I spec’ed my trailer with Bearing Buddies, which let me easily add a few pumps of grease. Because none of my paddling venues are close, the trailer gets driven a fair number of miles every season. I never even drive it down the boat ramp, just park the truck and carry kayak and paddle to the water. Therefore, the hubs don’t get immersed. They do get rained and snowed on, being parked outdoors.
The trailer has had 13 years of use, with only about 4 of them sitting little used (because I could cart the kayak to the beach from home). It also carried kayaks for the move from CO to WA and back to CO a few years later.
It really should get a full overhaul now. Ever since my husband curb-checked one trailer wheel HARD early on, that side has tended to leak grease. Didn’t do it before then. That’s why I always check hub temps after arriving at the launch, and why I add grease every couple of months in season. The hubs have never overheated, thanks to this frequent checking and topping up. But it’s time to find a place that will competently clean and repack the hubs, replacing the old seals. I’ve fixed electrical wire breaks etc as necessary all along, but all the wiring and related hardware should be replaced also, just due to age/use and outdoor storage.
Note that the key word here is competently. I don’t trust the local shops. Will need to drive the trailer a fair distance away to a boat trailer shop that doesn’t consider a lightweight kayak trailer something to be careless with.
HA, yeah, when I replaced the original wheels with a new set, my husband had to sit on the trailer to keep wheels from spinning, even on the concrete driveway.
I check the hubs for heat throughout the year. I jack them up in the spring to physically check for play in the bearings, then grease them. I do a visual inspection of the entire trailer at that time. The couple of hours it takes is still way less than having a bearing seize up on the highway.
The original topic of this thread is “Utility Trailers w modifications for carrying Kayaks”, but if you do the opposite and modify a kayak trailer to become a utility trailer, as I did with my Trailex, you also have to keep in mind that kayak trailers may be very lightly sprung. My Trailex is the SUT350-S, which has the heavier tongue than their 250 series trailers, but they still list the load capacity at just 350 lbs. The stuff I added to make my trailer into an enclosed utility trailer weighs 140 lbs, giving me a net load capacity of just 210 lbs. And, even being careful not to exceed that, I broke a spring a couple of summers ago.
I was very lucky, 300 miles from home, but it broke just as I was leaving a motel in PA. I was able to pull into the back of a Sam’s Club parking lot and temporarily prop up the frame with things I had in the car (some wood and some straps) to make the trailer carefully towable. And, there was a spring shop (Wilkes-Barre Spring) just a couple of miles away that took really good care of me. This was during Covid with all of the supply chain problems but they found a set of springs the right length that were delivered the next morning. The springs were 4-leaf and far too stiff, but they removed all but the single main leaf and got me going that afternoon. My springs are now stiffer than the original ones, but still softer than typical utility trailer springs.
That’s a long lead-in to another thing to add to a trailer emergency kit. I already had a wood block that acted as a yoke to let me use my car jack to raise the trailer by the axle (the yellow block in the photo). I have added the gray wood block in the photo, which can prop the trailer frame up on the axle, essentially replacing a broken spring with a solid connection. A cam strap would go around the axle, frame and block to hold everything together. I couldn’t drive far with it, but it should allow me limp to the next exit if I ever break another spring. You can also see the two spare tires that I carry. These stuff all goes in a space below the load floor on my car, but above the car’s spare tire.
Started as a boat trailer rather than a utility trailer, and its modified to haul canoes, but what the heck. its a trailer modified from original purpose to haul paddle craft. It’ll carry a kayak if necessary.
Yes, do an overhaul a couple of times a year. I had Bearing Buddies on my sailboat trailer. I found out the hard way that they only lube the outer bearings.
I have a utility 5x8 trailer with a Dexter axle, It has a
grease nipple that’s supposed to add grease to the inside hub pushing it to the outside. You’re supposed to keep pumping grease through it till the grease comes out clean. Anyone else have something like that?
I have the opposite issue with the homebuilt kayak trailer I bought used from the guy who made it. Great that it has an extended tongue and 4 pairs of adjustable padded cradles on the crossbars so I can haul my 15’ to 19’ sea kayaks, and it is very sturdy.
But it is oversprung since he used the frame of a utility trailer for it. When I carry a couple of light boats on it (all my boats are under 55 pounds) it bounces around annoyingly. I have considered making some sort of lead-weighted ballasts to hang on it.
I had originally planned to build a wooden platform to mount on the frame (which is a welded 4’ x 6’ rectangle of square tubing) to use for hauling other loads, but ended up getting a used 5’ x 8’ stake side trailer for that use, since I now have a large enough property to store them.
This is the welded steel home-built kayak hauler (now lives on concrete in a large clean garage – this was the gravel alley where it used to live, behind my old house with no garage or driveway.):
I have had that type of axle with a grease through spindle on a couple of boat trailers I’ve had in the past. I never trusted them to properly grease the bearings. I always disassemble the hubs, clean and inspect bearings, then repack with new grease once a year. I install a new grease seal every time I pull a hub. I do pull my boat long distances and launch in salt water. Hubs on a utility trailer that never get dunked in water should be fine using just the grease fitting on the end of the spindle.
willowleaf - my previous Harbor Freight trailer was too heavily sprung also. Trailer springs are actually easy to replace, and there are places where you can buy springs with different load capacities. Here’s one: Trailer Leaf Springs at Trailer Parts Superstore
Also, it turned out that removing one or more leaves from a spring stack is an easy job. Wilkes-Barre spring apparently does it all the time to customize springs so I expect that any spring shop could do it. My replacement springs were 4-leaf and the spring rate feels about right after they removed all but the single main leaf.
That was going to be my advice as well. I live a life where trailers are a normal part of daily life and re-springing or modifying multi leaf springs for the appropriate ride is common for me.
I live in a major metro area and honestly don’t know anyone else who owns a trailer. In fact, since I have two trailers and a good sized box truck, I’m the person people that I know call when they need something moved (like picking up furniture and building supplies or rescuing motorcycles that have broken down on the road). I have to drive out to the remoter burbs, like into adjacent counties, to do things like have hitches installed on my vehicles or to dump the waste tanks or have specific types of service done on my camper conversion truck. Usually 90 minutes to 2 hour round trip to find those sorts of businesses that are common in more rural adjacent areas. When I visit my brother in upstate NY those kinds of services are everywhere.
This is a leftover truck bar attached to the front of a utility trailer. Boat can go over bar and ramp. Cradles can be added. Note conduit. Wires fare better when protected. In the junction box I connect to terminal strips that ease troubleshooting.b
This was the rear end from an Aerostar Mini Van. My father -in-law, the retired farmer built it. I added an old truck tool box for storage. There is also conduit on this trailer and larger gauge wire than usual trailer wiring. LED lights and better wiring are worth the effort and expense.
Nice job! I’ve been planning to rewire my trailers with PVC conduit and boxes that way too. So tired of having the exposed wiring fail, even when I’ve taped the heck out of every splice and keep a baggie twist-tied around the connector plug! Already got one ticket for the braking signal punking out during an interstate trip and now the replacement set has failed again on my utility trailer after I loaded it up with a huge pile of dead brush to haul to the borough’s yard waste dump site. It’s adjacent to the police station so even though I would only be driving a half mile on back streets to offload it, the local constabulary would be delighted to pounce on me right in their own parking lot if I show up with dead lights…
Where I live, trailers are ubiquitous—cattle and horse trailers, huge trailers for hauling large quantities of hay, heavy equipment trailers, etc. Boat trailers, yes. But not kayak trailers. The Trailex is not what I’d consider up to being abusively handled by no-nothing, self-proclaimed “pros”.
Even in the “big city” of Durango, auto mechanics there said their customers with boat trailers tended to go to a farther-away town where there was an actual boat trailer shop. That would be a 4- to 5-hr round trip for me.
Light boards are fairly common here on aquatic trailers, Australia . They have all your turn/ brake/ tail light fittings, usually LED, but are not fixed to the trailer. You tie them, hang them off the rear end of the watercraft. There is usually a long lead to the light board from the socket on the towing vehicle. https://www.arkcorp.com.au/product/standard-trailer-board-lights/
I used to use a light board for sail boats. It was fastened to the rear rack for carrying the mast and boom on an 18 ft scow. Worked more reliably that regular trailer lights on a boat trailer. Lights never met the water.
They have wireless light bars now that down need wire. Look for them at wrecker supply places. Or etrailer.com
