[A/S] Balls and Tires and hitches oh my

["Thomas Dickieson" <lleather@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Y'All

If one wished to discover all there was to know about hitch and ball 
installation and adjustment, one could find this on Reese Hitches web 
site at www.reeseprod.com and I believe that all the other hitch 
manufacturers have a support area also, so whatever type of hitch you 
use - you could do worse than to go to their web site and browse a 
bit.  Now as to hitch height on trailers.  Airstream has recommended 
ball heights, measured from the ground to the inside top of the hitch 
cap of the trailer, WITH the trailer level front to back, with the 
originally installed tires.  Now, I saw it mentioned that David had 
replaced his tires with a different size than came on the trailer 
originally.  This changes the entire fabric of the recommendation 
from Airstream.  To find the new proper height of the ball one would 
need to level the airstream in a flat area, and then measure to the 
inside of the ball cap on the trailers hitch frame.  Mine changes by 
as much as 1/2 inch difference between radial tires in a 225 size and 
bias ply tires in a 7.00 size.  The intention of the whole concept is 
to have the truck and trailer ride level.  With the trailer hooked to 
the truck/tow vehicle, the orientation of the vehicle should be the 
same as it was prior to hooking up the trailer on equalization.  In 
other words, although the vehicle will settle, it should settle the 
same at all four corners, and the trailer after hookup should ride 
level.  This is best accomplished in a nice large flat parking lot in 
daylight.  I believe these instructions can be found on reeses web 
site, and probably on the others as well.  Sorry to jump into this 
discussion, but I thought a bit of clarification might help.  If you 
disagree with this, fine, I won't help you adjust your rig.  Please 
don't bother to flame this post as I won't rise to the bait.

Tom
North Bay, Ontario