Need advice with Trailer roller setup on aluminium hull

[Ojay Samson]

Hey raiders looking for some advice in regards to trailer roller setup on an aluminium hull.

So I have a problem right now in that ‘ezi loader launch and retrieval system’ and keel rollers don’t overlap enough and as such when  loading my boat onto the trailer the keel always gets pinched in between the two and forward progression when winching is halted. My current roller setup is 2 skids on the outer most part of the boat for support and then 4 keel rollers with the back 2 having a set of these ezi loader style skids on either side on the keel roller (OEM dunbier circa 2003).

Now, my boats rear weight is being fully supported by the skids and not the keel (I know they are not supposed to rest on the skids 100% and are merely there for side to side support but at the time of trying to replace the rollers on the keel the pins had rusted so much extraction of the pins from the spindle at the boat ramp was not possible). I was trying to replace the keel rollers, as you can see they are all pretty chewed up in the pictures except for 2 closest to the bow which I did manage to replace).

I have a 4 X quad wobble assembly rollers and would like to know if it’s a feasible idea to replace the 4 ezi loader skids on both sides of the 2 sets of rear keel rollers at the rear with these or is there a better option to fixing my problem?

Please find attached the pictures of my trailer setup and the section of the keel (where it turns into an I-beam sort of section) and the bow and roller plastic getting scrapped when trying to winch it on…

I have the 4 sets of quad wobble roller assembly at my disposal already and would like to know if having skids, wobble rollers and keel rollers is a bad idea or not, I have never seen a boat trailer with the setup I am asking about so I’m not sure if that’s because of an initial setup cost or redundancy… my hope is that the wobble rollers will act in place of the 4 side skids making the V shape at the back 2 keel rollers…

any advice appreciated, cheers.

Edited January 15, 2017 by Ojay Samson

[Fab1]

Are your keel rollers sloping slightly from front to back?You only need the front roller 50mm higher than the rear.Are your side skids set at the same height,just touching the bottom of the hull and level?

I run the same setup as you and have set my trailer up as described above and never had a problem.

When I picked my boat up brand new it use to come up askew and chew the rear roller and v guide as they hadn't set the trailer up properly and you can see the damage in the photo.

I back my trailer in until that rear roller is just below the surface of the water,bring my boat up and pull the bow up onto the roller and clip the winch strap on that I had at the ready at the back of the trailer then simply winch away and she comes up straight every time.

Setting your boat trailer up like I said and greasing your roller pins will have your boat trying to self launch as soon as you take the safety chain off and winch strap.

It will winch straight and nice and easy too.

With aluminium boats you want skids supporting the hull and rollers along the keel(the strongest part of an ally boat).

Loosen your v guide bracket bolts at the rear roller and angle them in towards the roller like I have.

Heres a few photos of how I set mine up. 

hope this helps.

[kingfishbig]

I'm not sure if wobble rollers are meant to be used on pressed allow boats. They can cause dents in the hull due to the pressure not being spread out. I don't quite follow your explanation but looking at photo it looks like the ezi loader bracket is resting on the boat strake at one end and one point of the hull at the other end. This is creating undue pressure points by the look of it and may be why the boat is not resting on the keel rollers. I would try re - adjusting the ezi loaders first. You might want to adjust the keel rollers up as well.

[Ojay Samson]

hey guys, yeah sorry for the crappy explanation, I got confused reading it back to myself to. I forgot to mention that the 2 rear keel rollers are not in the position they were before I attempted replacing them(full contact with the keel on all keel rollers), they are in that current position in photos because I wanted to try a new position on them to give them a sharper V and attempt to close up the gap between the keel roller and V skids and thus dropped the keel roller and raised the V parts on either  side... forgetting that the side skids were there in their original position and and thus why the boat is now sitting on the skids completely on the arse end (dropped the keel rollers way too much, by the time we put the boat back on the trailer it was night time because we ended up giving up and went for a cruise instead), it was the next day at home when I saw the error. 
my problem is not the height of the keel rollers (I know they are at the wrong position), more so the gap between the roller and the V guide thingy and my keel getting pinched in between the two… I think I just need to try readjusting again before I try the wobble rollers I guess.
I was looking at the same type system from a newer trailer and I noticed that the blocks to create the V on that particular trailer had 2 support posts each and they spilt onto the keel roller (attached pic). my problem is the spindle for the 2 rear keel rollers is not the typical one (these measure over 30cm, and I can’t find replacement ones from the typical chandleries ( I’m afraid I will have the same problem again and not be able to pull the rusted pins out of the spindles)… only thing I can hope is to bring a cordless drill next time and hope it can take them out as I need to be at a ramp to float the boat when doing this for ease and no power points at my disposal.

I’ve taken some new shots of the rear just now and I circled the suspected gaps that keep catching my keel, any advice on how to close these gaps up (circled in red). They existed before I dropped the whole rear roller system however it could be possible the V skids had dropped from previous owner and I took it as normal from the get go? Thanks for the pics Fab, the way your ones are set up are like mine as you said so that’s put my mind at ease in terms of I’m not missing anything important. I guess I will just have to try repositioning again (next time armed with power tools to get rusted pins out of spindles).
in terms of repositioning all the rollers on the keel should my boat have a slight angle sliding away from the trailer if the boat was on? Or are they supposed to be level and the side skids barely touching hull when on it? I just don’t know how the angles should look if I have to start from scratch repositioning everything.

sorry  in advance for the terrible explanations.

[Ojay Samson]

1 hour ago, Fab1 said:

Are your keel rollers sloping slightly from front to back?You only need the front roller 50mm higher than the rear.Are your side skids set at the same height,just touching the bottom of the hull and level?

I run the same setup as you and have set my trailer up as described above and never had a problem.

When I picked my boat up brand new it use to come up askew and chew the rear roller and v guide as they hadn't set the trailer up properly and you can see the damage in the photo.

I back my trailer in until that rear roller is just below the surface of the water,bring my boat up and pull the bow up onto the roller and clip the winch strap on that I had at the ready at the back of the trailer then simply winch away and she comes up straight every time.

Setting your boat trailer up like I said and greasing your roller pins will have your boat trying to self launch as soon as you take the safety chain off and winch strap.

It will winch straight and nice and easy too.

With aluminium boats you want skids supporting the hull and rollers along the keel(the strongest part of an ally boat).

Loosen your v guide bracket bolts at the rear roller and angle them in towards the roller like I have.

Heres a few photos of how I set mine up. 

hope this helps.

I'm guilty for only reading the 1st paragraph initially and going straight for your photos, after having a proper read that's great advice,  I'm sure my one is not set up right to as you can see th chunks taken out of my side V bits and keel rollers...  Either that or the previous owner just power loaded and came in hot every time.  I've only launched and retrieved a total of 4 times so that damage as definitely there before my tenure. I'm keen to try repositioning now before I try more drastic measures (wobble rollers).  I used to launch and retrieve  like that with my tinny but for some reason with the new bigger boat I decided my trailer needs to be almost fully submerged because the ass end sits so high (overly sprung suspension and being towed by a small low tow bar height car).  Nice looking boat btw. 

 

[Foghorn]

Mate, I had a problem with my set up with a FG boat, I spent a good time over winter under the trailer with a jack adjusting the rollers and guides. When trying to retrieve the boat sometimes it would tend to go askew on the trailer, this was depending on the wind and the tide, I pulled all the rollers pins out and regreased and adjusted the centre and side rollers. The easy guide skids were adjusted so the boat would not scrape on the rollers brackets but would still have movement, this will depend on the shape of the hull, you have to adjust them so as they still have movement but still protect the hull from the roller bracket. I spent at least 2 days to adjust the setup as I did not have access to the river, it takes time.

[Fab1]

19 minutes ago, Ojay Samson said:

hey guys, yeah sorry for the crappy explanation, I got confused reading it back to myself to. I forgot to mention that the 2 rear keel rollers are not in the position they were before I attempted replacing them(full contact with the keel on all keel rollers), they are in that current position in photos because I wanted to try a new position on them to give them a sharper V and attempt to close up the gap between the keel roller and V skids and thus dropped the keel roller and raised the V parts on either  side... forgetting that the side skids were there in their original position and and thus why the boat is now sitting on the skids completely on the arse end (dropped the keel rollers way too much, by the time we put the boat back on the trailer it was night time because we ended up giving up and went for a cruise instead), it was the next day at home when I saw the error. 
my problem is not the height of the keel rollers (I know they are at the wrong position), more so the gap between the roller and the V guide thingy and my keel getting pinched in between the two… I think I just need to try readjusting again before I try the wobble rollers I guess.
I was looking at the same type system from a newer trailer and I noticed that the blocks to create the V on that particular trailer had 2 support posts each and they spilt onto the keel roller (attached pic). my problem is the spindle for the 2 rear keel rollers is not the typical one (these measure over 30cm, and I can’t find replacement ones from the typical chandleries ( I’m afraid I will have the same problem again and not be able to pull the rusted pins out of the spindles)… only thing I can hope is to bring a cordless drill next time and hope it can take them out as I need to be at a ramp to float the boat when doing this for ease and no power points at my disposal.

I’ve taken some new shots of the rear just now and I circled the suspected gaps that keep catching my keel, any advice on how to close these gaps up (circled in red). They existed before I dropped the whole rear roller system however it could be possible the V skids had dropped from previous owner and I took it as normal from the get go? Thanks for the pics Fab, the way your ones are set up are like mine as you said so that’s put my mind at ease in terms of I’m not missing anything important. I guess I will just have to try repositioning again (next time armed with power tools to get rusted pins out of spindles).
in terms of repositioning all the rollers on the keel should my boat have a slight angle sliding away from the trailer if the boat was on? Or are they supposed to be level and the side skids barely touching hull when on it? I just don’t know how the angles should look if I have to start from scratch repositioning everything.

sorry  in advance for the terrible explanations.

 

I'm still dizzy reading your post mate.

Where you have circles in red in between the roller and guide is where the keel will wedge itself every time if you let it.

Your boat should never come off the second set of rollers like you have photographed.

I would change the rear roller on your boat too ones like mine as yours are too flat and have no raised edges to keep the boat on them or a self centering roller.

Your boat should have a slight angle from front to back with the rear roller as low as possible.

My boat launched the same with the ute which the coupling sits higher than my kia.

Think about it,it doesn't matter how high/Low your trailer is as the boat will sit on the trailer the same way except with a higher tow bared car your boat will have a bigger slope from front to back on the trailer but you still back in until that last keel roller is just under water both on launch and retrieval.

You want your keel rollers sloped slightly from front to back (a down hill slope)and after you've set your keel rollers and the boat is balanced level from side to side you raise the side skids to just touch the hull evenly and angle them out wards against the inside of the planing strake.

 This will help prevent the boat sliding from side to side also.

Hope this makes sense.

This is a self centering roller.

 

[Fab1]

16 minutes ago, Foghorn said:

Mate, I had a problem with my set up with a FG boat, I spent a good time over winter under the trailer with a jack adjusting the rollers and guides. When trying to retrieve the boat sometimes it would tend to go askew on the trailer, this was depending on the wind and the tide, I pulled all the rollers pins out and regreased and adjusted the centre and side rollers. The easy guide skids were adjusted so the boat would not scrape on the rollers brackets but would still have movement, this will depend on the shape of the hull, you have to adjust them so as they still have movement but still protect the hull from the roller bracket. I spent at least 2 days to adjust the setup as I did not have access to the river, it takes time.

You can do it at home in the garage like I do.I wish you could post Videos on here and I'd make one.

[Ojay Samson]

12 minutes ago, Fab1 said:

I'm still dizzy reading your post mate.

Where you have circles in red in between the roller and guide is where the keel will wedge itself every time if you let it.

Your boat should never come off the second set of rollers like you have photographed.

I would change the rear roller on your boat too ones like mine as yours are too flat and have no raised edges to keep the boat on them or a self centering roller.

Your boat should have a slight angle from front to back with the rear roller as low as possible.

My boat launched the same with the ute which the coupling sits higher than my kia.

Think about it,it doesn't matter how high/Low your trailer is as the boat will sit on the trailer the same way except with a higher tow bared car your boat will have a bigger slope from front to back on the trailer but you still back in until that last keel roller is just under water both on launch and retrieval.

You want your keel rollers sloped slightly from front to back (a down hill slope)and after you've set your keel rollers and the boat is balanced level from side to side you raise the side skids to just touch the hull evenly and angle them out wards against the inside of the planing strake.

 This will help prevent the boat sliding from side to side also.

Hope this makes sense.

This is a self centering roller.

 

Yep makes sense, sound advice... in a nutshell i got to go back to the drawing board haha. yep this is the hardware i have left ...bought extra as redundancy. I guess i will try this with car jacks and blocks of wood etc, saves me trouble with boat ramp and no GPO's to use. time to take a headache pill Fab lol, cheers.

these are the leftover bits (i bought multiple for redundancy) i still need to replace on my trailer (only managed to replace the front two keel rollers and 1 spindle for it (the other one was still good so reused it). 
in order for me to make my V guides work i will NEED to be able to reuse the old spindles at the rear because I cannot find replacement ones long enough to replace them. (the v guides i seem to have are designed to have the ends of the spindle go through a bored hole on one side of the V block whereas your ones on yours do not need support it seems on the keel roller side of the V block.
..ok now take a panadol lol, thanks again Fab & everyone else for their sound input, much appreciated.
will report back here on results or after i give it another crack.

 

[Fab1]

30 minutes ago, Ojay Samson said:

Yep makes sense, sound advice... in a nutshell i got to go back to the drawing board haha. yep this is the hardware i have left ...bought extra as redundancy. I guess i will try this with car jacks and blocks of wood etc, saves me trouble with boat ramp and no GPO's to use. time to take a headache pill Fab lol, cheers.

these are the leftover bits (i bought multiple for redundancy) i still need to replace on my trailer (only managed to replace the front two keel rollers and 1 spindle for it (the other one was still good so reused it). 
in order for me to make my V guides work i will NEED to be able to reuse the old spindles at the rear because I cannot find replacement ones long enough to replace them. (the v guides i seem to have are designed to have the ends of the spindle go through a bored hole on one side of the V block whereas your ones on yours do not need support it seems on the keel roller side of the V block.
..ok now take a panadol lol, thanks again Fab & everyone else for their sound input, much appreciated.
will report back here on results or after i give it another crack.

 

Mine are exactly the same as yours.

Note how I have leant them towards that last roller by undoing the nut and leaning them over.

This is the end result of a combination of lowering the last roller cradle all the way down and raising while tilting the v guide over to overlap the rear roller.

In my opinion they don't work very well as you have a hard sharp edge digging into the guide(The boats keel) sliding forward on the (Softer)guides while at the same time trying to slide laterally down on to the rear keel roller.

Basically the keel cuts into them going forward and gouges them sliding laterally across them.

The cure?Like I said before,after you set up your trailer,Back down the ramp until the top of the last keel roller is just under the water on both launch/retrieve.

Like I said my tinny will self launch if I let it once I undo the safety chain and winch strap and comes back on the trailer easy and straight every time as long as the keel at the bow is on that rear roller.

[Fab1]

Another tip is to mark your existing roller position as a reference point with a pencil or marker like this.

This is how you want your side skids,Hard up against the insides of your planing strakes and angled slightly to the out side of the boat to prevent the boat sliding laterally as she comes up the trailer.

Hope this helps you mate and appreciate what a fellow raider does to help another by crawling underneath his boat to take photos for him.Just kidding.

Good luck and let us know how you go.

Mods can you please rotate my photos the right way?Don't know what happened.

cheers.

 

[Ojay Samson]

33 minutes ago, Fab1 said:

Another tip is to mark your existing roller position as a reference point with a pencil or marker like this.

This is how you want your side skids,Hard up against the insides of your planing strakes and angled slightly to the out side of the boat to prevent the boat sliding laterally as she comes up the trailer.

Hope this helps you mate and appreciate what a fellow raider does to help another by crawling underneath his boat to take photos for him.Just kidding.

Good luck and let us know how you go.

Mods can you please rotate my photos the right way?Don't know what happened.

cheers.

 

Above & beyond mate, genuinely appreciate it
pictures say a thousand words as they say... my 1st post should of just had the pics and said  "need fix, what do?" *picks up caveman club*

[frankS]

Ojay. looks like you need some hands on help and some new OR cleaned axles for them rollers, I would say they are not rolling correctly.

I have a heavy duty gantry here that I use for lifting and suspending boats off the trailers so they can be worked on, also have all the gear you could want to do the job properly, If need be I have solid stainless steel rod which I make my centre pins from and lathe etc for tidying up those rollers if you don't want to outlay money for new ones, as for the Teflon ( blue  V guides ) they need adjusting, maybe the hole needs elongating so they can be positioned properly.

I am at Berala if you want to bring boat and trailer over and we could fix your little problem so the boat fits the trailer..

 

Frank

[kingfishbig]

I might be worth removing the 2nd (middle) set of ezi glide brackets, then a combination of raising the keel rollers and lowering the skid rollers should give at correct support. Ie one set of ezi glides at the rear of the trailer should be sufficient to guide your boat on when retrieving.

[Ojay Samson]

4 hours ago, kingfishbig said:

I might be worth removing the 2nd (middle) set of ezi glide brackets, then a combination of raising the keel rollers and lowering the skid rollers should give at correct support. Ie one set of ezi glides at the rear of the trailer should be sufficient to guide your boat on when retrieving.

duly noted, cheers.

 

 

13 hours ago, frankS said:

Ojay. looks like you need some hands on help and some new OR cleaned axles for them rollers, I would say they are not rolling correctly.

I have a heavy duty gantry here that I use for lifting and suspending boats off the trailers so they can be worked on, also have all the gear you could want to do the job properly, If need be I have solid stainless steel rod which I make my centre pins from and lathe etc for tidying up those rollers if you don't want to outlay money for new ones, as for the Teflon ( blue  V guides ) they need adjusting, maybe the hole needs elongating so they can be positioned properly.

I am at Berala if you want to bring boat and trailer over and we could fix your little problem so the boat fits the trailer..

 

Frank

Sent you a PM Frank
 

[frankS]

Just to finalise this issue. Ojay bought his boat over to my place on Thursday, I couldn't use my gantry for reasons we don't want to go into here, but managed to get the boat floating in my driveway. The rollers were a bit of a mess and after a fair amount of sweat we managed to fix his problem. Snapped 4 bolts along the way and had to cut and re-weld brackets with new bolts, we replaced the old keel rollers with new ones and new axles pins etc, we reversed the V guides with better placed holes and reduced the gap between the bracket and rollers so that the boat should go off and on a lot better without getting gammed.

Another bit of work needed to get this trailer to maximum use. Smaller 9 " alloy wheels with much smaller guards and a few leaves taken out of the springs will lower the centre of gravity of this boat by at least 4 " probably more.

A job waiting for more pleasant weather.

 

Frank

[Ojay Samson]

Hey all, I finally managed to take my boat out on the 20/2/17 for a test launch & retrieve (and then a bit of a cruise to gladesville bridge then anchored fish) after it had been altered by myself and Frank (+ supporting cast of my gf Nat, mate Ramsey, Franks wife & her friend) on the 9th feb.

Ignore the strap dangling in front of my face, it was all me holding up the bow in mid air...


This test launch was a bit ad hoc in that it was not planned before lunch time between myself and my mate, anyways  we ended up dunking the boat at around 630pm and pulled it out at 9pm. Also this was the first time my girlfriend has been on  the boat when it was actually on the water, also another first was my mum who came down as well after work to try out boating (this was actually also the first time she has been on any boat of mine) and from what i can gather  they both enjoyed it (gave my mum a couple travel calms just in case).

I edited up a quick clip of how the boat went when launching. It slides off now like a dream compared to the difficulty from previous 2 launches. Retrieving also went without a problem (no video was taken for that as it was to dark to see anything really).

Anyways thanks for all those who took an interest in my thread, i now have the confidence of being able to launch and retrieve the boat now solo thanks to the new setup.

Click here for my Youtube vid

Cheers Ojay

 

Edited February 21, 2017 by Ojay Samson
Added a pic

[Ojay Samson]

On 2/12/2017 at 6:11 PM, noelm said:

What size wheels are on it now? I am after some 13" Holden pattern wheels, and will happily swap some 600X9 alloy "Velox" wheels for them! I am in the process of changing my trailer over to 13" wheels.

Im not actually sure witout going outside to check the sidewalls, all i know is they are light truck tyres. For now i am actually happy with them as I prefer the durability of having commercial tyres on my trailer so I have no plans to get rid of them just yet, my problem right now is finding a tow car that has a tow ball height that is higher than what my small hatchback currently rests at. 

[jeffb5.8]

Depending on the towbar you may be able to get a step up hitch if you have a Haymen Reece towbar with a removable hitch.

if it's a solid towbar then it's a new towbar or new 2nd hand car.

i used to tow my old 4.3mtr tinnie with a Honda CRV or a mates Toyota RAV4 both did it easily and were cheap to run.

 

[frankS]

I can now see where you get your last user name from.

Glad it worked ok for you and when you buy that Jeep for towing all your problems will be solved.

Smaller wheels and a few less leaf spring leaves and the boat would sit lower and you wouldn't have to back down quiet as close to the water, even with a conventional 2 wheel drive. If you are happy with the way it is than go for it.

 

Frank

[Fab1]

First of all you need to workout a little more as an aluminium boat should be able to be lifted with one hand.lol.You can buy tongues with different offsets/drops to help raise the nose on your trailer like this one.Try the wreckers and a few trailer places.Also if you haven't done so you can turn your existing tongue round 180 degrees to raise the trailer by around 50mm.

Cheers.

[Fab1]

4 minutes ago, frankS said:

I can now see where you get your last user name from.

Glad it worked ok for you and when you buy that Jeep for towing all your problems will be solved.

Smaller wheels and a few less leaf spring leaves and the boat would sit lower and you wouldn't have to back down quiet as close to the water, even with a conventional 2 wheel drive. If you are happy with the way it is than go for it.

 

Frank

His surname could have been Simpson.

[frankS]

Fab1 and others. Ollies tow bar is not the issue, it's his present vehicle Toyota corolla ( I think ) and it's just not a suitable vehicle to tow this boat.

The boat in the video is not the vehicle in question.

 

Frank

[fragmeister]

What a great effort by all concerned in helping out a fellow Raider.

Good on you boys!

Cheers

 

Jim

 

[slydar]

ok, i may well have a similar scenario. due to the difficulties in getting my boat to the place i bought a trailer from i went and got it without taking up there (extra) offer of fitting the boat so now despite their claiming the trailer can take boats up to 5.3 metres and mine being a searay 525 its looking like its going to be a 'tight fit. can anyone tell me how close the boat should be legally and/or safely to the back of my car? i'm worried not only about having it too close but rear overhang if i cant bring the winch post forward enough - already it's looking like the jockey wheel will have to 'straddle' the winch post in one form or another