Hodad3230
15-04-2009, 08:20 AM
Gday fellas I have real issues when I pull my boat in and I'm after some advice before I open the wallet. I usually retrieve where there is a little bit of surf, so I drag the boat onto dry sand with a rope, then back the trailer up to it.
The trailer is an old dunbier tilt with standard roller and skid set-up. I installed new skids myself, they are spaced almost as far apart as the trailer will allow. Not sure if this is part of the problem. Boat is a 4.45 tinny with an old 50 two-stroke on it. Often have lots of gear in it, pellet burley, ice, bag limit of gummys :P, 2 sets of freediving gear, fuel (usually come back with one tank full), etc, which I would prefer to leave in the boat till I get home.
When I don't get the trailer perfectly aligned, and often when I do, she wants to slip sideways off the rollers. Part of this is due to the beach being sloped, and, particularly at high tide, not being able to get the boat and trailer pointing directly up the incline of the beach. Not a lot I can do about that.
I was going to try to correct the problem by replacing the back two rollers with self centering ones (as she comes off the dry sand, and the keel starts to run over the second roller, the steep angle of the tilt section means that contact is lost with the back roller)
Next idea is to install a long set of skids running along the keel just outside the rollers, with a flare behind the back roller, that will effectively contain the keel to the rollers as I winch the boat on just like the polycraft trailers. Just not sure what if anything, this would do to my pressed hull.
Otherwise I was considering installing four ezi loaders (not the sprung ones - $$) at 90 degrees to the keel on the back two cross-members, but not sure about their strength given the weight of the boat and gear and the fact that it's a fair effort to winch the boat up off the sand using my 5:1 winch. (I have seen a trailer set up this way but just dunno)
http://www.whitworths.com.au/products/91060_lg.jpg
Not to mention that the hull is quite flat at the transom
Or the other option is to weld on some v shaped skids each side of the back two (or three or four) rollers, using box section that run the same away as the ezi loaders, but obviously can't move and would be heaps stronger.
It has also been suggested to me that I could just replace all the rollers with welded v skids at 90 degrees to the keel, but again worried about the effects on the hull. Maybe that could work well if they were sloped flat enough such that once the boat was on the trailer, the v skids only made contact at the keel and the normal side skids held the hull level.
Any thoughts? Just after the best solution, I can do the welding myself.
Cheers Ian
The trailer is an old dunbier tilt with standard roller and skid set-up. I installed new skids myself, they are spaced almost as far apart as the trailer will allow. Not sure if this is part of the problem. Boat is a 4.45 tinny with an old 50 two-stroke on it. Often have lots of gear in it, pellet burley, ice, bag limit of gummys :P, 2 sets of freediving gear, fuel (usually come back with one tank full), etc, which I would prefer to leave in the boat till I get home.
When I don't get the trailer perfectly aligned, and often when I do, she wants to slip sideways off the rollers. Part of this is due to the beach being sloped, and, particularly at high tide, not being able to get the boat and trailer pointing directly up the incline of the beach. Not a lot I can do about that.
I was going to try to correct the problem by replacing the back two rollers with self centering ones (as she comes off the dry sand, and the keel starts to run over the second roller, the steep angle of the tilt section means that contact is lost with the back roller)
Next idea is to install a long set of skids running along the keel just outside the rollers, with a flare behind the back roller, that will effectively contain the keel to the rollers as I winch the boat on just like the polycraft trailers. Just not sure what if anything, this would do to my pressed hull.
Otherwise I was considering installing four ezi loaders (not the sprung ones - $$) at 90 degrees to the keel on the back two cross-members, but not sure about their strength given the weight of the boat and gear and the fact that it's a fair effort to winch the boat up off the sand using my 5:1 winch. (I have seen a trailer set up this way but just dunno)
http://www.whitworths.com.au/products/91060_lg.jpg
Not to mention that the hull is quite flat at the transom
Or the other option is to weld on some v shaped skids each side of the back two (or three or four) rollers, using box section that run the same away as the ezi loaders, but obviously can't move and would be heaps stronger.
It has also been suggested to me that I could just replace all the rollers with welded v skids at 90 degrees to the keel, but again worried about the effects on the hull. Maybe that could work well if they were sloped flat enough such that once the boat was on the trailer, the v skids only made contact at the keel and the normal side skids held the hull level.
Any thoughts? Just after the best solution, I can do the welding myself.
Cheers Ian