We purchased a malone microsport trailer. It arrived last night and we spent many hours assembling it. We took it for a test run last night and it vibrated alot. We thought it was maybe because it was empty. This morning we loaded it with 3 kayaks and our PFD’s and set out for vacation. The vibrating is driving me insane. Our van has pulled other trailers we have used to carry our 3 kayaks without any trouble.
Any ideas or suggestions are appreciated as we have plans to trek about all week towing our yak’s around to different fishing spots this week.
I agree that most likely it is an out of balance tire/wheel assembly…especially if it feels ok at very low speeds like a few mph but then gets worse the faster you go. First check to make sure that you mounted the wheels correctly…just loosen the lug nuts again and make sure each wheel is centered as best you can…and fully seated on the hub and not cocked and then torque the lug nuts as evenly as you can…best to torque them up a little at a time rather than doing one very tightly and then going to the next. Also best to tighten one a bit then do the opposite side rather than going in a circle. If that doesn’t work…If you have a tire shop nearby you can stop by and see if they can balance both of your tires/wheel assemblies for you. That’s your best option since they can nail it if their balance machines accept your small wheels. Alternatively you can go to a car parts store and buy wheel weights that can attach to your rims and do an experimental balance which means trial and error. Put a weight on the rim and drive it…if it’s worse move weight to opposite side. Eventually you can do a decent job. If that does not help you may have a bad tire…tires have stiffness variation that feels like imbalance if a tire is out of spec. I’d also suggest that you call Malone and see what they say since I doubt you are the first to experience this so they may have some good advice for you.
There might be no need to rely completely on trial and error for improving tire balance on your own. On small wheels like that, especially since there are no brakes to drag, it’s a pretty certain thing that the heavy side of the wheel will always end up at the bottom when the suspension is jacked off the ground. That will show you which is the light side, where you would add weight. The best you can do at that point is add enough weight to the light side that the wheel no longer rotates due to gravity when allowed to freely spin, no matter where you position it.
By the way, for professional balancing, your next best bet might be a motorcycle shop if a standard automotive shop can’t mount that kind of wheel in their balancing machine.
The first thing is to check that the tires are actually round and are properly seated on the rims. Jack the trailer up and give each wheel a spin–watch for wobble, or out of roundness. Then do the balance thing.