Quote:
Originally Posted by SSPBill
. . . I haven’t been brave enough to retrieve like Denny has (with dry feet and wheels) mostly to keep the back of my truck from lifting off the ramp. I have gotten to having the axle and hubs just above the water. But with the rollers tuned, it pulls up on-center every time. The point is, I think any trailer can be good or bad depending on how well it’s set up. That’s probably why there are so many options. I will say the rollers freak me out every time I start backing in or pulling up. I have horrible visions of the Restless Lady unintentionally dry-docked. I TRIPLE check the winch clutch, Boat Buckle and safety chain every time.
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The big galvanized EZ Loader is probably the best single axle roller trailer out there. It’s rated at 4000 lbs, and the axle with 6 lug wheels is rated at 5000 lbs (the trailer itself weighs ~900 lbs.), and I believe the total tire load capacity is over 5000 lbs. More than adequate for a 20’Seafari heavily loaded with enough gear for a 2 week Bahamas cruise! The patented roller system has very little friction with nylon bushings rolling on aluminum axles that are flat on the sides; The only downside to that is that good tiedowns are required, and you need to carefully use the clutch on the Powerwinch as a brake when launching, or the boat will go screaming off the trailer as soon as the boat’s CG passes the pivoting rear cross member, which then allows the entire rack of rollers tilt about 45 degrees!
The benefit of not dunking the trailer is
greatly reduced maintenance . . . I bought that trailer new in 1985 and until I sold the rig to SSP Bill last fall, it lived its entire life launching the boat in salt water, AND it still has it’s
original springs, wheels and axles! The rear cross member does get dunked and I replaced it a couple years ago because it was looking pretty ugly with big flakes of rust falling off, but the original steel appeared to be about 3/16” thick, so it could lose quite a bit of thickness and still be plenty strong!
Regarding retrieval, you MUST chock all 4 wheels on the truck! Reason is that if you only back far enough into the water enough to just get the tires wet (I always got my feet wet but I wear Teeva sandels so no big deal!), the aft center roller will be just below the towing eye, so when the boat first starts coming up on the trailer, there will be enough weight/leverage on the back of the trailer that it will lift up on the hitch! If you only chocked the back wheels, it will lift the back wheels of the truck up onto the chocks! If you use wedge shaped chocks, they can start to slide! (Ask me how I know!) SO, I used 1’ long 4x4’s behind all 4 wheels when retrieving. Before I pulled up the ramp, I pulled all the chocks except the left front, and then left the door open and just reached down to grab that chock as I drove past it. It’s ok to just chock the back wheels when launching because the boat goes off the trailer fast enough that it only lifts the hitch for a few seconds, not long enough to cause a problem, especially if you use 4x4 chocks.