Trailer Tongue Question

[Be Free]

It appears the trailer tongue has some pretty good corrosion. any photos?
You also need to inspect the axle it can trap water inside and rot out from the inside. Use a ball hammer on the bottom of the axle.

This is what happens if you don't notice the water trapped in the axle.

[OverEasy]

Owwie! Owwie! Owwie!


That had to hurt!

[pitchpolehobie]

Ugh I'm disgusted after looking at all the rust. The 2nd picture is the paint cracking from when the tongue was bending under load. The last picture was a piece of galvanized angle that I welded many years ago when I found the hole near the crossmember.

Currently the bow is supported with some bricks and wood to take the weight off the trailer tongue.

I'm not sure if the tongue is salvageable even with bolting/welding a new 3x3 underneath.

This makes me want to go double check my trailer while my boat is moored. I had it professionally serviced by a trailer company 2 years ago and they said structurally intact but the more I see on this message board the more concerned I am about hidden corrosion

[Be Free]

Owwie! Owwie! Owwie!


That had to hurt!

Actually, I did not even notice it until I stopped for a safety check about half way to my launch point. That's one of the advantages of a dual axle trailer with more capacity than I normally need. The scary part is I had not clue that the axle was that far gone. I'd had it off and checked it about two years earlier when I replaced all of the suspension parts. The new axles don't have a factory installed hole for water to come in through.

[OverEasy]

Hi Be Free

Glad you had the redundancy of the second axle!
An “Aws—t!” could very well have been something much worse.
Very glad you caught it when you did!

Hi trdprotruck

Sorry to see the significant degradation you trailer is experiencing.

The process of making and forming roll-formed welded steel tubing can result in a kind of “layered” rust degradation of the material structure which can”travel” out from the origin location. Flaking Rust hiding under paint is another. Sometimes the general “use-by” day for a structure is reached (or exceeded).

Having designed/fabricated/repaired a variety of vehicles and trailers one sort of has to realize that the cumulative degradation of the whole exceeds the repairability of the specific location.

Often I would get the entire structure stripped down and throughly sand blasted to make sure I wasn’t going to miss something in a restoration repair project. It always paid off in finding that there was more damage than originally met the eye. Nothing worse than unwittingly applying a bandaid to much more serious issue and having it fail elsewhere a short time later.

Like my older beer fridge...all the magnets actually were holding it together!

It’s just a thought:
Maybe the trailer is trying to tell you it wants to retire gracefully(???) and it might be time for a newer version?

Best of Luck!

[trdprotruck]

Just thought I'd update this thread with a couple of pics





Cutting the tongue tube into pieces was very revealing. The rest of the trailer is in decent shape since most of the frame is made of C channel that doesn't trap water. I decided to follow Tomfoolery's suggestion and upgraded to a 1/4" tube and wow it was heavier than I was expecting. More pics of the fix to come...

[trdprotruck]

So here's the photos of the replacement tube. You can hardly tell the difference except that I welded the end of the tongue to thick piece of angle iron and bolted it to the cross member. In the future the Angle will provide extra strength to the cross member as well as make it easy to replace without removing the boat.

[Tomfoolery]

Bolted-on coupler, instead of welded. I like the way you think.

[Be Free]

Much easier to change when they wear out (and they will!).

[trdprotruck]

Yep bolting the coupler made a lot of sense. Drilling through the 1/4" tubing with a cordless drill was a pain though. I wish I drilled all the holes on my drill press before I welded it