Buckaroo wrote:
Nice work Tom, I have a Thule box overhead on my trailer and love it. It makes putting needed things in the boat easy although it increases the weight pulling it off of the trailer.
Have you had good luck with the 8" tires and do you drive them any significant distance ? I changed to 12" tires early on my trailer in the desire for the tires to run cooler if I wanted to run to the coast or farther. Now I find myself looking at anything that could lower the trailer and make it easier to load/unload the boat including going back to 8" tires and perhaps converting to a torsion axle to lower the suspension. My trailer isn't that high to begin with but that awkward sideways lift at the stern of the boat has me thinking about those modifications and how much cheaper they would be than future back surgery.
Thanks
Chris
I haven't had any issues with my 8" tires. I towed it all the way to Ohio and back last summer (around 1,600 miles round trip) with no problems. I keep them at about 60psi. We are planning a trip this summer that will take us all the way up to Lake Superior, back down to the lower peninsula of Michigan, down to Ohio and back to Nebraska (approximately 2,300 miles), so that should be a really good test of 8" tires.
I was finally able to test the trailer out this weekend. Short trip to a lake about 10 miles away. Our local Hobie dealer was doing a demo day so I figured I would go show off. I had a pretty good audience at the ramp.
I had a few bolts slip, so I will need to figure those out. I did not have the bikes on the rack, it jiggled a little bit, but not bad. I think I'm going to add some cross bracing on the sides of the bike rack base to stiffen it up. All in all nothing fell off so I would call it a success!