Re: Moving a 30ft boat 450 miles on a converted mobile home trailer
Well it was a great weekend! We got home at 2:00am Monday morning. The wife had to be at work at 8:00 and then her Chemistry class after work. So she was a little worn out.
We changed out all of the tires and wheels and put the new ones on. Ya'll are gonna laugh at me on this one but my wife is the one who changed the wheels around and packed all of the bearings. I think she got tired of watching me scratch my head. I think the look on my face is commonly known as "The deer in the headlight" haha. Here is a picture of me, I am going for the Redneck fat guy GQ Cabelas catalog look along with the Canadian coffee cup mug I found on the boat trailer.
The bearings all seemed to be in decent shape and had plenty of grease on them. We cleaned it off (Well I should say my wife cleaned em off), packed them with grease and the tires spin freely very nice.
The floor jack I brought could not get the job done on its own. Lucky for me there was another jack there. Its shaped like "A" and on the side it has a hook and then a crank on the top. Between that and the jack stands we were able to get the trailer up high enough. Then we used my floor jack to hold the axles up.
The trailer does have electric breaks on each wheel. The wiring was spliced in several places and quite the mess. It had the 5 pin flat plug (counting the ground). So I went and bought a new one and replaced the plug and about 20 feet of wiring harness.
Here is one of the goofy things in the buff without wearing its wheel and tire.
AFTER I put the new flat plug on I found the hot wire for the breaks. The breaks have 2 wires coming out of each of them. One wire is grounded to the trailer and the hot wires are spliced to one hot wire that runs to the front of the trailer. Pretty darn simple really!
So then I learned what was said here in this thread is true, you cant wire breaks in to that 5 pin flat plug. Lesson learned, back to Riley's for another plug. The wife went and got it while I stayed and worked on strapping the boat down.
She got a 6 prong round plug, same as we have on the horse trailer. Come to find out, that one was wrong to! We found this out after she wired it in. You can see that jack in this picture to. So the plug that is in this picture is the wrong one. We were on our way home when I found this out
Denes (pronounced Dennis) that owns the transport company. He told me many times to call him if I had questions. I did not want to bother him on the weekend. Another lesson learned, should of called him!
So now he is having one of his guys go out to the boat and wire the big 7 prong round round plug. He said the small 6 might work but in all the years he has transported boats there was only 1 boat that had the small round one and it was in Canada.
A problem that we had was missing a lug nut. The "California Wheels" are a pain in the arse to find the lug nuts for. It was a Saturday afternoon so that by itself did not help. 3 Les Schwabs and a couple tire stores later we got tired of hearing "Good luck finding one of those". So we left one wheel missing a lug nut but Denes said he would take care of it.
I did not put the U bolt in the bow of the boat as she was to far forward and I did not have the means to slide her back to get room. Note the V in the front of the trailer. That used to be my sons inner tube for sledding. I needed to get something wedged in there to keep the boat from rubbing on it. So 3 ounces of epoxy, 2 rolls of electrical tape and 1 inner tube later I got what you see there. Talk about down and dirty. That has got to be in my top 5 all time best jury rigs. Hopefully it stays put for the transport.
Today was going to be D day for the transport but the storage place closes at 5:30 and they did not have time to get there. I am guessing it will be over the next couple days but it kind of all depends on that stupid missing lug nut. It would not surprise me if it shows up tomorrow. I will talk to them later today and find out for sure. I am excited to get her home!
Good luck and post many pics when you get her home..
