Bass Boat Maintenance & Repairs > Bass Boat Trailer Maintenance
Almost Disastrous
Curt:
I hooked up the boat this afternoon to go fish a small local tourney. I've only been to this body of water a few times, so I wasn't sure exactly how to get back there.
In light of that, I decided to use my GPS to get me there on time. Unfortunately, the way I would usually go was clogged with beach traffic, so I had to use an alternate route. The GPS ended up routing me on a bunch of small back roads, one of which was pretty rough.
At one point, there was a huge bump in the road that was impossible to see until I was right on top of it. I hit it at about 30 MPH and knew right away it wasn't good.
I looked in the rearview several times to make sure the trailer looked OK as we finished driving to the launch.
We arrived and got ready to launch, and as I was backing down the ramp, the guy running the tourney pointed to my trailer like there was something wrong.
I stopped and got out to see what was up and he showed me that my boat's hull was resting directly against the fender wells of the trailer.
Then he pointed under the trailer, so I looked and saw that one of the crossmembers on my trailer had snapped (fp)
I also saw that another one had cracked and wasn't in very good shape.
So we took a few minutes to stuff a lifejacket between each fender well and the hull of the boat, strapped the boat back down and headed home, being careful not to take any of those twisty, bumpy roads.
I stopped by a friend's house who does work on boats, outboards and trailers, so he could take a look at it. He's pretty sure it can be welded and reinforced to at least get me through for a few months so I can save up for a replacement trailer.
So he's coming to pick it up tomorrow morning to do the work for me.
I'm not really happy with Bear Trailers right now. This is a 2007 model boat/trailer that I didn't start using until the Spring of 2008, when I bought it. It's never seen saltwater or salty roads, yet it rusted badly enough from the inside out to snap like this.
I will definitely be calling them tomorrow to see what they will do, if anything. My gut feeling is that they will tell me there's nothing they can do, but I will at least try.
This is not the first problem I've heard about with Bear trailers.
frugalangler:
If you replace look into MagicTilt excellent aluminum trailer
bullet20dc:
one of the reasons I dont like aluminum trailers they dont like to flex like steel , they are light but do break not very forgiving. Good luck,
Curt:
My current trailer is steel. Seemed to have rusted from the inside out. This is the reason I don't like box frame trailers.
I think all boat trailers should be built using channel steel or some other type of open beam style.
Curt:
Trailer is gone now. A friend of mine came and took it this morning to repair it for me.
Not a pretty sight!
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