Trailer construction

Liam uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Closer to the back puts more of the load on the tow ball. Fine until you reach the vehicles limit. Given the varying loads you will be shifting stick to axles in the centre and load it from the centre outwards porviding a safe nose weight to make the outfit stable.

Other than that it make a difference to the manouverability... i.e reversing and taking tight corners will be more difficult with the wheels at the rear end.

Lee

Hi Liam, For a twin axle trailer put the axles equally spaced in the middle of the bed, any nose weight needed on the towing ball (recomended

50KG) will be taken care of by the weight of the front "A" frame, towing equipment and jockey wheel etc. The next question to answer is how far apart do you have the axles (wheelbase) the closer together the more manouverability you will have, the further apart the more stable. I built a car transporter (twin axle) and my axles are just short of 1M apart, this makes it very stable at speed and i still have no problems turning into tight spaces with a car on it.

hope this helps?

gary

Liam wrote:

Thanks, I hadn't thought about the spacing between the axles. I think I may move them further apart on the new trailer. I've just been taking the brakes apart to check everything is working properly. When we've been using the trailer we've never had a brake away cable fitted, I want to fit one on now but am unsure how it's supposed to work, it's easy enough to fit on to the brake lever to pull the brakes on if it comes off the hitch but are the brakes supposed to stay on after the cable has snapped off? if so how?

Thanks Liam

Liam uttered summat worrerz funny about:

They pull the other end of the handvbake lever... so you should either have a ratchet on the lever or a hydraulic ram (as on our caravan) to help the lever stay in the up and on position once you've tugged it up / the breakaway cable has pulled it up from the opposite end.

So simple it hurts ;-)

Lee

My catering trailers have a gas strut installed which keeps the handbrake on when it is even slightly released. The breakaway cable pulls the handbrake and the strut keeps it there. Have a look at Al-Ko trailers or websites to see how it's done. Or any AJC catering trailer.

Thanks I think I've got the brakes worked out now. The next thing is I cannot find on the internet anyone that sells bearing kits for the hubs that I have. They are Lockhead 10" x 1 3/4" (4566-674/5) the bearings are 48548 and

44649 oil seal 275:175:0.37. The closest kits I've found so far have the correct bearings but with the wrong oil seal, anyone got any suggestions where I should try.

Thanks Liam

Try trailer specialists. Or Bearing specialists. Not all local businesses are on the 'net - try yell.com. I have two local trailer places that seem to stock a wide range of parts - Blendworth trailers (Rowlands Castle) and Indespension at Park gate. I also have a local bearing company that had Landrover size bearings in stock at better prices than elsewhere when I needed them.