Boat Trailer Findings

About 40 years ago, my wife and I decided to buy and live aboard a new sailboat. We took delivery at the factory in Rhode Island. The owner of Bristol Yachts had a brother who moved the boat from the factory to the marina so there was no trailer involved - we commissioned her ourselves.

After living aboard for three years, we decided to move ashore and maybe start a family, we'd take the boat with us.  There was no Internet back then and so there was no one to tell us what we couldn't do. We just knew we'd need a trailer.

I looked in the Chicago Yellow Pages (I had a job in Chgo) and found a fellow who specialized in boat trailers. He said he would build a custom trailer for my boat. This is what he used to build it:

He built me a tandem axle trailer with electric brakes. The brake controller was plumbed into the truck hydraulics so brake pedal pressure activated electronics which made the trailer brakes work in proportion to how much pedal pressure was being applied.

I towed the empty trailer home, and eventually to the Atlantic coast at Morehead City from Chicago to put the boat (Thora II) on the trailer. A travel lift was used for the first try. It was a perfect fit. 

We never thought twice about trailer capacity or towing vehicle ratings back then. We just pulled Thora II  home with our 1970 302ci, 3 on the tree, 4x4 Ford Bronco.

We used Thora II as a trailerboat, albeit seasonally, shown here just after loading her up and lowering the mast.

Believe it or not, we could load/unload at most ramps.

Off season, Thora II was tucked next to the garage.

A while after we sold the sailboat, we bought a trawler thinking luxury and comfort was the way to go, but because she wasn't trailerable we lost interest after about a year.

Still wanting to be able to overnight aboard, I sought out the smallest cuddy cabin boat on the market. This turned out to be an Arima - 15 feet 11 inches long. QT's dry spec weight was 1,100lbs + motor, so there were no brakes needed on the trailer. Even at that weight, we had extremely poor experience with ST (Special Trailer) tires as we splashed up and down the east coast from Long Island to Key West, sometimes with my wife, daughter and self spending several nights aboard at anchor.

She was a great little trailerboat, but proved to be a little too small when my wife started needing a wheelchair. We then stepped up to an 18 foot cuddy we called Nicky.

In the showroom, Nicky sat on a single axle trailer with no brakes. I insisted they include brakes for the 3,600 lb rig before I took her home. I drove her home with brand new surge disc brakes.

Because we had hub failures and ST tire problems, I had the trailer upgraded to tandem axles at the trailer factory. This included all new tires, axles,  brakes, bearings, coupler - the whole nine yards. But the bearings/hubs continued to overheat, and the ST tires still gave me fits.

I eventually solved the bearing/hub overheat by realizing it was brake drag and backed off the spindle castle nut an extra flat. I'd learned about this when I was an auto mechanic; it was a fix for squeaking brakes -- it allows a very slight rotor wobble which pushes the pads into the caliper, back away from the rotor. 

When I complained about the poor performance of the ST tires, they told me that the life of an ST tire was 6,000 miles...so I put passenger car radials on the trailer in desperation. I easily had the load covered with passenger car radials because of  my tandem trailer. 

We were good for a short while, but on the way to Alaska from SC, after a total brake refit including new pads and turned rotors, a grinding noise alerted me to the total destruction of brake pads on one of the axles. The lining was gone and the backing plates were gouging the rotor. This was puzzling because there was no sign of heat. This happened at about 1,000 miles into the 14,000 mile trip.

The passenger radials on my boat trailer ran the Alaska Highway both ways and 40,000 miles without a failure.

Where do you get parts for these brakes on the road? Everyone had electric drum brake replacements, but no one had parts for my disc brakes. I disabled the surge disc brakes and did the remaining 13,000 miles without any brakes on the trailer. Had these been electric brakes, I could have just undone a wire for that axle and continued running brakes on the other, but with hydraulic brakes it's complicated to disable just one axle. 

When I contacted the brake manufacturer after I got home, they said the pads are really only good for 3,000 miles. The rotors were shot too, so it was cheaper to put totally electric drum brakes on that axle than to buy parts for the destructed discs.

I installed the parts for the electric brakes on one axle. This included drums and backing plates, a breakaway battery for the trailer and a brake controller for the van. The mechanical installation was straightforward - remove the disc brakes, put on the backing plate/shoe assembly with 4 bolts, install the hub and castle nut, run a wire to the plug and a ground wire. There's no finicky hydraulic connections and no bleeding required and in fact you don't even have any moving parts in the ball coupler with electric brakes.

Installation of the controller was simple as well. Most trucks have a built in harness for the controller so all one has to do is mount the unit where it's convenient and plug it into that wiring harness connector. I also had to put a relay in the fuse box under the hood, but the relay came with my van and included instructions on where to put it if electric brakes were to be used on a trailer. It's a standard generic relay.

I like the Prodigy brake controller. It can be set for proper braking when the trailer is loaded or unloaded. It also has what is called 'boost'. This is a setting that can apply the trailer brakes as soon as you touch the brake pedal, even before there's enough pressure to activate the vehicle brakes. There's 3 settings for boost, each applying more braking at the touch of the pedal. I like to run with a light boost - this means the trailer brakes come on lightly before the van brakes start grabbing, so the trailer never pushes the van. With full boost you can almost lock up the trailer wheels before the van brakes come on at all. 

So now I had one axle with surge disc and one axle with totally electric drum brakes. This setup gave me a chance to compare both systems. The first observation was that I could test the electric brakes to know they were effective -- can't test surge brakes. And the electric brakes work in reverse and/or can be locked up even without brake pedal pressure. Another comforting find, was the casual mechanics of the electric brakes...everything is right there in the open and unlike the hydraulic side, there are no close or tight fitting parts.

Some folks will belie the use of electric brakes on a boat trailer, "Electricity and water don't mix!" But the fact of the matter is that the braking is done using a sealed magnet which doesn't know whether it's in water or not. My electric brakes got regular dunkings in salt water and showed less corrosion that the discs. And I even used wire nuts for the electrical connections, filled with sealant, shown here after a complete rewire.

Not one of these connections showed signs of water intrusion or corrosion after years of saltwater dunkings.

And when I had a hydraulic line rupture on the disc brake side, before I dug into the fix, I checked the bleeder screws on the calipers. They broke off.  I went to totally electric brakes on the boat trailer...and my problems were over, well at least for awhile until...

Until I got a bigger boat. A 40 year old, 28 foot houseboat came into the picture when I had the winning bid on eBay. My wife's MS now required us to have all the facilities on the boat because it was awkward for me to get her to the marina bathroom and then help her shower once inside. I thought this houseboat would be perfect.  

The problem was once again ST tires

I drove from SC to Las Vegas to pick up my new to me boat -- heck it was only a little over 2,000 miles. We, a close friend and I, brought back the 12,000 lb boat/trailer on the ST tires that were billed as road ready. They were new to the trailer but had been in storage for about 6 years, actually expired according to the recommendations. We made it home, but the tread was so thin you could almost see the air in the tires when we got back to SC. I immediately replaced these 14.5" ST tires with a fresh set of ST tires. These replacement tires only lasted the recommended 6,000 miles and I replaced them with another set of ST tires. The second set of fresh ST tires lasted about another 6,000 miles.

My van has tires rated high enough I could use them on the boat trailer, but the van takes 16" tires as opposed to the 14.5" on the boat trailer. I had such good luck with passenger car tires on the cuddy that I was determined to get 'real' tires on my boat trailer.

I bought 16" rims at about $50 each and the same Walmart "E" rated LT tires as are on the van. The LT tires were cheaper than the ST tires at about $100 each. I was determined to find a way to make them fit the boat trailer. The trouble was, the 16's were quite a bit taller than the 14.5 that I was currently using.

As you can see, moving the fender higher was not an option. But a friend came up with the solution to get the tires farther away from the fenders...a taller equalizer.

Now we were cookin'

There's no comparison in the tread depth of the ST tire to the LT tire, and now my trailer tires don't say "Not for passenger car service".

Both of these tires are brand new.

So now I'm comfortable with my new tires on the road, but for the next away trip, I'll totally replace the 40 year old brakes, springs and shackles and add a 16" spare.

New springs, heavy duty shackles, self adjusting brakes and a spare bearing/seal set.

I'm a defensive driver. My van has logged over 120,000 miles, 90% of that towing, and it still has plenty of meat on the original brakes. Looking way down the road and being ready for anything is not only easier on your rig, but is also great for gas mileage. This technique allowed me to bring a boat down to SC from MI without brakes. 

The brakes on this little jewel were too far gone to rebuild and plans for new axles were already in place so I decided to bring her back brakeless. At 6,000 lbs, she didn't give me a bit of trouble because I kept an eye way down the road.

While we're talking about towing we might also mention load equalizing hitches. These devices use levers to move tongue weight to the front of the tow vehicle. This makes for safer steering because instead of the tongue weight trying to lift the front wheels, it does just the opposite. Equalizers can also correct rear end sag, giving the rig a level ride. I didn't use this setup when I brought my houseboat back from Las Vegas...I was too lazy to make the adjustments necessary for it to work properly. My van is a one ton, so the 1,200 lb tongue weight didn't make it squat, but on a subsequent outing I did use the equalizers and found them to make towing more of a pleasure.

Big Duck's Load Equalizer

Equalizer hitch for pole tongue boat trailers with surge brakes.

One more thing...electric over hydraulic (disc) brakes. With this setup one uses the same controller in the cab as with totally electric trailer brakes, but the controller sends the signal to a pump on the trailer which activates the hydraulic trailer brakes. This makes no sense to me. The cost of the e/h pump is way more than a total electric installation on a tandem axle trailer. Eliminating the hydraulics was my goal, this setup only adds cost without addressing the problem. Maybe there's a requirement somewhere that you must be able to control the trailer brakes from the cab and this seemed like a logical approach to some folks?