This time with pictures: 3 1/2 inch ball

CenTex Farmall

Well-known Member
Finally took a couple of pictures. Just wondering if this had a particular name.
p51016.jpg

p51015.jpg
 
I have seen those, in the 70's some cattle trailor co's used them. A neighbor had one to keep people from borrowing his trailer, didn't work we just borrowed his truck too. Donahue put the 5/16 ball on the trailor for a few years but the reciver in the truck would get full of dirt, ice etc. so that idea was bad. the 25/16 and 3 are the standard now I guess.
 
Had a neighbor who had a backhoe business in the early 80"s. His gooseneck trailer was set up like that. I had never seen one before, we always had the 2 5/16" ball, and some big horse trailers used the king pin type hitch instead of the ball in the bed. It just had a big bolt that went through the eye, and the ball was free to rotate. It seemed to work fine for him. He told me it was pretty common among the contractors.
 
I should have mentioned that on the trailer, the hitch seemed to just be the pipe down-tube of the hitch with a cross-wise hole for the bolt to go through. It didn't seem to have any special socket for the ball to seat into, although I may be wrong on this. It looked as though all the weight sat on the end of the pipe down-tube, which rode on the flange below the ball - there was no weight on the top of the ball. The hole through the ball was not straignt, but rather it would look like a bow-tie if you had a cross section. This was so that turns would not tend to shear the locking bolt. So I'm thinking that the big attraction was that it was a cheap set-up.
 
Neat. I bet if you looked up into the tube on the hitch, you'd see a dome inside there that mates up with the top of the ball.

I've never seen a 3" ball hitch either. Anybody got a picture of one of those?

The biggest trailer hitch I've ever seen is a 2-5/16".
 
Don't know of a name for it. But I do know it was an early version of the goose neck. We had a stock trailer on the farm from the 60's with one. The tow vehicle was a 68 Chevrolet. I have also seen them use a flat plate with a hole through it instead of a ball. My GN was set up for this ball originally. Now it has a 2 5/16" coupler welded in. The cross pin and latch are still there.

CT
 
neighbors use 3" balls in all their trucks. You can still get them from B&W hitch co, the turn over ball hitch people. I think they said the 2 5/16 ball is rated at 25,000lbs and the 3" rated at 30,000. They believe in bigger is better i guess.
 
I know that 2 5/16 balls can be had with 40,000# capacity and have read on another forum that they are made with 50,000#.........though I personally haven't seen them.
 

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