The REAL end of my race season....

Imagine being so lucky as to have this happen after you made it home.... was leaving for work on a Monday after returning from Bakersfield and found the right side tires about 1” apart.

Trailers 10 years old. Had one axle replaced 3 years ago due to some tire wear issues. The trailer repair facility up sold me the Dexter EZ Ride equalizer/shackle set up. Hey the OE stuff was 7 years old and the equalizer and shackles certainly had some wear... thought it sounded like a good idea. What I finally found was the Dexter part they sold me was for a trailer with a 33” axle spacing.... mines 35”. Of course being the repair was 3 years ago, they wouldn’t offer any assistance. It was a learning experience as I’m not an experienced welder.

My weapon of choice was a Miller 211 I’ve owned a few years. While I’ve done some little projects, I’ve not had the confidence to do anything of important structure. This left me little choice. I bought a 50ft 240 extension cord and with the aid of a friend “in the know” wired up a temporary outlet off the main panel as it was on the outside of the garage in range of the trailer. Cut and ground off the old hanger and found the correct size hanger online. My harbor freight band saw also paid for itself in surviving cutting all the steel that I made reinforcement plates from. In looking at some of the existing welds on the trailer... I couldn’t be to far off.

From the “overkill” department.... now I don’t build trailers or know the physics involved, but I’ve never “liked” the hanger set up. Although they are 1/4” steel they just looked like the weak link.

The finished product.... perhaps now I’ll break the frame it was at this point of assembly that I noted the degree of difficulty getting the spring eyes to line up, and the wear on the brass spring eye inserts.... I mean we’re talking assistance with a come along. After finding some YouTube vids on installing this set up and it went like a hot knife through butter... I kept investigating.

The final amazing discovery.... the correct equalizer for a 35” spread over the incorrect “33 that played “tug-o-war” with my suspension for three years. Using the correct piece everything bolted up nicely. Glad this didn’t happen in the heat of summer. Prob would make a great small claims case... but we’re ready for 2021!

Yeah you got really lucky there. Had that busted loose while you were doing 65 mph on the free way with a race car on top you would've had a big mess on your hands. Even if you had gotten lucky enough to get it to the side of the road without wrecking, you would have been stranded with a race car stuck on a broken trailer. Could've turned into a long ordeal.

I'm really glad you found it without getting hurt or hurting the car or trailer get hurt any worst

I had that happen on my boat trailer when I was up in Canada on a fishing trip, the axle bent 180..
I had the trailer towed with a dolly under the axle.. as I was cutting and grinding... I had my brother
drive 75 miles to the next town to see if he could find a spring.. we got lucky and he did.. when he got
back I was ready for the spring... the shop rented me their welder and torch.. they charged me big time
for 20 minutes for me to weld it up... we were down for about 3 1/2 hours total

Good that you caught it early! Nice fix!

Caught it early?? LUCK! It was interesting researching this. I found a few occurrences where spring hangers broke and it was attributed to “bending fatigue” on tight turns over time. We’ve all watched our trailer tires as we’ve made tight turns... it actually made a little sense. I’ve also upgraded to G rated 14 ply tires which have very little give when turning, so that could add to the stresses involved. It did however bother me the equal tearing forward of the hanger. There was also a crack starting on the left side rear hanger.... but nothing noted on either of the fronts and of course the centers were fine. I drilled the end of the crack and ground a groove and welded that one up. Added 12 triangle outer plates over the sides of all the hangers. As I noted above it was the accelerated wear of the pivot points that luckily made me dig deeper... I think it will last me the rest of my hobby days, or at least give me peace of mind if selling it.

The tire wear has been phenomenal since the rear axle was changed. Not really sure when the issue arose but we started seeing some whacky tread wear and the right rear tire would always run 10-15 degrees warmer. If we had a tire fail, it was always that one.

The Dexter EZ Ride actually adds some shock adsorption and all the hardware is very robust and pivot points are all greasable. Might use the used ones on the boat trailer

Nice save MR J

Good catch and nice repair. Definitely dodged a bullet on that one!

It makes one wonder how much trouble the trailer company that replaced the axle and transfer links had assembling it.

Glad you caught it.

Yikes J! Glad you caught that for sure, and fixed it. Nice.