Electric Boat Trailer Tongue Jack

An electric trailer tongue jack is not a convenience for me, it's darn near a necessity w/ 1,200 lbs tongue weight on my 12,000 lbs boat/trailer rig.

My trailer has electric brakes so I do have a 12 volt breakaway battery on the trailer, and it's enough to work a 12 volt tongue jack, which I installed to the tune of  >$150. It is billed at 3,500lbs lifting.

Breakaway battery.

The 12 volt jacks work OK, but they're not made to hold up for a long period. The tiny teeth and large gear give this thing a lot of torque, but a little moisture/rust will put it out of commission. Eventually my 12 volt jack bit the dust. They're not worth rebuilding.

The 'best' jacks out there can cost over $300 - ouch. Should I just get the $150 jack and plan on replacing it every couple years? I couldn't bring myself to spend $150 on something that just wasn't going to last, so I bought a $25 top wind jack.

Manually winding this thing got old fast. I needed get a motor on this thing somehow. I took off the jack handle and tried my 1/2" drill (which did chuck up on the shaft), but it didn't have enough grunt to move the jack under full load. I needed a drill with more torque.

Then good old Harbor Freight sent me an eMail with a coupon for a Slow Speed 1/2" drill - $39!, which I immediately took advantage of.

This baby was geared to go 550 rpm at 7.5 amps. And it worked like a charm.

Harbor Freight drill chucked up on jack shaft.

 So for a 25 buck jack and a 40 buck drill, I have an electric trailer jack. And because I have a generator on my boat, with an outlet in the chain locker, I can put the drill in my van and run this baby on the road.

I decided rather than getting the chuck key out every time I wanted to use the drill for the jack, I'd make an adapter that I would leave in the chuck. Now I can use a pin to attach the drill to the jack.

But my $25 jack didn't have enough travel to get my bow high enough to have the garboard drain empty the bilge when Big Duck was on the trailer in the back yard. This meant I'd have to use at least 4" of spacer under the jack foot. With the spacer I now had to jack and block to get the tongue low enough to land on the ball when I hit the road.

Then I discovered Fastway Flip at about $50. This gizmo adds 6" to my trailer tongue only when it's extended.

On the road again -
Just can't wait to get on the road again.


Follow up on the drill powered tongue jack:

First - I love it.

Second - I got lazy and just left it installed on the trailer in the rain and snow. It has weathered well.

And Last - that thing has too much torque. I was running the trailer tongue up and down to swish out the bilge and the cord got wrapped around my hand. The cord also wrapped the handle on top. It nearly twisted my arm off and continued to run even after I extracted myself from the tangle. because the cord was now holding the unguarded trigger in the on position. It eventually unplugged itself but not until after it ripped the handle off the top of the drill.

It still works fine, even with the broken handle and rain/snow it has endured, but now all my tongue movements are done in short bursts.

OK, one more caveat - If you use the Fastway Flip with the electric drill, it's possible to run the foot up too high. The Fastway unit stops the leg from coming up and the torque from the drill will actually pull the female screw assembly out of the  inner tube and the leg will become disconnected and fall. So as soon as that Fastway is flipped up -- stop.

I took the jack off when my leg fell, to see if I could salvage it. The female screw assembly is easily tapped back into the top of the inner tube.


 One more (final) update on the Fast Way Flip.
 Because it was a miserable failure on my 12,000 lb boat trailer I moved it to my 16' single axle camper and it took no time in destroying the jack on that light trailer.

Save your money - it caused me much undue aggravation and expense.

Today I use a drop foot on the 120vac jack and it's as good as it gets.