New England B.S. Thread

Out with man!

 

Sorry I had my kids and had to put them to bed.

Ok so the story is not as exciting as you guys make it sound.

I believe I have said on here for some time I had been trying to plan for a weekend in Rangeley Maine to go snowmobiling. Well last year on our trip we had a string of bad luck with the machines so I wanted to be proactive this year and have it serviced before going. So I went to pick my machine up Thursday night from the place that's about 45 minutes away and as I was at the end of the highway it's a traffic light just a few miles away from the house. Well I pull away from the light and I notice that my truck seemed like it was struggling to pull the trailer so I pull over and notice the trailer is leaning over big time so I thought I had a flat tire (tires are brand new) so I get out to look and I notice this.


The axle completely snapped in half. This happened at about 10:40 pm. Well of course my 1st thought was to call AAA to get a tow and little did I know that AAA doesn't cover to tow trailers. Well as it turns out almost nobody is willing to tow a trailer! Well after calling about 20 places I finally found a place willing to tow the trailer the short 3 to 4 miles away for the little sum of $275. Now this is of course after sitting broken down on the side of the road for hours. So glad it happened that close to home. Looked pretty funny having this wide ass trailer sitting on a tow truck


Well anyways we were planning on leaving at 5am but I because I got home at 3am I ended getting over to my friends house at around 6 and we got to Maine by putting my sled into my truck and pulling a utility trailer with my friends sled inside that. We ended up having a good time and both machines ran great. Left this morning and met up with Noel and his girlfriend to have a great little lunch. What at 1st seemed like a bust of a weekend ended up turning out great End of story

 

There is still snow in Maine? I am just in Southern NB and there is none here at all.

 

Sorry to hear about the trouble with the trailer, but glad that everything turned out well for the rest off the weekend.

 

That sucks Rob, well at least you had a good weekend and got to meet Noel and Noelette.
Good luck with the trailer.

 

You're the second person in a months time I've heard of that happening to. Luckily you weren't too far into the trip

 

Yes in parts of Maine. Rangeley and Jackman seem to usually get quite a bit of snow. It seems like kind of a sweet spot. Must be something to do with the terrain or something in that general area.

Thanks bud.

Yes it was nice to finally meet Noel. They are really nice people.

Wow. How did the other one work out? I have to say that it really sucks. I was stuck there for hours and it's not like I was in a remote area. I was in a city but the second you say trailer it's like they think you need a semi truck trailer towed. I will say one thing it's funny because snowmobile trailers are so wide you can see it hanging over the side of the tow truck.

 

Yikes, glad everyone is ok and it happened close to home, not on the highway.

 

Happy Monday Morning, faces!
Nice meeting you yesterday, Rob! Glad to hear that you and Doug made it back without any more disasters, haha!

She prefers usually prefers Noelina, actually.

 

Rob, almost the same thing happened to my uncle this past summer while towing his tandem jetski trailer. One of the wheels almost fell off, but not from the axle breaking, but the bearing/hub failing. It took quite a few hours for a tow truck to show up, just to tow the trailer to his house a few miles away. He has always greased/packed the bearings yearly because the trailer sees water, but now he is going to replace the whole hub/bearing every couple of years to prevent this from happening again.

Also, good morning everyone!

 

Morning all. Wow Rob that is crazy lucky that you weren't stuck in the middle of nowhere

 

enclosed motorcycle trailer, axle broke off in nj on the way back home. he had to leave it at a friend's down there, order parts, and go back and fix it

 

I'm afraid to ask, whhats an axle ggo for usually?

 

God I need sleep..Slayer kicked my ass last night

 

i don't know. i'd like to know how to prevent something like that though. i admit i haven't taken the best care of my trailer

 

Aside from preventative maintenance, there's not a lot you can do to prevent it. For my camper, I repack the bearings once a year and check everything out structurally while I'm under there. For a trailer like Rob's, you can check it all out, obviously it's rusty but there's no way to tell when the rust is too much and it's going to catastrophically fail. It can seem fine at the time, but once you start bouncing down the road, the forces put on the axle are far greater than you can replicate just give it a 'once over' in your driveway.

 

Nice meeting you guys too. We just took it easy yesterday on the way home. Here's a picture for you that looks a bit less redneck. Lol

 

Thanks guys. We were very glad it happened so close to home as well. The amount for the tow was kind of sickening for how short of a distance it was. The price for the axle might not be too bad. If it's a standard size they look to be less than $150 (axle only no hub's or bearings) but if it's a custom size it will be more of course.
Mike is right, the underside of the trailer is rusty. I had just replaced a section of the ramp for it and we are going to knock off the scale and determine the condition of the rest of the frame from there but we weren't expecting the axle to snap in half. Mike is also right there is no way to really test for how rusty the axle is. Just keep an eye on it and clean/paint on a regular basis

 

I honestly saw this set-up sitting on a trailer in Alton this week. It did not look safe!

 

What was it? A trailer sitting on top of another trailer?