Trailer Hitch Styles & Uses

Video Transcript

The purpose of this video is to talk about the different kinds of trailer hitch options, maintenance, and installation of a trailer hitch on your vehicle. There are many different styles of trailer hitches. Some mount on trucks, on the bumper. Some of them mount up underneath on the body. Some of them go on the bottom of cars, down underneath. Trailer hitches carry many different loads, behind the vehicle. Some are heavier, some are lighter. Depends on what you're going to carry. Are you planning on carrying behind the car a lawn trailer, that's relatively light, or are you planning on towing your family boat to the lake. Depending on what your load is, it's going to make a difference in what kind of trailer hitch you install or how you connect your trailer to your vehicle. The first example that I want to show you, is on the bumper of a truck. Simple ball mounted to the bumper of the vehicle. Now this is pretty sturdy if you?re going to carry a light load, maybe a motorcycle, even a jet ski behind your vehicle, but if you?re planning on getting something bigger or heavier you're probably going to want to not use this. This bumper basically is attached to the frame and then this is attached to the, rather thin metal, on the bumper. This is sufficient for carrying most small trailers. One other example we're going to use for how to mount a trailer hitch on your car. Up underneath the car you have the spare tire well, typically. A lot of trailer hitches will have you drill holes in the spare tire well and then mount it there for stability and then you'll drill a couple more holes in the bumper here to be able to attach it to the bumper. When you're mounting a trailer hitch on a car, you're not going to be able to carry a lot of weight. You're going to need a trailer that is pretty light with a light load on it. Don't expect to carry much weight if you're going to do it behind a car. Here we have a classic trailer hitch that would mount up under the vehicle frame. This is a more heavy duty trailer hitch. According to the sticker it can carry 75 to 100 pounds, you can pull behind your vehicle when you have this trailer hitch attached. This trailer hitch mounts here up under your frame, you can see the holes provided. Your chains attach here and then your adapter with the ball on it slides into here. This is how you carry it, for the vehicle. This is what we're going to use for an example tonight when we mount it up underneath the van.

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