The poor trailer section has been a bit neglected lately, so I thought I'd throw a few words out since I've been worrying about, and working on mine, getting ready for pull-out day.

Learned a few things since last year. For one, I had 3 vertical guide posts that I attached, 2 in back and one up front. I found out that I only need ONE guide post, in back. It will go on the port side, since the wind is always blowing on the starboard side. I figure the breeze and a helper on the dock can help align the back. Even as big as this boat is, getting it on the trailer dead to rights is fairly critical. Up front I only have about +/- 2" from center to play with, or I can flatten the center keel fin.
(here a couple of shots of the fin, and the groove it has to fit in:





due to the hull flattening out to stern, the fin alignment is only critical up front. But there are several reinforcement ribs running the length of the hull, and the bunks need to fit between them, and I have maybe +/- 5" to play with in the back. Last year, the front was perfect but we missed in the back by a few inches to starboard and I bent a couple of the ribs. I wasn't the first one to squash a rib, but I don't want to repeat it. I also bent the starboard guide post. When the boat is coming on up front, we could feel when the fin fell into the groove, plus we can just line it up visually, so that's why I'm not going to use the front guide this time. As long as the front fits, the back can just be 'floated' to the port guide post and hopefully it'll be all lined up...

Another thing I've learned (and still learning) about is how semi trailers work. This thing has 2 air tanks for working the brakes and airing up the suspension bags. The brakes are drum brakes, which are operated by a rotating shaft, which is rotated by a lever that's attached to an air (and spring) operated plunger, one plunger per drum. Inside the plunger 'can' is an extremely strong spring that, when there's no air available, puts pressure on the plunger, applying the brakes. Air pressure overcomes the spring pressure. If you need to move the trailer without air, the brakes can be "caged". This is done with a special bolt and nut, the one end of the bolt is "keyed" to fit an I-shaped slot in the plunger mechanism inside the plunger can. You tighten the nut to pull the plunger into the 'non-brake' caged position. This only requires about 500 pounds of torque to turn the nut! So, the easy way to cage the brakes is to do it while the tanks are pressurized. To do this without a semi, you need the special airline connectors they use. Fortunately, my congear has air brakes that I don't need, and are already caged, so I robbed it of it's air hoses and connectors. Then I had to rig up some fittings so I could use an air compressor. Because there's 2 air fittings, and I know nothing about them, I had to figure out what to do. There's a red line and a blue line. I aired up the red line, the tanks filled but nothing else happened. So I aired up the blue line, and for every bit of air I put in the blue side, air came back out the red side. That's when I figured out I needed to block the red side while airing up the blue side. Voila! The air bags filled and the brake plungers opened up. I put the cage bolts in and finger tightened the nuts.

Now I can pull the trailer around with my pickup and congear!

Speaking of congear, this is what it looked like last year:



However, I got it cheap because the guy wanted his 8 nearly new tires & wheels back! My friend Gary found me some rags, and here's the poor thing now:



BUT--I only need 4 tires, and these tires are a lot lower profile which I needed too, so while it looks funky, it'll actually work better now.

And last year, we had a problem with the ramp being shorter than the trailer. Specifically, the right pair of tires fell off the ramp into an abyss caused by powerloading. The main reason it's a problem is because when trying to pull the trailer out, the air spring shackle got caught on the end of the ramp! Check it out:



I want to have an angled skid plate added between the bottom of the shackles and the frame, but everyone tells me I shouldn't do that(?)...so, as a quick fix I'm going to buy a 12' long 2x12, cut it into six 3' long pieces, and cut them all diagonally from corner to corner, then figure out a way to temporarily attach 3 of them in the straight corners, kinda like this:



Have no idea HOW to attach them...? Doing the same thing with a single piece of 1/4" thick steel seems like it would work, I need to talk with Dave, my welder...

Sorry for the novel, it's that time of year, it's Sunday and I'm bored silly!

Wonder why they say not to weld an angle "ramp" in front of the spring shackle?

That's got to be a sight to see one of those boats pulled out of the water...

How did you get the spring shackle unstuck at the end of the ramp???

Looks like your idea will work. I assume you're gonna have to weld all that in there??

Weld some clips (with bolt holes on one end) to the trailer and then bolt the 2x12 to the clips?

I'm not sure why everyone says not to weld in a skid plate of some sort, maybe they're not sure of what I'm actually talking about, need to show them pictures maybe. (I've never beenn near the trailer when explaining what I want). And this trailer will probably never do anything else in it's life, it doesn't need to be pretty!

Fishntoss, we have a webcam at the lake, you can watch if you want, a few here watched when we launched it this spring. But getting it off the trailer is easy, putting it on was pretty nerve-wracking last year! But this year the trailer actually fits the boat and having done it once, I hope it goes smoothly!

Getting the trailer unstuck last year wasn't easy, we're probably lucky we didn't rip the shackle off the frame! Fortunately there was still no weight on the back of the trailer yet so it finally popped up. That's probably when the guide got bent...

On holiday, I was thinking somewhat along those lines, but if anything is going to be welded on, I'd like it to just be a skid plate!

Since the right side fell off the ramp but the left side didn't, I'm hoping that if I crowd the left side of the ramp I'll just avoid that hole. But, I don't know what may lurk on the LEFT side yet. I want to test-dunk the trailer with my truck, but I need some sort of skid in place first so I don't get myself in trouble!

I wondering if the issue people think would be wielding to the shackle itself. Perhaps if you just welded a triangle section in front of the shackle an inch or so???

When are you planning on taking it out?

as far as I know, arc welding to the shackle shouldn't hurt anything. GAS welding could warp it so that's a no-no.

I'm hoping to pull it the weekend after this coming, 18th or 19th, and first thing in the morning before the wind comes up. I MIGHT go for this weekend if the truck and guys are available, but the weather's supposed to suck...

Regarding the alignment of the bow and the keel fin groove up front.

Maybe you can't do it now, but I'm wondering if you can do something this winter to help out for next year.

Once the boat is on the trailer, you might see if you can fabricate some kind of guide, for the keel fin, that is wider towards the stern and narrow to the bow. Allow the keel fin to guide itself into place.
Don't know how strong the keel fin is, maybe there is a danger of snapping it?? And maybe you'd want something that can be reomoved once parked.
This 'rail' can be bolted to front and back of the exsisting beam and then removed when parked??

I gotcha, a running V-groove, great idea, and I could do it just using 2x4's--- (pardon the pro graphics)



I could bolt down a couple of blocks at the ends... I could screw some 1/4" thick aluminum plates to the ends of the blocks for the keel fin to bump into. Or I could make the opening wider than shown...but I could do that right now!
Thanks!

If it is heat treated the heat from welding will probably alter it.


Welding can also induce stresses which can be removed by a post weld stress relief(heat treatment)

makes sense---

How about something like this out of steel plate?

I wouldn't do it in wood - that would probably just crush under the weight, then you're going to have a problem.

I would do the ramp in steel, like you show in the diagram above - however, I'm not sure it will be necessary to use two triangle shaped pieces. One will probably do the trick if you can weld securely to the shackle and the frame. It would look like an I beam. I also don't see any reason not to weld to the shackle boss - just looks like formed steel to me.

You could make the above graphic like a wide flange beam or an "I" beam as often referred as. In a typical wide flange beam there is only one web and two flanges (top and bottom). Very strong member in a YY axis formation.

IF I make skids out of wood (time is becoming a factor!), I have a bunch of 1/4" thick aluminum that I could cut into flat plates like in my graphic above, and screw them to the wood along the ramped edge. That should be enough (hopefully) of a hard edge to keep the ramp from gouging into the soft wood. Also, the trailer weighs 8x less in water, so I have that benefit too...

And I agree that the shackles are probably just formed steel, and a simple 1" long weld at the bottom on each side of the steel plate should be plenty. (check your motorhome's frame extensions, the ones on our Winnebago were barely more than tack welded on)

I like I-beams, this trailer is already nothing BUT I-beams! If I can just get in touch with my welder Dave, if there's a best way, he'll know what to do...

Whatever you decide to do, this year's trailer prep seems very mild to what you went through last season! What are you doing with all your idle time?

IDLE time?

Ever try to air up a flat semi tire with the bead off the rim? (one of the rags on the congear was flat!) I spent the better part of one afternoon before I gave up--next day Gary came out with his portable compressor, we tried for over an hour before we decided to try the starting fluid trick--it worked! Gary caught his arm on fire, but we got it out pretty quick. ...since his compressor was handy, I made sure the trailer tires got a full 125 psi.

I also spent a fair amount of time putting new seals in the outboard on the party cruiser---

And even more time cleaning 2 years of calcium off the pontoon logs. Still need to do the INSIDES of the logs--

Picked up a 24' x 49' tarp and covered the party cruiser, and installed the snow-support framework up front...

We spent an afternoon tarping the upper deck on the houseboat, and another afternoon and morning getting a tarp over the canopy and tied up--

Tried to make our old 28' motorhome cover fit our 31' motorhome. They're not kidding, it just plain won't fit (but I'm going to make it fit, still got THAT to do...)

Got the motorhome water system drained and antifreezed up--

This morning I hooked up the congear, hooked it up to the trailer, and got them out of the north 40 and into the parking lot. (much to my delight, the brakes on the trailer weren't rusted shut! She just rolled away nice & easy!)

Just tonight we hauled a load of stuff home from the boat, since this is probably our last week

That's just so far... I still need to tarp up the flybridge, I need to come up with SOME sort of skids for the trailer (and quick), need to bolt up and measure the one guide (no biggie), still need to drain the oil out of 4 lower units and drain and antifreeze 3 engines, winterize the houseboat water system, and arrange for Gary to yank the boat out...

That's just at the harbor! I still have crap to do at home!

(I should move down by Kelly I guess!)