torquing a ball

[Brad_Blazer]

Kudos on reading the instructions. I think most hitch balls on the highway are torqued with an old pair of pipe wrenches or at best with a cheap hitch ball wrench. Hitch Ball Wrench

 

[Soundguy]

There are times when having a 48" Crescent wrench and a 48" Ridgid pipe wrench around the garage is a good thing.

David Kb7uns

reminds me.. i had a 4' pipe wrench.. i hate to have to use it, but love to have it when needed.

 

[dstig1]

Once tight, I take a paint marker and draw a line from the ball mount, nut and shank. This way, from time to time, I can check and see if the ball has rotated in the mount or the nut has moved on the threads. The paint mark is on the bottom, back side, so it does not look stupid.

The Japanese are pretty religious about this. All the Japanese equipment we get in has bolt and nuts marked with paint markers this way. I figure it is a 2-fold system - a mark as a double check that you torqued that fastener, and helps track any loosening down the road.

 

[FTG-05]

So I got new drawbar and ball hardware for my new truck. Got both rated for 10,000# since the truck can tow up to 9500#. The balls have a 1-1/4" shank and 1-7/8" nut, and call to be torqued to 450 ft-lb. I have a 1-7/8" wrench that is about 2' long, which means I'd need to apply about 225# to the end to get 450 ft-lb torque. My only guess how to do that is to put the drawbar in the receiver sideways (i.e., rotated 90 degrees to normal) so that the shank is horizontal and I can maybe try to hang my fat azz off the end of the wrench and put my weight into it. Any better ideas? I don't think I can find a pipe big enough to fit over the end of the wrench to make a cheater bar.

That is the better way!

 

[s219]

Well, I didn't get a chance to do this yet -- been doing concrete work for my barn today and waiting forever for each section to dry before troweling and applying broom finish. Was planning to tighten up the hitch balls tonight, but I walked into my raised front bucket (twice) and put a real nice knot on my head. So I think I will wait and do the trailer ball gymnastics when I recover a bit!

I thought it would be a great idea to raise up a tarp with the front bucket to block the sun while I worked, and that did work well. Need to learn not to walk next to the bucket when its up though.....

 

[rkeith]

Just use a large enough wrench.

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Bruce

Got my vote!! :laughing:

 

[SPYDERLK]

450 ftlb is awfully low for a thread that size. I just use an IR 2135 impact on a short hose and hammer til it stops turning.

 

[s219]

Well it seemed like a lot of torque when I was sitting on the end of that wrench last night! I think I got them more than tight enough, and also used blue locktite for some insurance and paint-striped the bolt/nut as alancamby suggested. Will periodically check everything whenever I tow, of course.

I thought about firing up my impact gun, but it's a 1/2" unit and all of the 1-7/8" sockets I found were for 3/4".

Interestingly, the 2" ball snugged to the point where I only needed to wrench on the nut to tighten it all the way home. The 2-5/16" ball kept wanting to spin so I had to wedge a pipe wrench between the flats on the ball base and drawbar to snug it up.

 

[Soundguy]

450 ftlb is awfully low for a thread that size. I just use an IR 2135 impact on a short hose and hammer til it stops turning.

the rear axle nuts holding the hubs on a ford 8n and NAA are torqued to 450 ft #

 

[downsizingnow48]

I do exactly same as spyderlk.