Took the trailer down a realllllllly rough road yesterday. Didn't know the state of the road until it was too late. Wound up losing the handle of my boat trailer winch and tearing one of the lateral frame trusses. Does anyone know where I can find a replacement winch handle and if I can fix the truss by welding a couple 1/4 steel pieces on each side?
Just looking for your opinions on how I can get my trailer back on the road. Nobody is really open today otherwise I'd be calling around. I kind of figured I could just take the truss to an autobody shop and have the welding done.
I'd be tempted to replace it with a piece of steel angle if I had to pay someone to weld it. Is that galvanized steel? The pics have me doubting myself.
It looks like that's been cracked for a while and the rough road finished it off.
Unless you provide a barrier, steel on aluminum will corrode. It depends how much you want to spend. I'd expect it to crack again if you weld it.
I'm sure you'll get more suggestions but I'd probably still replace it with a steel angle but put something between the two to prevent corrosion (thin plastic, layered duct tape, silicone). An 80's trailer isn't worth a high dollar repair.
Alright. Thanks for the suggestion. Is that something I'd have to have custom cut or is it available precut at a place like home depot? I've seen angles there just not sure if they'd fit the bill.
I ordered parts for my ez loader from Rainbow marine in Edmonton. Just get the vin off the trailer and phone the ez loader help line and they will give you the part numbers for the pieces you need. I had one of the wish bone shaped pieces break on my trailer and it was a pretty quick and reasonable to get the part brought in if memory serves me correctly. It was a few years ago so that might have changed but it's worth a chance.
I tried to find a picture I could share showing where on the trailer the piece that broke is and had no luck. I'll post a link to an image of my actual trailer and where the truss is located later.
The cross member/truss seems like an auxiliary support. It runs behind the wheels laterally, over top of the wheel wells and under the boat ramps.
I fixed it by going to princess auto and buying a nearly identical piece of aluminum angle, cutting it to length and re-drilling the holes with high speed steel drill bits (drilled small hole first, then moved up sizes until the hole was large enough). Then refastened everything together and torqued down the bolts/nuts. The angle cost me $46. It would have been cheaper if they had smaller sizes in stock. I had to buy the largest.
As for the replacement winch handle. Nobody seems to sell these individually so I bought an all new winch. It was $20 also at princess auto. My winch was showing it's age so it wasn't a big deal.
I'm happy the trailer is fixed and hope that doesn't happen again. Basically killed my Saturday (i.e., wasted drive to the lake) and a couple of my evenings this week to work on it.
Boat Trailer Parts and Frame Support Repair
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