the one I'm holding in my hand is going to be the 10 1/4 inch length version. So, this one is gonna be a little bit longer. So if you need that extension, you've got it.

Now, the only difference between the lengths of our drawbars here are going to be the lengths. As far as the weight ratings, they're still both gonna have a 7,500 pound gross trailer weight rating, which is how much that it can pull behind it. And they're both gonna have a 750 pound tongue weight. So, going with a slightly longer drawbar here, you don't sacrifice any weight ratings. If we take a look down the tube, you can see that it is a hollow shank.

It's not a solid shank. And we can see here, we do have a very thick platform for our ball to attach. And that is gonna be a 7/8 inch thickness. That's important when determining the length of shank that you're gonna need on the ball that you install on it. I recommend at least a two and eighth-inch shank for your balls when installing them on here.

Now, before you can use your drawbar, obviously, you have to install a ball on it. So, you can follow along with me in the shop. And we have a CURT ball with the same weight rating and appropriate shank size to install into our drawbar here. The first thing we're gonna wanna do when choosing your ball is verify what ball size your trailer needs. So, if your trailer, usually on the coupler, you're gonna see that it's written on there what size you need.

And two-inch is kind of one of the most common sizes for your midsize trailers. So, we're gonna go ahead and show you how to install the ball here. You also wanna double check your weight ratings and try to match those up with your trailer. So, if your trailer's 5,000 pounds, I'd recommend getting like a 6,000 or more bar and ball to make sure that you've got plenty of capacity available there. That way, you also get a little bit of head room in case you happen to maybe overload it just a little bit or something. So check your weight ratings, check your trailer ball size. At that point, the only other thing you really need to check is for a drawbar 'cause your truck can sit at varying heights and your trailer also sits at varying heights. Oftentimes, with a two-inch ball on a trailer, usually between 16 and 18 inches is kind of the average that you would typically find a trailer riding level at. So, you would take to see where your hitch is at the back of your truck, level your trailer, and make sure that you get a drop or rise that will allow your ball to sit roughly at the height that it needs to for your trailer. So, we're gonna be using this mount from CURT here today. You can actually get these in a couple of different lengths, depending on if you need one that sticks out a little further. That can be important depending on the vehicle you're working on. A lot of times, trucks don't really care and they use the shorter one here just fine. But some of your vehicles could have the hitch tucked up further underneath the vehicle where you would need a little bit more extension. You also wanna double check your shank diameter and make sure that the diameter of your drawbar matches that of your ball. The ball we're installing today has a one-inch shank. So, make sure you got a one-inch hole on your drawbar to match that. So, we're gonna go ahead and get this mounted on here. We're gonna install it in the rise position, which means it will be like this with the ball on top. This would be the drop position down here, but we do wanna go ahead and put it in the rise position. So, we're gonna go ahead and grab our ball, unscrew the nut, and slide the washer off of there. The ball will drop down into whatever position you're intending on putting it in. We'll then take our ball, we're gonna go ahead and slide it into the vice here. Go ahead and you can drop your nut and your washer on top there. Get those loosely started. And the ball has flat spots on each side. So that way, you can hold it here in the vice to tighten it down. And you can see those flat spots there. So, we're just gonna line those up in there, snug down our vice here, and that'll hold our ball in place. And I also like to line up the flat spots with the drawbar. Just think it gives you a nicer final look once you're done. So now, we'll go ahead and tighten it down. We're gonna use a 1 1/2 inch socket to do so. And you are gonna need a pretty beefy torque wrench to be able to tighten these down. And you should be able to accomplish this with a half inch drive torque wrench. Many of those are gonna go up to the required torque spec for this. But do double check because it is gonna be towards the top end of what a half inch torque wrench typically will torque up to. All right. Once we got it torqued, at that point, we can just take it out of the vice, slide it into the two-inch receiver on the back of our vehicle, and secure it with a 5/8 inch hitch pin and clip. We'll now just insert our drawbar here into our receiver and secure it with the pin and clip. Typically, with your two-inch receivers here, you're gonna have a 5/8 inch hole diameter. And a lot of the drawbars available here at etrailer, you can get them in a lot of different configurations. Whether you get a pin and clip included, get a ball included, or just get random parts, if you are gonna part it out yourself, then you're looking at three different pieces you would need here to be able to secure this to your hitch. The ball, the drawbar, and the pin and clip. So, here we are now at our trailer. This uses a two-inch ball. This is just a kind of a utility trailer. It's a tandem axle. Something that would pair well with this. Our trailer here should not exceed 7,500 pounds. And we have 7,500 pound ratings here so we should be good to go there. Both our ball and our drawbar are rated for 7,500 pounds. So that way, they match. And you always go by the lowest rating. So, if for example, our hitch was only rated for 6,000, that means our max would be six, not 7,500. Now, our hitch is gonna be higher than that here, but that's just an example. Now, before you hook up your ball, typically, you would want to grease the ball. That lubrication provided on there will let it maneuver inside of the trailer coupler easier and help to prevent metal on metal wear. And that also helps to protect the chrome surface here, which protects your ball against corrosion and makes it look nice as well. So, for demonstration purposes today, we're not going to be lubricating the ball but we'll just go ahead and lower it on here so we can show you the hook up. Just drop your trailer down. And sometimes it's necessary to push your trailer a little bit to the left or to the right to kind of get it to line up with the ball there. After we get it dropped down on there, we'll secure it in place and then hook up the rest of your connections that you would have for your trailer, which is typically going to be a pair of safety chains. So, make sure you hook those up. And if you have the ability to, you'll wanna cross those, putting the driver's side chain on the passenger side and vice versa with the other. That way, it creates a cradle. In the event of a catastrophic disconnect, this cradle will hold our coupler up off the ground to keep it from digging down into the pavement. And, of course, you also wanna hook up your electrical connector as well. And then we just need to bring our tongue jack up and we're ready to go ahead and haul off. All right, once we get this up, we should be good to go. And it may seem like we are a little bit high here on our trailer, but we have a completely unloaded trailer here. Once we would put some weight in the trailer, that would help even it out, giving us a nice flat towing experience. And that completes our look at CURT's line of 3/4 inch rise, two-inch drop drawbars with a one-inch shank hole..