Trailer right trailer wrong -- Archive

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Subject: Trailer right trailer wrong

Author:
Jim Day

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Date Posted: 948313971PST

Some of you know this some of you don't. but we just got a new 23' Maycraft with trailer. We love the boat but have been having some trouble with the brakes.

The left front brake initially heated up then seized on on down-grade taking about a quarter of an inch of tread off our new tire. I contacted Bruce Chase the Technical Guy at International marine where we bought the boat. I told Bruce what happened he called Trailer-rite. They said it's an adjustment problem. Bruce told me he had a manual on them, and that I should pick it up go through and see if you can trouble shoot the problem. He said: "If we have to we'll drop it off a Trailer-rite for a few days." I got the stuff went to Mikes and started playing.

I noticed right away that the adjuster star was frozen. Since I had all the info and could see it was pretty simple in design. I decided to pull the hub and check out the problem first hand. As soon as I opened it up I could tell something was wrong. Everything was there where it should be but something just did not look right. I looked at the drawings again and found it. The adjustment bolt and star assembly had been put in
backwards. So when the adjustment guy had tried to set the brakes he had adjusted them the wrong way, all the way loose, so the brakes were binding. I took it out, turned it around, put everything together, adjusted the brakes And.......... Everything worked fine, which is fantastic.

This all got me thinking though. I used to work in factories as a kid 16 to 18 so I understand a little of the scene and the mentality. Here's what I think happened. You had some guy working on the assembly who installed the brake adjusters. For some reason: either his training was bad, or he was hungover, or just smoked one, but he thought he was working on a right assembly instead of a left. He put the adjuster in the wrong way and sent the thing down the line. Later someone put this assemblie on our trailer, then they attempted to adjust the brakes. Now they should of noticed that the star was on the wrong side but they didn't and went about adjusting it just like always, turning the star up. Rather then tightening the brakes the adjuster turned into itself until it froze. This guy then should of said: "Hey wait there's something wrong here" who knows maybe he even did. At any rate either because he thought he'd messed up or because someone thought that it was too much trouble to pull the whole thing back off, the trailer continued out the door. Now our boats a small one by some standards It's 23 feet but only 2,400 pounds. The trailer is rated for 4000. The engine weighs maybe 450. When our wheel froze we were only going about 30 but what if it had happened about two minutes before on the 405. Could of been real trouble, might of lost the tire or even had a bad wreck. Makes you think.

Today when I contacted Bruce Chase: he was incredibly cool, (I'm really happy with Innternational marine) He not only offered to replace the tire but said we can have a whole wheel and use the old one as a spare. He also said they could pay us for the baitpump (went out immediately) that we replaced, I settled for another pump and wheel. Nice people.
I've decided to check the other brake out and make sure everything is alright. I actually like the design of the trailer and brakes and I'm sure they'll be fine. It just amazes me that Trail-rite let this problem out the door. We've all got a lot of money riding on those wheels. It seems to me they should have the quality control down to make sure everything is right.

Tight lines Jim

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
update	Jim Day	948314072PST