Trailer Hub/Axle Guidance

Hollywood wrote: MrMcD wrote: you could see the tire was way out of balance. I can't, you must be like super human.

I don't even see a picture of any tires! Did I miss a link to extra pictures?

took a quick peek at the wheels last night, and both rims had weights on them, so at some point they were balanced. That's not to say that they are still balanced though. There is a tire place on my route to work, so it won't be hard to just have them rebalance them.

Went ahead and ordered new springs with bolts and shackles. I ended up ditching the monospring and opted for the 5-leaf. I'm glad I did as the bushings were toast (probably what was causing the squeaking. We'll see how it rides with all the new parts. a couple more weeks to go.

We notice that stretch of road being awful even without the boat behind. I like the security of the traffic on 151 if there is a problem, but really like 26 from Janesville to FDL for the ride.

Bruce,
The last set of tires I bought was for my utility trailer. Tires-r-us insisted balancing was needed and did balance them. Different philosophy east to Midwest? BTW, no extra charge since the balancing was built into the cost.

Michigan Roads are the worst roads I have encountered in the entire country.
I was amazed we got out of Michigan with no damage to the car or trailer.
Some of your pot holes on the freeway could eat a small car.   I towed through in May maybe before the frost heaves got fixed?   From Chicago when entering Michigan the road conditions went off the charts terrible. I have to believe IL has the same weather challenges as Michigan why are the roads so much better.

quinner wrote: My head is square but My trailer tires are round, I like them that way.

I have 4 boat trailers,2 of them still have the original tires and wheels that came on them, none are balanced. Did some googling and found out why. If not done the correct way you just may be fooling yourself---


None of our tire and wheel assemblies come balanced from the factory.

Although some customers do insist upon balancing their trailer tires most (98%) do not. Trailer tires have a tendency to "throw weights". Meaning the weights come off the wheels. This can happen for a number of reasons, but it is not uncommon for the weights to be thrown off when towing a trailer empty (the trailer bounces excessively b/c of the no load conditions) or when making very tight turns on tandem or tri axle trailers.

Furthermore, galvanized trailer wheels are not designed to be balanced. When the steel wheel is dipped into the vat of molten galvanized and then pulled out, some of the liquid zinc always accumulates on one end. Which makes galvanized wheels incredibly difficult to balance. But the galvanized coating does provide one of the best corrosion resistance to harsh environments such as salt water.

Most automotive centers are not equipped with the proper wheel balancing machine to correctly balance most trailer wheels. All of our trailer wheels are a lug centric design. Meaning, that the wheels are centered on the hub by the torque of the lug nuts. Most/many automotive wheels are a hub centric design. Many automotive centers use a computerized "cone" balancer which works great on hub centric wheels, but not on lug centric trailer wheels. In order to balance trailer wheels, an adapter must be used on the cone balancer to correctly balance trailer rims. Check with your automotive center to see if they keep the adapter on hand.

original link

explaination of hub centered vs lug centered wheels

Just to round out this thread, the new axle, springs, and tire are back on and ready for the weekend.

I ended up getting a 6000# heavy duty Dexter Axle with custom V-bend, EZ lube, Free-Backing, 6 on 5.5, Fully assembled. I went with 2500# leaf springs (i figured 2k was pushing the limit with the tower and gear). Strange how much bigger the new axle is compared to the original.

The downside, the axle was going to go from Dexter to Redneck to Ekquist Trailers to me. Well, it didn't make the weekly delivery truck from Redneck to Ekquist, so I embarked on a 5 hour road trip to pick it up myself. I'm glad they were willing to let me do that.

Once I got home and proceeded with the install, I realized they put the spring perches on the bottom instead of the top. Well, as the discussion from above already points out, the trailer dropped ~4". Due to the drop, it also puts the axle itself back into the equation for fin clearance, essentially making it the same as if it was a straight axle. We will find out this weekend if it is a problem, we'll just have to load carefully a couple times. The dropped height ended up causing the prop guard hit in a couple spots when pulling out of the drive. It also forced us to temporarily modify the fenders until new ones can be made. On the plus side, the lower trailer means the tower doesn't graze the garage door when putting it away.

As you can see from the photos, one of the fender supports is pretty bent, so I will work on straightening that once the boat is back in the water and I can heat it up safely. Other than that the process was pretty easy. Thanks for all the help figuring out what I needed and how to go about fixing it. Bravo to CCF once again!

HW, The fenders are pretty much shot. If you look at the first picture in this thread you can see that the flanges are about to fall off. So I could either reinforce them, or just get new fenders. My neighbor works for a semi-truck repair shop and said he would do the fabricating for me.

IF the boat/trailering ends up being fine with the bottom perches, then the new fenders will be made accordingly for the extra height. i had to add a 2 1/4" spacer to give me about 3/4" clearance from top of tire to bottom of fender.

IF having the perches below do prove to be an issue, I will pull the axle and have someone move the perches to the top which will allow us to use the original fenders as templates. I didn't take any closeup pics of the fenders since they look like garbage now.

i think you are right...im just hoping i can get by until the end of the season so it can be switched over the winter. It scraped pretty badly getting out of our back drive. Figured it would scrape pulling into the front drive but it had about an inch to spare.

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