Disaster Averted

That isn't mud on the wheel.

Well, here it is, the post of shame. This is the short story of how a tiny piece of metal, or the lack thereof, really changed my Independence Day and the following two days.

So, before we left for the lake on the 4th I inspected the trailer, as I always do, and noticed that the Bearing Buddy had come off the hub on the right (starboard) side of my boat trailer. The spindle was exposed but there was plenty of grease in there, so I thought that it would be fine. Big mistake. On the way to the lake I noticed I was low on fuel and decided that I would fill up on the way. Well, I forgot to fill up. Trust me, that part is important.

We got to the lake, had a wonderful day on the boat. We packed up and went along our way home. It was then that I remembered to fill up with gas. While I was filling up I noticed that the trailer hub was smoking. Hmmmm.... not usually a good sign. Upon closer inspection it was clear that there was no longer any bearing inside the hub and the wheel was riding directly on the spindle of the axle. We had been going 45-50mph down a two lane highway with nothing holding the darn wheel on other than the downward force of the boat! Thank goodness for smooth NC highways.

I limped the boat down the road to a boat ramp so we could take a closer look and leave the boat overnight if necessary. When we jacked the trailer up the wheel literally fell off! Literally fell right off the dadgum axle. I can't believe how incredibly close we were to a very, very big mess. It was a two lane road, the only road to and from the lake, and it was very busy with 4th of July traffic. I have horrific visions in my head of an O'Day 22 on it's side in the middle of the road, traffic as far as the eye can see, flashing lights of firetrucks, towtrucks and police. Truthfully though, that would be the best case scenario, what if a car had been right behind me when it fell? What would have happened to the truck? It's not pretty.

So, the next day Aaron and I decided that we'd just press new bearings into the hub and slap it back on. Since there were no bearings left on the hub, it was guesswork to pick out the right size bearings. Well, we guessed wrong, but it didn't really matter because we realized that the spindle was so marred from having the wheel ride on it that it would be unusable. So, we wasted all day Saturday figuring that out. We decided that the only thing to do was to replace the whole axle and hubs. I could've gotten a new spindle pressed in the old axle and a new hub, but once you price both of those things plus labor... better off with a whole new one. Where to find an axle on Sunday morning? Luckily, Tractor Supply came through in a pinch and had the right part... or so we thought. I happily drove to the stranded boat (all 45 miles from my home) with the new axle, foolishly thinking that I'd just bolt it on and be gone in half an hour. Not so, turns out that my axle had 71" spring centers. Modern sizes are 70 and 72 inches. I had gotten a 70". Aaron, always thinking on his feet, decided that we could modify the brackets with an angle grinder. So, off to his house to do that. Back we come, this time more confident than ever that we'd bolt it on and be gone. Foolish. Now the problem was that the U-bolts which hang the axle were too short. Apparently they were for a shorter stack of leaf springs. Hmmmm... two options: find longer u-bolts or remove the bottom two leaves on the springs. Off in search of u-bolts we went. Lowes, Home Depot and 3 auto stores later... no u-bolts. We found about every other size than the ones we needed. So, I got some c-clamps and we decided to modify the springs, no reason for this trailer to have a 6-stack of leaves anyway. In fact, the darn thing was so rigid who knows how much force we were imparting to the wheel bearings, not to mention the boat. So, we pulled off the bottom two leaves and the axle went on like it was supposed to. That felt good, really really good. Oh, forgot to mention that it thunderstormed on us everyday. We finished the repair at 8:45pm in a thunderstorm that had been kicking for the past two hours. We were soaked, tired and very, very happy. Big thanks to Aaron without whom I wouldn't have been able to repair the trailer.

I can't stop thinking about how horrible it would've been if I had remembered to get gas on the way to the lake...