If you can, take the wheel nuts off and coat the studs with Loctite Nickel anti-seize and put them back on. Life becomes so much easier in the future when you have to remove them. Grease all nipples with a good marine grease, and set up a garden spray system to wash down your hubs, brakes and springs/shackles before you put the boat on it. Reduces wash down effort, and it is easier to do while there is no boat on the trailer.
Cheers
Thy
I'd be a little worried about the boat hitting the rear cross member unless you're prepared to really sink the trailer deep.
SUPERDAFF
Have you got a link to the rock climbing hook thing?
Thanks SUPERDAFF,
Some well thought out ideas there.
I particularly liked your idea of putting the winch handle on the drivers side, never thought of that but it seems so obvious when you mention it. Everything on the drivers side just makes sense and stepping over that drawbar is stupid and hazardous if not necessary.
We must be burdened with an American design I assume so we need to get onto our Aussie winch makers and see what they have to say.
I'll be looking at changing mine for sure.
I am pretty fussy with my trailer being well setup and each new trailer can take many days of fiddling to get it how I like it.
Not a five minute job thats for sure or it will let you down and not work well, possibly damage your boat long or short term.
Well worth a bit of effort.
Downey St Rustproofing at Geebung, 32657574. They have been around forever. But for the tectal to work, the trailer must not have seen salt water.Originally Posted by BigE
ROLL TIDE, ROLL.................
Regards,
Peter
The single most important thing to do is,
grease evey nut, bolt, screw, shaft and pin anywhere two metal surfaces come together.........do this and maintenance next year will be easy with a spanner... fail to do this and you will probaly be doing the next maintenence with a grinder and it will probaly cost you over $100 is new bolts and nuts.
Dont forget the U bolts.
If you have disk brakes the caliper rods and their bolts are a must grease......if the calipers do not have grease nipples, in the caliper rod bushes, fit grease nipples here and use them regularly...everything that moves or rubs in those calipers should be greased too including the backs of the pads.
When I baught my new trailer there was not a spot of grease anywhere appart from the hubs and the coupling.....it took be about 9 hours to dismantle the trailer, grease everything and reassemble.
I am a great lover of never seeze, but on my boat trailer I prefeer blue grease (Lithium complex), I tried lanoilin grease on a few things, but it dries out over time and goes hard..... but serioulsy any grease is better than nothing.
when you are seting up your trailer for the transfer...do as best you can and get the boat on........
then take it home and set it up with the chasis level on somehere flat.
the trailer must be supported on its wheels and preferebaly near the coupling.
and load the boat as it would normaly travel
most of these trailers flexquite a bit these days.
then you can get under the thing with a couple of jacks and snug up all the rollers and skids till they all do their fair share......I have half a dozen scissor jacks, this makes the job easy....you can put jacks under variuos pins and dial up the adjustments...but remember the trailer will flex so have a good look with the jacks backed off before you pull the bolts down hard.
As for shackles.....remember shackles from the hardware aren't worth a piece of piss......rated shackes are good, even stanless yachting items have a reliable rating.
Not sure That I am keen on climbing carabinas, they are made of alloy and are realy intended for use with soft tackle ( rope and slings).
remember too that climbing and height saftey equipment is rated at breaking strain, lifting equipment is rated at safe working load or working load limit with minimum safety factor of 4:1..so a 1.5 tonne Carabina will fail just above that ( and in rope), a 1.5 tonne lifting shackle will hold till at least 6 tonnes and in similarly sized and quality chain will be the weak point.
DO NOT rely on your winch post or the winch to hold the boat on the trailer especially if it is a bigger boat.....you realy should be fitting a chain and probaly a turn buckle to hold the bow down and back and down and forward.
There are planty of stories, pictures and links that show what happens when the winch post fails..remember all that stress is on only 1 mild steel U bolt.
Oh if you have cable op brakes...replace the crappy steel wire with some stanless with swaged eyes with thimbles.
cheers
Its the details, those little details, that make the difference.
OH... for rustproofing up the rails.....I laike lanolin spray, cut with a little white spirit so it runs and penetrates.
I make up a device with a length of microirrigation tube with a 360 spray head on the end.....this I screw into a standard trigger sprayer with a threaded barb joiner.
you can make up the tube as long as you like, and it gets all the way up all the rails and crossmembers.
cheers
Its the details, those little details, that make the difference.
There was a guy on here who worked for Dunbier, I suspect he was a Dunbier. Anyway he reckoned that Lanolin sprays can be part of the problem with early rust in the trailers. I don't know the reasoning but worth mentioning.
Re: Top new trailer set up tips.
I'm absolutely right with you on the ratings brother - and I'm across the yellow tagging of the shackles. But with a 3 tonne carabina, dual turn-buckles, two tie downs and a winch wire, I'm feeling pretty comfortable.
Compare that with the dinky standard D-bolt.
I did have a winch post snap at the base on a previous boat (while towing it laden to the hilt through the Kangaroo Valley in southern NSW) - very unpleasant. But the tie-downs out-performed themselves and not a mark on the boat.
Regards
Set the keel rollers as low as you can get them so as they never touch the hull, that way you will have no problems driving the boat on, hell take them off even better so long as your boat never comes near hitting the cross members. I'd be a tad cautious putting it on the first time making sure the boat doesn't hit that rear cross member. It looks close in the photo but probably not so bad real life.
Avoid bearing buddies like the plague if you want water free hubs. Or if you insist on having them, makue sure you only use high quality ones. But you're far better off without them and using the caps.
Yeah, I'll be getting rid of mine as soon as I get time to take off the hubs and clean and regrease. I don't trust the princible of them, and I think that they would have to let water in. Although I could be wrong.
Have always sealed my caps on with good SS marine bearing seals and never had any water from heaps of total submersions and years of trouble free motoring, so i'd rather go with what I know works.
Just did mine today, be prepared for a few hours work (if you are anal like all of us sound). Just make sure that the keel rollers are making the most contact with the hull, from what i was told weight distribution should be 80% keel rollers 20% on the sides. The most important thing to remember is that there is no real right way to do it, so long as she is well supported. Agree totally with the lanolin spray definately make sure you use that, I used lanox (inox brand) will keep you're trailer looking good for a lot longer.
Confucius says.........."Before man become master fisherman, man must become master baiter".
I have also had good success with a coating of INOX/Lanox about every 3rd or 4th trips. Don't seem to have to be overly meticulous with getting every square inch as it travels along the metal itself and seems to coat everything.
I just keep the INOX away from any natural rubber parts where I would use Lanox instead or could use Lanox for the lot, but it's just a bit more expensive.
I did a trailer way back with tectal (spelling) and although it did seem to preserve the trailer, it looked like dirty brown crap and had to redo it from time to time. messy messy job!
The longest I have owned an INOX treated trailer is about 4 years and that trailer was still near like new. A good spinoff is that all the bolts and nuts are in perfect condition and easy to work with any time.
I use Lanox around the Spring rubbers and so on as INOX will soften them.
As some of you know i recently had access to a perfect 27yo steel trailer (tracer made) without a spot of rust on it. All i can do is pass on what was used from new.
- Bolts, any metal/metal contacts, and welds are the problem areas. grease is good but better to just replace inexpensive gal bolts roughly every 2-3 seasons.
- Marine penetrol was used over the gal which is very thin and apparantly acts as a water displacer a bit like wd40. Thin enough to get in over the gal but does no harm to it by the looks. No idea about ally trailers tho.
- As with most things there's always a new fix for something an old product does perfectly well. Forget lanolin and fishoil the hell out of your back half. Use the good fishoil not cheap stuff. It just works as long as u do it regularly like anything.
- The welds tend to rust from the inside out. Whatever you use put extra on the welds and/or spray any welds hard to get to with a long nozzle. Water/salt tends to settle/dry in them.
- If u can add a bit of detergent to the water you're washing it helps get the salt off much better. Always spray the inside of the wheels/springs from underneath.
- If there are any box sections assume salt water will still somehow get in and attack the welds from the inside. Look for low points in cross members and drill a "drain hole" which you can plug with a gal bolt you can re-access....get a nozzle in and spray fishoil inside especially over the welds and seal the hole up. It will naturally settle into low points the water would head. Even better if you can pour heaps of fishoil into any box section, seal up then go for a spin. Leave it in.
Finally its kind of common sense but still rarely seen. We love to wash/spray our trailers after taking the boat out or at home but realistically the damage is already done and irreversible by then. The problem is we dunk metal into saltwater then leave it for hour upon hour in the air/sun..then dunk it again and assume a bit of freshwater will fix the corrosive effect it had. A bit of a hassle (and to be honest i dont even do it myself but you see old salts with it) but the best defence against corrosion is to have some form of water tank (with a dash of detergent chucked in) like an old 22l plastic tote tank and a small bilge pump inside, either on the trailer or simply in the boot hooked up to the car light wires or any other way u want it. Run some cheap poly garden irrigation tubing down the trailer insides with those small spray nozzles and when exiting the ramp flick the parker lights on to go park it...sprays the living hell out of your trailer with freshwater and effectively washes it when its truly necessary. They should make steel trailers with this standard coz its not expensive to do.
All good tips guys keep em comming.
BigE
trailer swap done. Thanks for all the tips. some real gems in amoungst them.
she rides sweet and tows like a dream.
BigE
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