Roadmaster Hitch Riser for Tow Bars - 2.5" Hitch - 6" Rise/Drop - 10K GTW - 400 lbs TW

Video Transcript for The Low-Down on the Roadmaster Hitch Riser for Tow Bars

Ellen: Hey everyone. I'm Ellen here at etrailer.com and today we're going to be taking a look at the Roadmaster High-Low Adapter. So if you're getting all set up to flat tow your vehicle behind your RV, this is going to be an important component to make sure that everything works right. A lot of times there's going to be a height difference between your RV and your towed vehicle, so this is going to help to make sure that everything's nice and level.Usually you have about a three inch margin in either direction to make sure that everything's okay, but you want to make sure that you measure both the hitch height for your RV and also the tow height from your towed vehicle. The way to do that is to take a tape measure. Measure from the inside top edge of your hitch on your RV, to the ground, and then compare that to the height from the center of your base plate, or where the arms attach on your base plate, to the ground.

The difference between those two numbers is going to be the amount of hit rise or drop that you're going to need.If your RV is taller than your towed vehicle, you would need a drop. If your towed vehicle is higher than your RV, then you need to rise. Either way, this is going to give us six inches in either the drop like this I have here or rise position, if you flip it around the other way. So can work in either direction there.So you can see it's going to be a nice sturdy construction. We're going to have this tube steel with a reinforced gusset at the back, so it's going to be really nice and durable.

This is going to be have a pretty high weight capacity of 10,000 pounds for our max gross towing weight and then 400 pounds for our max tongue weight.Now the caveat that I wanted to mention with that is that if you're planning on using this for anything other than towing a vehicle behind another vehicle, if you're using this for hauling a bike rack or a cargo carrier, you want to keep in mind that this is actually going to limit the amount of weight that you can put on your hitch. It's going to drop your tongue weight down by half. It reduces that down by half.Since this is intended to be used for pulling for a pull setup, so a flat tow setup, so I just want to give you that idea if you're planning on using it for anything other than a flat tow, but if you are in the market for a flat tow, you don't have to worry about that. Again, we'll have that 400 pounds of tongue weight, 10,000 pounds of towing weight or pull strength from this, so it should work out, work for most vehicles out there; very few are going to be bigger than 10,000 pounds. Of course, you do want to check that.Also take into account with any cargo that you might have loaded into your towed vehicle as well and always go off of the lowest number of any component in your system.

So look at the weight rating for the hitch on your RV, for your tow bar, your base plate, and make sure that you're not going above any of those numbers. You want to go off with the lowest number of any component in your system.Now as far as the size of our component here, again it is going to give us that six inches of drop or rise. The total length going front to back is going to be about 14 inches. Now this is going to extend out the system. That's something that people don't think about until it's a little late.

But by adding this in, you're going to now be pushing that whole setup back by about nine and three eighths inches. That's going from the center of the hitch pin hole here, to the center of the hitch pin hole there.So if you have safety cables that are pretty taut already, you want to make sure you get an extension to allow for those cables to still have the room that they need to make that connection. We do have extensions available here at etrailer.com I highly suggest that you pick them up or get longer cables if you haven't already got them. A lot of times tow bars will come with the safety cables so that's when you get that extension, just to get that extra bit of length that you might need.Now the pin hole diameter for both our attachment to the RV and the towed vehicle, both of those are going to have a five eighths inch diameter. It's a pretty common size for anything that fits into a two inch or two and a half hitch. We have a lot of options available. You can get lock sets as well, so definitely a good idea to get a lock for both the connection here and there. And while I mentioned it, the tube going into our RV, that is going to be a two and a half by two and a half inch shank, so you need to make sure that this is going into an RV with a two and a half by two and a half inch hitch.The receiver tube here is going to be a two inch by two inch, which is pretty typical for most of those hitch mounted style tow bars out on the market. I know that's a lot of numbers to throw at you. It's pretty simple though. It's just making sure that all your components work together properly and again, you can find all those accessories here at etrailer.com to make your setup as efficient and safe as possible.One last note that I want to give you, whenever you're going for a towing, a flat tow setup, you probably already have these components, but just as a reminder, you want to make sure that you have your base plate, your tow bar, your braking system, your tow bar wiring, and also those safety cables. As I mentioned, safety cables often do come with your tow bar, but you can find all of those accessories and anything else that you might need for your flat tow setup right here at etrailer.com.Well, that's going to do it for my video, but I hope this has been helpful in deciding if this is going to be the right piece for you. If not, we have a lot of other options, so check them out. Thanks for watching.