Detroit wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 11:24 am
I had one hell of an experience towing the boat on Friday, figured I'd update this thread a bit.
Boat came out a few weeks ago, hoists are coming out this week for winter. Bitter sweet, but an epic first boating season. I looked into storing the boat locally to me, and most indoor storage was in the $500 or so for the winter range, not heated. My dad has a heated garage 250 miles away in the Detroit area that's EMPTY all winter other than his Vagon on the hoist, so free heated boat storage for the winter enticed me to tow the boat down. We have a ridiculously generous neighbor who insisted I use his 2017 Tahoe Premier to tow the boat down state, and I took him up on the offer.
Before departing, I checked the trailer tires and added air to make sure they were at the right pressure. When I bought the boat in April, I went through the bearings on the trailer, replacing all of them and using fresh grease, drove it 2,000 miles home with no issue, and so assumed the bearing were good for this 250 mile tow. Hitched up the boat to the Tahoe, lights worked, everything was good, so we hit the road. The first 120 miles were uneventful, cruising 60ish on 2-lane roads and highways. Then disaster struck.
Cruising at 65 in the right lane on the highway, I felt some sort of shudder, checked the side mirror to look at the trailer and saw something fly off the wheel. Without hesitation, I pulled over immediately assuming something bad just happened. What I found was indeed bad. Very bad. The wheel had fallen off. Somehow the spindle nut had worked itself off and what I saw in the mirror was the grease cap, axle nut, and outer bearing ejecting onto the highway. The wheel was no longer attached at all, with the wheel hub just riding on the spindle. Holy shit. The fact that I got the rig onto the shoulder without the wheel flying off was a miracle.
I stood on the side of the road in disbelief, then fix it mode set in. 120 miles from our destination, seemingly middle of nowhere, it was 3:45 on a Friday, I knew I had to act quickly if I was going to make contact with any sort of repair place. Incredibly, google indicated an "RV and trailer repair" shop 12 minutes from where we were, so I unhooked the boat and hightailed it to the destination leaving the boat with precariously placed disconnected wheel on the side of the highway.
We get to the place, which is just a pole barn with hundreds of RVs around in various states of storage and repair. I walk into the mobile home office and a lady asked me how she could help, I told her I had a wheel fall off my boat trailer on the highway and she said "uh oh, better talk to Brian". We find Brian working in the pole barn and I explain the situation. He looks at me and says "brother, I've been there, we're gonna get you fixed up". It's 4:15 on Friday at this point, and he gives me a few bearings and spindle nuts to test fit to see if maybe I could limp it to his shop. If not, he told me to bring the wheel back and he'd help me find a tow. Did I luck the fuck out like I've never lucked out before?
Head back to the boat, I use the bottle jack from the Tahoe to jack up the trailer to remove the wheel and check out the spindle damage. The bearings he gave me were close, but no cigar and the threads on the spindle where a bit chewed up from riding on the wheel hub so the nut wouldn't screw on all the way. I took a bunch of pictures, grabbed the wheel and went back to Brian.
It was 5pm when I got back to him, and showed him the pictures and the wheel. He took a look at it and said, "we can get you to Detroit tonight" with incredible confidence. He got on the phone to call his friend with a tow company, and they went out to pick up the boat. I told him that if he could just let me use his tools, I'd pay him well and he could head out to enjoy his Friday night. He just said "maybe, but let's see how bad things are when the boat gets here". I head out to the bank to grab some cash and while I'm gone, Brian goes about replacing the bearings and races in the hub.
The tow dudes got the boat to us in record time, and it was sitting outside Brian's shop when I got back from the bank 20 minutes or so later. They charged me $200, which I gave them $250 and told them to go have some beers on us because they were so fast and managed to not damage a thing despite the trailer missing a wheel. They were stoked, as was I.
Then the rain started. It was 5:45, and Brian looks to the sky and says, "welp, I was going to have a bonfire with some friends tonight, looks like that's canceled, so let's get you fixed up". The boat was next to an RV he was working on, so he extended the awning so we would work out of the rain. He handed me some rags and brake clean so I could clean up the spindle. While I did that, he grabbed some files to clean up the spindle and threads. We used a thread file to clean up the threads well enough to screw the nut on easily, then carefully filed the parts of the spindle that were chewed up from the wheel hub riding on it preventing new bearings from going on. Along the way, he told me about his training and certification as a trailer mechanic, telling me war stories, and explaining why RVs are complete junk and to never buy one. He was an incredibly awesome human, and by 6:30 we were lowering the trailer back onto it's newly replaced wheel. I borrowed his jack to jack up the other side to check to make sure it was ok, and it checked out to both of us.
"I don't want to give you bad advice, but I'd consider this fixed if it were me, drive it home and worry about it later." He went on the say that he's seen way worse in service for a long time but cautioned me to do whatever made me comfortable. I liked his confidence, and agreed. I asked him what I owed him, and he looked at the clock, did some math in his head and said "I dunno, how's a hundred bucks sound?". I said "you just gave up your Friday night to help a stranger for 3 hours in the rain, so it sounds too low", gave him $200 and off we went. I did 60 in the right lane the whole way back and both wheels stayed on, no drama thankfully.
Neither Brian nor I could figure out how this happened. I'm not even sure if I could have checked it before leaving and prevented it. There was plenty of grease, so it didn't dry out or anything, might have just been a freak part failure? The boat trailer needs quite a bit of help in fixing lights, wiring, and brakes, so I'm going to go through the entire thing before spring so hopefully this doesn't happen again. I got insanely lucky to find such a great helpful dude in the middle of nowhere, sometimes bad things happen but the solution ends up being
in the end.