Trailer Bunk Busted

[delevi]

I have a bunk bolt that snapped off with the bunk coming half-way off. Its currently held together by a bungee cord. It seems like it just rotates freely, so I dont know if tore through the wood or if there is a bolt head under the carpet, running all the way through. Does anyone know? Size of bolt would be helpful too if anyone had to deal with a similar problem. This also brings up another concern. My boat & trailer are about 16 months old and already there is quite a bit of rust on the wheels and under the trailer. Much of this is my fault since I operate almost exclusively in salt water, keep the boat in dry-storage, mast up, so I launch every time I take the boat out. I frequently return late, so I dont rinse off every time, (every other time at best.) Should I be concerned about structural components corroding and breaking anytime soon? Also, the carpet on the bunks has worn in several places. Anyone know a good source to buy a replacement? Sorry for the plethora of questions. Thanks.

Leon

[Dimitri-2000X-Tampa]

Wow, your's rusted through pretty fast. Evidently, (at least on my 2000X), Roger used the cheapest bolts he could find to attach the bunks, definitely not SS or galvanized. My front bunks busted off about 6 months ago, and my middle bunk busted off last month. The rear is getting ready to go also. My trailer is over 6 years old now and lives in the rusty FL climate so I'm surprised that I got so much more time out of mine compared to yours on the much drier left coast. Maybe you gave it a bump? Thats what happened with mine when I tried to put the boat on the trailer with the ballast full.

The rusted bolt in the bunk doesn't appear to have much of a head...or at least, it is totally rusted away. Drill goes through the rusted bolt like butter (harder to get the ones out of the steel). One of my front bunks had split in half so I used the same bit of carpet with a new piece of PT 2X4 cut to the same size. After drilling out the 4 holes, I knocked all the loose rust away from the cross bars, there was quite a lot of rust so I am a bit concerned that structural strength has gone down some. But since it is a C channel and the vertical face and lower horizontal face is still ok, hopefully it should last me a bit longer before I replace the whole trailer with something better. After I knocked the rust off, I painted it with phosphuric acid to stop the rust, then about 3-4 coats of rustoleum. The bunks go back on with some new SS 1/4 X 2.5 inch bolts with 1 inch flat washers on the top and lock washers on the bottom (Galv would be ok too). I used a 1 inch hole saw to inset the washer and bolt head so that they are below the level of the bunk and can not gouge the boat.

I also added a 9 inch wide roller just behind the front bunk. This design was partially borrowed from a mod I saw on Duanes home page, but I put the roller a bit higher...so that it is just a couple millimeters below the top face of the front bunk. The idea is that the bow will roll up instead of whacking the front bunk if the boat is nose heavy coming in. When you pull the boat all the way up, the bow now (just barely) rides on the bunk, not the roller.

I'm hoping that with the repaired bunks (and regular spot spray painting), I can get 10+ years out of the trailer which I think is pretty good for a salty humid environment. Eventually the thing is going to rust away though...thats for sure.

[Chip Hindes]

Pretty much what Dimitri said, except my trailer is just over five years old and in all its life has been in salt water eight times total, and I have always rinsed it off after a salt water dunking.

I broke off one of the front bunks and broke loose one of the rears so it swivelled on one bolt last season. The bolts are 1/4" flat head and as nearly as I could tell, not galvanized, certainly not SS, though the heads didn't appear to be a problem as the two that broke sheared where the bunk meets the trailer frame.

In addition, it appears the bunks themselves are standard Doug fir and not pressure treated, and they were beginning to rot out under the carpet, so I decided to replace all. I went with 5/16" galvanized carriage bolts rather than SS, I figure the larger diameter galvanized should last as long as the trailer and SS bolts are breathtakingly expensive in small quantity.

The biggest probelm was getting the old bolts out of the trailer. I tried jacking the boat off the bunks and removing them from below, but without exception the nuts sheared off. I tried driving them out with a punch and that's a no go; it is impossible to drill them out from below as well because you're punching/ drilling at an angle into the C-channel legs, and I was unwilling to jack the boat high enough to get them from above; IMO you really have to do it with the boat off the trailer.

Boat bunk carpet is not cheap, is available from West Marine, but by my calculations a single piece would have been a couple feet too short to do the whole trailer. Presumably you could get it elsewhere by the yard. I looked at the standard "marine grade" carpet (at least it's advertized as such) at Home Depot and Lowe's, and it's garbage. Even with the crumbiling bunks and broken bolts underneath, the carpet on mine was in surprisingly good shape so I decided to reuse it, just reversing it end for end since the wear surface was always at one end of the bunk or the other. I had to invest in a new Arrow staple gun because I couldn't get SS staples for my Swingline gun. Don't use regular staples, they won't last a season.

I completely repainted my trailer using a brush and foam roller two seasons ago when I added the second axle, and I touch it up every season using the same. Spray paint is quite frankly a waste: it's expensive, it doesn't work when you hold the cans upside down, most of it ends up carried away on the wind or on things you didn't want to paint, and it really doesn't look any better anyway.

[Dimitri-2000X-Tampa]

Spray paint is quite frankly a waste: it's expensive, it doesn't work when you hold the cans upside down, most of it ends up carried away on the wind or on things you didn't want to paint, and it really doesn't look any better anyway.

I think spray paint is great for those little 10 minute touch up jobs which I do frequently. Sure, if you want to spend the whole weekend doing the big job, it is much better to brush it on (and flip the trailer upside down while you are at it too) but I think there is no way my trailer would still be serviceable in FL salt water if it weren't for rustoleum spray paint! The glossy black pretty much matches what was already on there. Also, I think spray gets into the leaf spring area better too.