A small hitch ball ?

Hi

Can you help me to find a small Hitch Ball and his coupler for my trailer, not the one that is used for the car because they are to big for my need.

Some time i find a small hitch ball, but not the coupler ?

The hitch ball will give to me all the freedom that is needed.

Thanks in advance and excuse my English.

Gillis

Smallest real hitch I've seen is still car stuff.

But the hatchback on cars has a very small ball on the car that connects to the hatch lifter. Maybe you can get that at a junkyard, and make a tiny hitch and ball from that.

I've seen these used as hitches. It'd be a lot lighter than a ball hitch, at least..

http://drumbent.com/trailer_big.html

Hi,
I use these type of ball hitch/joint on my trailers...





http://www.amazon.com/Alcoa-GAS-32-Spring-Fitting-Cylinder/dp/B002P4ON5C

You could also use the spring loaded type as used on this trailer...


http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~talizmar/xntrick/hitch.htm

Hope this helps.

Regards
Tom

I"m bumping this, started work on a heavy duty trailer to carry Smurf ( my Samoyed .. dog ) and found this while looking for a hitch method ... more to come.

https://www.bikeshophub.com/trailers/radical-design-bike-trailer-hitch-p-1627.html

You can get those quick disconnect ball joint linkages from McMaster Carr. The ones with 3/8" and 1/2" studs would both be applicable to cycle trailers.

EDIT: Here's a link. http://www.mcmaster.com/#6058k33

Whilst a ball hitch is neat and appears the correct solution, it is not essential or necessary.
Just remember, no large commercial vehicle/ trailer uses a ball hitch !

Hillhater said:

Whilst a ball hitch is neat and appears the correct solution, it is not essential or necessary.
Just remember, no large commercial vehicle/ trailer uses a ball hitch !

Click to expand...

Ball hitches have the limitation that they are easily damaged when the trailer overturns. On the other hand, the quick disconnectable ones are the fastest and easiest means of attaching and detaching a trailer.

On my own trailers I use Burley hitches, which have an elastomer joint rather than a ball joint or universal joint.

This is how I set-up a hitch.

I've used (and broken) a few kinds, including the crappy elastomer+spring clamp-on hitch on Bell 2-kid-type trailers.

I've made some from different things, including copying an air-hose-coupling hitch others have used successfully, and most of them broke under the loads and road conditions I put them thru. :/

The only homemade one I've used that survived was made from bike headtube/steerer parts, as seen early on in the DayGlo Avenger thread. Even that had two failures, but IIRC both were nuts unscrewing from bolts mostly because I didn't use loctite or proper locknuts or lockwashers. The hitch itself was very durable, though.


Now I am using automotive ball-hitches, and so far have had only one problem, where somehow the nylock nut on the tongue clamp worked it's way up and allowed me to unhitch it, but then wouldn't let me hitch it back. It's also possible that someone messed with it to do that, but I can't see how they could've gotten to the nut. It has not had this problem again, which favors the latter theory.

I"m sure they're overkill even for my stuff, but I'm all for overkill if it keeps me from having any kind of problem that results in a trailer coming loose while a dog is in it, which happened once with Hachi.

One thing that my hitches have to deal with, is very large dogs wiggling around while I ride; this wouldn't be happening with normal loads that most people carry. Elastomer hitches might work ok for that too, but my experience with the Bell trailer versions shows it would need to be a lot better than those.

TopCat said:

Hi,
I use these type of ball hitch/joint on my trailers... http://www.amazon.com/Alcoa-GAS-32-Spring-Fitting-Cylinder/dp/B002P4ON5C... Hope this helps. Regards Tom

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. FYI, in 2017 I found this still available on Amazon for $6.76 + $9.39 shipping - a bargain.