RAM-B-200-1U RAM Single Socket Arm & 1/4" NPT Female Thread for 1" Balls

Use in my truck for phone, cup holder, tablet depending on my needs so many options

I ordered two of these to hold an iPad Mini in my truck. The base hole is threaded with a 1/4 NPT tap. It appears that no thread lubricant was used, or the cutter was worn out, because in both of mine the threads were extremely bad - rough, torn and shallow. I cleaned them up with my own tap, but I really should have returned them. OTH they will work fine, and there is no guarantee that the next ones would be any better.If you enlarge the picture for this item, yoiu can see that the threads look pretty nice. Mine were just nasty.I added a length of Schedule 40 6061-T6 aluminum tubing, threaded each end. After driving a while I will fine tune the fit by shortening and re-threading the tubing as needed. My tubing cost US$6 at a local metal supply (for a 12 inch length). RAM wants $26 for the same part, though it is powder coated. I am just going to put heat shrink tubing over mine.The Single Socket design gets 5 stars, the machining gets 0 stars. Still, it's a great design and it gives you a versatile mounting system that easily moves between vehicles, as long as they share the same sized ball mount. But RAM really needs to fix their quality control.John DaviesSpokane WA USA