. The 85 crew cab will be the hauler. A previous owner has welded a nice sized piece of channel iron to the frame and there's a hole in the bed for the ball. After myself and Matt the welder/fabricator looked it over real good it looks like it's been welded in there good. Matt's convinced me it's ok to run. I'll entertain comments about the use of such a gooseneck hitch. But my main question about this thread concerns the size of gooseneck balls. Didn't even know gooses had balls 
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Inside the channel a 2 1/4" long piece of pipe has been welded in where the ball would slide through and tighten with the nut at the bottom. It has an ID of 2 1/4" as well. Do I need to find a ball that has a shank size of 2"- 2 1/4"? Obviously need one longer than 2 1/4" to have room for the nut on the bottom. My local farm supply store only had shank sizes of 1 1/8", up to 3" long and 10k weight rating. Is that weight rating ok? Any help/comments are welcome to this city boy
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