emergancy road problems

[bill barchard]

What do you do if the trailer frame breaks when you are trailering--I amsure that this must have happend to some of you with the old 28x---any suggestions???

[irayone]

Have trailer and towing insurance with U.S. Boat.....They cover the trailer, the boat, dinghy, theft fire, salvage,liability, for very little money.I think I pay 300.00 per year which includes unlimited towing on water and land. Don't leave home without it.

[pokerrick1]

OMG

One of the MANY reasons I dislike trailoring!

Rick

[Rick Westlake]

I found out the value of this when I trailered my to its new owner ... I had a near-catastrophic bearing failure on Sunday morning; near-catastrophic in that I discovered it before the wheel sawed through the axle!

Cost me all Sunday working on it, trying to get it into repair enough to limp onwards, plus a new axle when I found a trailer-repair shop that would look at it Sunday evening.

If you have BoatUS membership and TowBoatUS coverage, TrailerBoatUS coverage is but a pittance more. Like all insurance, you hope you don't have to use it, but ...

[David Mellon]

I have AAA Premium Plan for on the road, used it once in the early 80's when my trany cooler hose blew out. I don't travel without coverage and a spare tire. I have BoatUS for on the water.

[Kelly Hanson East]

David - a lot of road coverage plans dont cover towed vehicles at all - check that fine print on the contract carefully.

I have the Trailer coverage from Boat US for 10 USD per year.

[Rick Westlake]

David - a lot of road coverage plans dont cover towed vehicles at all - check that fine print on the contract carefully.

I have the Trailer coverage from Boat US for 10 USD per year.

I found out yesterday that it doesn't cover problems you have at your "home port", though.

My old 1999 MacX trailer is having drum-brake lockups just towing around the boatyard where I keep Bossa Nova. It took me a lot of "rassling" with it yesterday morning, trying to get the port brake unlocked - finally did, but not before I was ready to order a new trailer and to heck with the old one! (The PO had it parked for years, with the boat in a fresh-water lake slip. I give him credit for buying new tires for it fairly recently, but it still had shrubbery growing through the frame when I pulled it out to tow my new boat home.)

Yes, I could put new disc brakes on the old trailer for 1/3 the price of a new one - the other 2/3 of the price, I gladly spend for PEACE OF MIND!

[David Mellon]

Thanks Kelly, I have the AAA Premium RV coverage, it covers trailers and full sized RVs, basically anything that isn't a commercial rig. I have it for "Completion of trip" in other words there is almost no mileage limit. But you are right, make sure you have the coverage you want, the cost is minor and the peace of mind is major.

[Kelly Hanson East]

I have the AAA Premium RV coverage,

And there is peace and nirvana on the trailering highway...

I had my first bad trailer incident in 7 years last year - despite hourly checks, I went from a cool well running portside bearing to losing the entire outboard race, locknut washer - the whole works. Nothing was holding the wheel on.

I last checked it on the Mass Pike at Ludlow (mile post 55 or so), drove the rest of the way home (80 miles, 1 1/2 hours) and next morning saw the wheel sitting at an angle, with no bearing race on it at all.


The wheel hub had killed the axle spindle so I ordered a new axle assembly from Champion and upgraded to disk brakes at the same time.

[Rick Westlake]

I had my first bad trailer incident in 7 years last year - despite hourly checks, I went from a cool well running portside bearing to losing the entire outboard race, locknut washer - the whole works. Nothing was holding the wheel on. The wheel hub had killed the axle spindle....

Same thing happened to me this April, towing my old to her new owner in the St. Louis area ... only I lost the starboard bearing, and wonder if I knocked off the "bearing buddy" somewhere between Brazil, Indiana, and the Illinois state line. It happened on a Sunday, to make it worse.

Through remarkable luck, I found a shop that could (and did) fix it ... but only after buying myself two sets of bearings (the first didn't fit), spending all day trying to find parts and trying to install them, and filing the gash in the wheel spindle enough to get the inner bearing to slide into place. All this at a rest stop in Illinois. The repair shop replaced my axle, so the buyer got a better trailer than I had started with.

Scary to jack up the trailer and have the wheel fall off in your hand ....

My new trailer has tandem axles and disc brakes. This means I'll have twice as many bearings to service; but even if I lost a wheel entirely, there'd be another on that side to keep the trailer "on its feet." (And it has torsion-bar axles, which permit me to replace a worn wheel-spindle without replacing the whole axle.)