Ep.15 - Straightening Our Bent Boat Trailer Axle 

scott parks Thank you very much! I'm just a poor man and I have to make do.

Nelson Machine They are strong! And that one had been in our yard for about 15 years and was a little rotten :P

Thanks!!

Ha! Great idea! I'm sure it'll be close enough. I get irritated when people make excuses for not being able to do something. You can do whatever you set your mind to doing. It would've been great if you would have uploaded a video of you straightening yours so people could see that anything's possible. Good job!!

Thank you! Best of luck straightening your axle. If you decide to video yours, I'd love to watch it!

Thank you!

+OlumVaaa We're finishing up all of the loose ends now. We only have a few days of work left to do but we're sidetracked helping our daughter paint her school bus...ugh.

Good luck!

I probably could eyeball it too and get it close enough that it wouldn't scrub the rubber off of the tires, but I thought I'd be proper since I was making a video. All I did was measure from one hub to the other one on the front side and the rear side. It would be more accurate if I had vise gripped a straight edge to each hub and formed an "H" so that I had a longer surface to measure. Thanks for watching!

:P

I haven't taken it apart to look at the bearings and races yet, but when I spin it I can feel flat spots in one of the bearings. I bought a used axle yesterday that I will be adding to the trailer so that it will be a tandem trailer and one of those bearings also feels a little rough :( So....now I have to try to find bearings and races for two axles that are unidentifiable. I think that all I can do is get out the micrometer and try to find bearings and races that will fit. I'll probably look on Ebay first. Thanks for watching and taking time to comment.....Bret.

+Bret Becky yea the bearings themselves should have a part number on them . if not just take the old ones with ya to the parts store and match . good luck

+Mickster Mouseter You're absolutely right, but the bearings already had a few flat spots on them and needed to be replaced anyway. Thanks for watching and commenting!

I used your info to straighten the axle on my utility trailer today. It looks much better. Thanks for the great video.

Mickster Mouseter I'm glad you got it straightened out. I hope you made a video of it, I'd love to see it :)

Sorry no video, but it sure looks and pulls better. :-)

It's not a crack, it's a stitch weld. The factory stitch welded it in case a crack did develop so the crack wouldn't continue. Thanks for pointing it out though. A lot of people either didn't notice it or didn't say anything about it.

Now that ours is straight, we have to add a second axle to the trailer and make it a tandem to support the extra weight we added to the boat :(

Welp, better safe than sorry! Nice boat BTW. I love the water too. I take my boat out almost every day of the year. I was traveling down a 45 MPH road and a damn dog ran out from a bush and the trailer wheel hit him and he bounced off and ran away but it bent the stub shaft of the axle up and toed out. The actual axle tube is fine.

That sucks. The alternative to straightening it is spending between $150.00 - $300.00 US dollars for a new axle and some unpleasant work. I don't know where you live, but I'm envious of you because you're able to take your boat out so often. We recently acquired a Jon boat and trailer (without a motor) but I found cheap Chinese made 9 hp motors for $200 bucks. I'm going to order one even if it's not the greatest motor, because I could at least get out on the water more often with it. I didn't see any boat videos on your RU-vid. If you ever decide to video your boat adventures, we would love to watch them (as would a lot of other people on RU-vid) Just a thought.

Thanks and no I don't :(