Mike had his car towbar fitted by Megatyre Towbars about 4 years ago and dropped into our shop on Saturday afternoon and told us that he had bought a new boat which had a 50 mm trailer coupling. He needed to
towball
replace the 1 7/8ths towball on the towbar but had been unable to unbolt the existing towball. I was not surprised, as we do them up very tightly for obvious safety reasons.
So we removed the old towball with a high powered impact gun and fitted the new towball which Mike had bought elsewhere. He offered to pay us for doing this but we said no as this is just part of our normal after sales service. Its surprising how often we do this; some people have trailers in both towball sizes which means we usually swap their towball around a few times each year.
This free service is available to all of our customers, even if we did not fit your towbar!
Megatyre Towbars, Browns Bay, North Shore, Auckland. www.megatyre.co.nz
that is a nice story; it is great to hear you look after customers like that
Thank you sue!
Does that mean that if you own a 50 mm trailer and some times say borrow a boat trailer with a 1 7/8ths coupling, do you have to change towballs everytime you change the trailer?
Are there ways around this?
Yes, you would need to change the towball every time you change trailers. You must not try to tow a 50 mm coupling trailer with a 1 7/8 ths towball.
The alternative is to fit a “convert a ball” or change the trailer coupling on one of the trailers.
why muck around like this, why not just use a dual size trailer coupling?
Good point Sambo! I was not thinking about this one. A dual size coupling has both 50 mm and 1 7/8ths heads and is simply swivelled around to the appropriate size.
Are there any drawbacks with dual size trailer couplings; I have heard some horror stories.
Another good point thank you Karl. There is a big problem if someone accidentally selects the 50 mm head for a 1 7/8ths towball.
In such a situation, the trailer is highly likely to pop off the towball; very dangerous!