Roller Adjustment

[Stumpthumpa]

Anyone have any tips for freeing up the adjusting bolts on trailer rollers? For some reason my rollers seem to have shifted after 2 years.

My trailer is not heavily corroded as it mainly has freshwater use, but the first bolt I tried to undo would not budge. Having snapped the head off that, I am up for suggestions. I have tried Inox and light tapping with no luck.

Thanks,

[finga64]

sometimes just moving backwards and forwards slightly breaks 'the seal' or my dad used to say use a bit of brake fluid, but I have never tried that one. Apparently brake fluid gets into everywhere and if you wash it off before it starts corrosion its all OK.
I always put stainless bolts in with the good old never ceise when I get a trailer, it seems to save a lot of skin and claret later :P

[seabug]

I had the same problem
Busted one bolt
Then sprayed them all with wd40 and hit the end of the bolts HARD
Then rock the bolt each way as suggested above
Hope this helps
Regards
Seabug

[propdinger]

if the wd40 and stuff doesnt work the next best thing is heat i use a blow torch to heat the bolt red hot then use water to cool it straight away it will free all the crap out of the thread and should then move very freely never had a bolt i cant get out this way

jeff

[blaze]

propdingers on the money, but dont make the mistake of trying to undo them when hot cause the threads will bind. on ultra tight ones it may be nessary to head the bolt only then quench it all, it tends to expand the thread a couple of thou
cheers
blaze

[bungie]

Don't heat the bolt, heat the nut. Every thing expands when it gets hot, a tubular object will expand out wards. If you heat the nut it will expand off of the bolt. And you don't need to get it red hot, just get a good heat difference between the two parts.

[blaze]

Bungie
If you Look at what I wrote I agreed that heating the nut to a "cherry red" and then quenching is the way to go, BUT if it is extemely tight, by heating the bolt to a cherry red it will cause the slightly cooler nut to expand and if the nut is quenched first it cause evening more expansion to the nut by streching it over the expanded bolt, so when it is all finally cooled down it will be finger tight because the nut has been streched a couple of thou. Try it, have removed siezed 6" diameter pins using this method
cheers
blaze

[propdinger]

all comes down to how tight the thing is stuck

[Sportfish_5]

Heatspanner will do the cutting job if stuck. Dont reuse any bolts/nuts if you heat them with the oxy - throw them out regardless.

Cheers

Greg

[nisrol]

stumpathumpa
having read all the post's Yes heat expands metals ,But having an engineering based background you may find the bolt easy to remove ( yeh cause the captive nut has cracked ) this is what happens when one metal arrempts to expand against a captive one .
my sugestion is heat up the nut if possible without turning the bolt red if you have a small spray bottle fill it with water and spray the bolt , Now try rocking the bolt back and forth with a ring spannercool the nut and spray with a penitrating oil , Nut should now come free remove completely clean up with wire brush and refit.



cheers andy

[nisrol]

hmmmmmm time for a new keyboard just read what i posted and MY SPEELING IS ATTROTIOUS ( keyboard ureadable )




cheers andy

[finga64]

Why clean and refit? Why not just go the stainless to solve future problems before they happen:-/
Personally i don't like too work-it conflicts with my leisure too much ;D

[Stumpthumpa]

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions. [smiley=2thumbsup.gif] I have plenty of options so hopefully I will get the roller heights sorted.

The only puzzling thing is why the need adjusting. The rig is 2 years old and was set up spot on. I can only guess that lots of rough roads have shaken down the rollers? [smiley=confused.gif]

[BigE]

new trailer ;D