Upgrades to my trailer
 

My month long trailer 'experience' finally reached conclusion today.

About five or six weeks ago we took our boat out of the water to clean it and bring it home. About fifteen miles from the lake the rear left wheel and hub went flying off.

We limped back to the marina, relaunched and moored the boat.

I proceeded to ask the mechanic's at the Marina to replace the hubs and brakes on the trailer. It's a 1995 Roadmaster Tandem Axle carrying a z240 Talari. I ordered new disk brakes from TieDown Engineering, a new actuator and new aluminum wheels from Eastern Marine.

After a week or so the Marina Mechanic called to inform me that the axles were two light on the trailer and that I needed to replace the leaf springs. When doing this I needed to ship back the brake rotors (10"), hubs (5 lug) and wheels (5 lug, 14") and go to six lug, 15".

I began researching online and found that in addition to the leaf springs being plenty big enough the axles were also just fine for the weight of the boat. Net/net is I decided to heck with the 'experts' at the Marina and I drove it 70 miles home to be repaired by a local mechanic who offered to do the job. On the boat-less trip home about 20 miles from the lake the single tire on the drivers side went flat!!! I replaced it with spare and limped my way the remaining fifty miles.


About three weeks ago I dropped the trailer and all the parts of with my trusted local mechanic.

After numerous calls and being away on business travel I went in last Thursday to be told that he 'doesn't want to do the job.'

I pulled the trailer home last week and began the adventure myself.

Over the weekend I pulled the old hubs off and discovered that only the rear axle had drum brakes. The left rear was already 'gone' as it had blown off entirely, the right rear drum literally disintegrated --- there was nothing left. I pulled the other hubs off, the biggest challenge was pulling out the existing cotter pins.

I cleaned all the axle areas with brake cleaner, sprayed undercoating under the wheel wells and then began assembling the brakes. I installed the 10" rotor, hub and caliper kits from TieDown Engineering. All four wheels now have matching disc brakes. I also installed airtight bearing buddies.

The disc brake kit includes a matching actuator that mounts on the tongue to replace the existing unit - after examining it, clearly it was in bad shape also and needed replacement. I ordered new brake lines from BlueDot and a new wiring harness from Etrailer. The wiring harness is a seven prong male that connects directly from the trailer wiring to GM vehicles with no adapter. This also enables connection of the automatic reverse solenoid - when the vehicle reverse lights go on it allows you to backup; otherwise the brake calipers clamp down and you can't move.

I replaced the rusty and tired chrome wheels with new wheels and covered them in new rubber. 215/75-14's. Locking lug nuts to ensure nobody develops too much envy.

After installing the new brake lines and bleeding the brakes I became a little foolhardy this weekend and decided to paint the tired frame. After masking, sanding, priming and shooting in my improvised garage paint tent I finished late last night. The paint is two-tone with one color (navy) matching the Mariah and the other matching the tow vehicle (Dark Toreador Red)

Today I went to pick up the boat with much success. The stopping power with the four disc brakes is really impressive.

Below are links to what I purchased and where:

TieDown brake and rotor kit - then added two roters and hubs separate to match
--- Eastern Marine or West Marine both have them.

TieDown Engineering manufacturer: http://www.tiedown.com/amarinedls.html

Trailer Light connectors: http://www.etrailer.com/c-tec.htm

New brake lines: http://shop.easternmarine.com/index....categoryID=156

New Aluminum Wheels: http://shop.easternmarine.com/index....categoryID=162

One more really neat thing I added was non-slip tape on the wheel well and along the top edge of the trailer. Here's the link to that:

No Skidding Products Inc. - http://www.noskidding.com/safety_tape/safetytape.html

1 x 6" X 60 ft. NS5100B Series Anti Slip High Traction Grit Tape - Black (NS5106B) = $78.00
1 x 2" X 60 ft. NS5102B Series Anti Slip High Traction Grit Tape - Black (NS5102B) = $28.00

I bought the new tires at Discount Tire - they did a great job and have good service.

Let me know if you have any questions, happy to walk you through the process.

Brent

Wow that is awesome, you really know your s*&t Brent. The finished product is a real
credit to you, when you get the boat on it, it will look quite the package.
Bet you cant wait to take it cruising.
If it was mine I would hook it up and go cruising around the streets showing off :yes_grin:
Congratulations on an outstanding job. :wink_thumbup:

That turned out really great Brent! I definitely feel your pain when it comes to trailer mishaps.

The dealer we bought our Mariah from turned out to be a bunch of tool bags and setup the trailer all wrong. They put on these cheep little bearing buddy knock-offs that were essentially just caps with no spring or mechanism to force geese into the bearings. As a result, our second season coming over the pass, one of the bearings seized up, locked the tire, and got so hot that it melted off the brake line. The line exploded, spraying brake fluid everywhere and caught fire inside the wheel well area on the trailer. The more you pressed the breaks the more fluid was sprayed out and the bigger the fire got. We were just coming into town where my uncle lives and we pulled into his driveway, fire and all, with him awaiting with a fire extinguisher.

Quite an experience i must say. Took the trailer to Les Schwab the next day and had them begin the ordering and repair process. They ended up having to replace the front coupler (they claim it wouldn't pressurize) and the entire axle w/ the seized bearing as they were unable to get the bearing out.

All in all we learned always always always check the grease in your hubs before heading out, make sure you have actual bearing buddies, and never get any work done at Les Schwab. Those guys do not know what they are doing. It took 4 trips to get them to adjust the bearing preload properly. Every time they gave the trailer back and said "it's fine now" we'd get about 10 mins. down the road and the hubs would be burning hot. A desperate call to EZ-Loader trailers, the manufacturer of our trailer who happens to be located about 20 minutes east of us, was made and they agreed to take a look at the trailer. They had no problem getting the bearing preload set correctly and even gave us a free 2000 lb tongue jack for free as the one that came with the trailer was a little dinky thing.

Luckily you'll never have to worry about your trailer breaking down again Brent. Just repack the bearings every year and you'll be set!