Some while ago I rebuilt the trailer for my M-15 and was reasonably satisfied with the results. My description is in the archive, but I've appended it below. Giles Morris -------------------------------- Until I bought her, Umiaq had been used primarily in fresh water. This meant that the Trail Rite trailer, although fifteen years old, was in pretty good condition. Living near the Chesapeake Bay, I have every intention of making life hard on the trailer by dunking it in salt water as often as possible. So it was that, a few days after getting back from a trip to Florida with Umiaq, I was in my driveway with the idea of inspecting the trailer to make sure that it wasn't going to fall apart this coming summer. Aesthetically, the trailer could best have been described as functional (it isn't only dogs who look like their owners) but the overall condition was encouraging. The frame itself was excellent for the most part - probably because it has no enclosed box sections. The wheels were new, and the grease from the leaking seals ensured that they weren't going to corrode. The wooden parts were another matter: Although still in the right place the side guides and the V-shaped keel guide just behind the rear roller had seen better days, and the carpet on the side guides would have been an insult to a parrot cage. The bunks were ok, but the high-friction carpet on them was sometimes making life difficult at the ramp. It looked like the trailer would easily last a couple of seasons without doing anything to it, so I did the obvious thing. A few minutes later I was jacking up Umiaq's keel preparatory to pulling the trailer out from underneath her. Tools available were a hydraulic bottle jack and timbers. A landscaping timber formed blocks for the keel to rest on, and two by fours took care of the rest. This was to be a solo effort because my son is much too young to be scampering around under half a ton of boat and my wife is much too smart to get involved with this sort of thing. My mother was visiting, and is usually game for this sort of thing ("I'll distract it while you grab it and slip the muzzle on - watch out for the tail"), but even I have some shame About an hour's work found me wondering why the trailer was still stuck to the boat. I lost count of the number of times that I checked every place where the hull was even close to the trailer. Eventually I noticed that the mast was still firmly tied to the trailer at one end and the boat at the other. Bingo! A few minutes later, the trailer rolled out free, and Umiaq was sitting proudly on blocks. But not for long. Before I could even stop the trailer moving, there was a "creak". Uh, Oh! "Creak". Doesn't sound good. "CREAK". Oh, no! The temporary props were too far back on the hull, and one of them was moving slowly. Quandary: Do I go and hold the timbers, knowing that the worst that can happen is that I break the hull's fall, or do I keep out of the way. "Rumble, bump". Option B, by default. To make the best of it, I decided that I would not worry about the damage that I'd just done until I got the boat back on the trailer. And the good side was that when my new centerboard arrived it would be easier to fit it (see "Umiaq Has a New Centerboard"). The rest of the afternoon was spent in reducing the trailer to its component parts. Here's what I found (remember, this trailer is about fifteen years old and may not have seen salt water until this year): All of the wood (bunks, side pieces, keel guide) were significantly deteriorated. All of the fasteners holding the wood had corroded - some of them almost to nothing. Many bolts had their nuts corroded solid with them and a bolt cutter was extremely useful at this point. The wiring was in such poor condition that it was a miracle it worked. Two of the six plates at the tops of the bunk board supports were rusted paper thin. The lights should have fallen off long ago. Apart from that, things were in good functional condition, although the original paint was falling off in many places. The hubs were absolutely free of water inside and showed no wear at all, which may well be a result of the bearing buddies. The ensuing work lasted several weeks and involved two outside contractors. First I took the trailer to a welder and had all six of the bunk board supports replaced. I also had him remove the single (permanently attached) safety chain and put on two loops for new chains. I also had him add loops for the hold-down strap that had previously been kind of jammed into a convenient hole. In addition, I had him remove a skid that prevented me from fitting a tongue extension (I'll write about that when I find out whether it works). I made quite a few phone calls about a new surface finish. My initial plan was to get the trailer sandblasted and hot-dip galvanized, but two problems prevented this. The first was return on investment. The only galvanizer I could find to do it wanted nearly eight hundred dollars, and this seemed rather a lot. The other problem was that I had to arrange for it to be sandblasted just before galvanizing, and this turned out to be really hard. Most sandblasters around here seem to want to do only buildings or small metal parts. I phoned every one in the Yellow Pages. Some were helpful, some were insulting, but most were just uninterested. Now what? It turned out that I could rent a sandblasting machine and, although not exactly fun, could expect to do the whole thing in a day. But the machine was too big to carry in a car - I needed a truck to carry it. Well, call me chicken but I opted out. There was one company that would clean to bare metal and apply a powder coat finish for under five hundred dollars. They and their work looked good, and a few days later I was in their parking lot one misty, moisty morning removing the axle, springs, wheels, hubs etc. "It'll be done in ten days", they said (it wasn't, but I didn't really believe them anyway so no harm done). Meanwhile, I was in my basement making new wooden parts. I used preservative treated lumber and stainless steel nuts, bolts and fittings. This was an easy but long task that involved duplicating the shapes of the old wood and bolting them together. All of the lighting and accessories were new. I decided to change the bunk board surface to Ultra-High Molecular Weight (UHMW) plastic. Somebody in the Potter group has recorded frustration with trying to bend the stuff, so I tried a different approach - I bought it thick enough to countersink and screwed a flat plate of it to each board. This didn't cost too much more than carpeting at well under $40 for two six-foot bunks. At the same time I sent an order to Champion Trailers (www.championtrailers.com) for new springs, bushings, U-bolts etc. Everything that was available in stainless steel, I bought stainless steel. Other pieces were bought locally at Boat/US or West Marine. I was initially planning on using new hubs, but after looking at prices for new ones I decided to fit new bearings to the old ones. (The cups were so tight that it took a professional mechanic friend over an hour to replace them). Considering that an idler hub is basically a lump of metal with a hole in it, new hubs would probably have been a waste of money. Eventually, the trailer frame was ready (one day under three weeks) and I was fortunate enough to be able to assemble it for the road in the finisher's warehouse. He even supplied an assistant to help me. The assistant was a little stand-offish at first, but after about an hour he was sitting in my toolbox and playfully biting my feet. This assistant was a delightful Labrador/German shepherd cross puppy with one blue eye and one brown. Never having done it before I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to assemble the springs, axle and hubs. Just as well, really, since that was the only way the trailer was going home with me. Now what? The trailer, mostly reassembled, was sitting in front of the boat. Neither of them was going anywhere unless I did something about it. Actually, this part had been worrying me. One option I considered was to invite all my friends round for a boat-raising, but it looked as if it was going to be hard to get everybody together at the same time. So... It was back to me, my bottle jack and plenty of lumber. It turned out to be pretty easy, partly because the UHMW plastic on the bunk boards allowed the boat to slide and partly because I had put a new, and stronger, winch on the trailer. The whole job took about two hours including tea breaks. It's hard to describe the feeling of relief when Umiaq was once more sitting squarely on her trailer instead of lying sadly on her side. And what about damage from the fall? Thank you, Jerry Montgomery, for building such a strong boat. A few scratches, nothing more. Final touches: Fine tune the fit of the new bunk boards, fit the V-shaped keel guide behind the rear roller, fit the new side bunks. Put on new wiring, including a proper ground wire instead of trying to use the trailer frame and... done. Conclusions? It was worth it for two reasons: The trailer is now ready to perform its duties with minimal maintenance for quite some time, and I now know a lot more about the trailer, and any potential problems have been addressed. This wasn't an inexpensive exercise, without having bills in front of me I would estimate $125 for welding $450 for stripping and refinishing $200 for parts Plus a considerable number of hours of my time. On the positive side are a better-than-new trailer and a great sense of personal satisfaction. One other thing. While I was doing this I decided that it was time to make a tongue extension so that I could get the trailer further into the water on shallow-sloped ramps without immersing the car in automobile solvent. I've just about finished an eight-foot extension to the tongue based on the design that was on the back page of Sail magazine a few months ago. I'll let the group know how it woks out when I get the chance to try it. Giles Morris Arlington VA M-15 #264 "Umiaq"