boat trailer

[lazy days]

Hi guys can you tell me the best way to set up my trailer.The boat doesn\"t sit properly on the trailer. is the best way to jack up the rollers when the boat is sitting on the trailer?

[kriso]

hey mate welcome to the site, for pictures you need to resize them to 500 x 500 or it wont come up. if you had a pic of how its sittin on the trailer that would be heaps helpfull. happy reading!

[Brian D]

Mate a couple of things but firstly like Kriso say Welcome mate and enjoy yourself.

If you can get it to Wello point this Sunday there will enough blokes there that know what they are doing. Just bring your tools, if you haen't got any, say so and I'll bring what I have.

I dropped my boat off at the ramp, had my tools ready and adjusted everything up while the boat was in the water. Then I used a bit of 3x2 as a spacer on each wheele guard, then dropped the boat down.

As to how far to have the transon from end of the trailer depends on the size of the motor but I am getting out of my debth so I gotta say RAY/Feral help!:blush:

[Feral]

Well,

The first thing is you must have enough clearance from the guards to the hull. If your guards are mounted to the trailer chassis, an inch is heaps. Some of the newer trailers have the guards mounted right down over the tyres, and they move with the tyres on the suspension. You need a lot more clearance for these, otherwise the guards can still belt your hull when you hit a big bump.

The boat should sit at least level, but preferable slopping down towards the rear of the trailer, a couple of inches makes it real easy to launch.

This is for an aluminium boat - I dont know stuff all about Poly boat setups (which is specialised), and dont know much more about fibreglass!

The keel of the boat should sit on the centre rollers, taking most if not all of the weight of the boat. The side skids should actually only be there to stop the boat rocking from side to side.

Before your strap holding the boat down is pulled up tight, you should be able to rock the boat slightly from side to side (IE crawl underneath and one side or the other should have a couple of mm clearance).When the strap is on and tight, the boat should pull down onto the skids with no rocking possible.

Easiest way to set up the rollers with boat on the trailer is to set the rear and front rollers so you get the angle and guard clearance, then push the others into place, and while holding them firmly up against the boat do them up tight. (Yes carefully use a jack if you need to raise the rear of the boat, use a big lump of wood or similar to spread the weight, (I use a high lift jack)If your worried about marking the hull a piece of carpet between the wood and hull is a good idea.

As Brian said working at a quiet boat ramp is the easiest way to get the angle and clearance correct, you can easily put boat on and off the trailer until you get it the way you want it.

Post edited by: Feral, at: 2007/07/10 06:01

[bootyinblue]

Ditto everything that Feral said above!

But bring it on down to Wellington Point on sunday, have a bit of breaky and other members will have your trailer squared away in no time.

Check the Community... Attend an Event link for more details.

Cheers,