Advice Needed: First Long Trailer Tow

Definitely inspect the bearings and repack. Bring one or two extra incase one goes. Bearings and lights are my only 2 concerns.

Get a spare. Even if it's used, its' worth it. I think mine was a little over $100 for new rim and tire. As said, make sure you have a fresh pack in the wheel bearings. Make sure you have some good tie down straps. If you are not going to cover the boat, you can spray some cooking spray on the deck and windshield. Washes off easy enough with soap and water, and makes it a lot easier to get the bugs off.   BKH

Also, a couple of spare light bulbs, because as I'm sure you know, bulbs go out at the worst times.

Bearings, Bearings, Bearings!!! In towing my new project home, I completely destroyed the inner bearing on one side. I was lucky. I was going about 10 miles an hour because of a wreck ahead and looked back & noticed the tire was really moving around. I quickly pulled over & pulled the wheel. The bearing was in pieces. If I had been doing 70 who knows what would have happened. I did have all of the tools needed to do the job though. Grease, hammer, screw drivers, large slip pliers, jack & lug wrench, Plastic gloves like the doctors use to keep the grease mess down, paper towels, hand cleaner, even some chocks in case you have to unhook the boat as I did. I threw in everything I could think of & was glad I did. Just be prepared & You can handle most anything that can happen. Have a great time on your trip.

Lots of Starbuck's Coffee!!!

normally the rule of thumb for a tow behind is 10-15% of trailer weight on the tongue so sounds about right, I think my 78 is around 3200LBS with trailer. If you get too light at the tongue the tail will start waggin' the dog if you know what I mean

Duckhawk....be carefull how much you pack in a boat...wieght could exceed the load the tires can handle.

I have had a lot of experiance in long haul boat tows. My '68 came from Vermont (to Houston)and my '66 came from Ohio. I then trailered both of them from Houston to Amarillo and back (about 500 miles each way) during the Rita evacuation. (When Rita was barreling in at Cat 5 levels the arrow the weathermen drew on the TV screen to show where Rita would hit, was pointed directly at my house down here on the Gulf Coast and yes, I did not leave my CCs behind - kinda makes you proud doesn't it?) (Although my GF said she'll never do that again. But I bet she will.)

Carry Fix-A-Flat, a jack, flash light, and stop every hour and feel your hubs for heating. Stop and check your tie-downs frequently - they have a way of working loose. If you have a flat do not try to fix it on the side of the highway - forget the tire and pull the boat to a safe area.

Like the others said, have your bearings repacked and replaced if needed before you begin.

If you add very much weight into the boat it will become unstable and sway back and forth and will pull you out of control - you should not use you boat as a trailer to haul things in unless you drive very very slow.

I had fun on all of my trips because of the comments I got continuously (and I made a point to not be in a hurry). Everyone loves an old CC for some reason.

Don't hurry and have fun. Don't tail gate.

Sad but true story I still think about frequently for the last 50 years (I really never got over this and I never talk about it but now seems appropriate):

A neighbor in Houston, during the early 60s was wooden boat builder of a fairly well-know high quality wooden inboard ski-boat. While pulling his boat back from the river one Sunday, a bus pulled in front of his car. He hit his brakes but his boat pushed his car into the bus. Tradgically, half his family was killed. I still miss them very much. I really don't care to bring everybody down with this story and out of respect for his family I don't feel good about talking about it but I would like to make a point that pulling a heavy load on the highway is serious business.

The problem is often not what you do, it's what some other bastard does when you least expect it.

I also don't care to hear anyone's comments about this and I will not come back to this thread - just be careful. My guess is you will have a car full of kids with you when you are towing your boat...

Any advice for trailer tie downs for my SN 2001? Right now the trailer just has a winch located in front of my crash pad. I want to add an additional tie down in the front and would like to try and use a metal "tightener" like I have seen on the front of some trailers. That being said, I am not sure how I would attach it to the 1.75" tubing my crash pad frame is made out of. Also, the "metal tighteners" (anybody know the real name of these) I found at lowes seemed too small. In addition, how to secure my transom? All I have is the lift ring back there, probably easier than it looks I guess, just wanted to make sure.

A lot of boats use a safty chain on the front instead of the turnbuckel CC likes to use, you can get a tigh down strap that goes acrros the top of the gunnel towards the rear and hooks onto the frame rails. Some use the ski platform brackets but most other boats have eyelets to attach the straps to CC's don't.

Since then I have learned not to trust bearing buddies. You need to pack the bearings by hand. The grease does not get pushed into or through the bearings it just rides around the bearing. It may help alittle but I still don't trust them.

One more thing. I packed the bearings one week before.

Another bearing story.

I bought my boat in the spring of last year. I was going to repack the bearings before I put the boat away in the fall, but I ran out of time. So I decided that I would just replace the bearings in the Spring of this year, but I kept putting it off. I kept meaning to do it, but just kept putting off. Do you ever have a feeling something bad is going to happen. Well, that was how I was feeling about one of my bearings the past few weeks, and then on my way to the river a couple of weeks ago the outer bearing went bad. Luckily I was only a couple of miles from the house. A little bit farther, and I would have been on the expressway. So I ended up replacing the brake hub drum. I would have replaced the spindle too, but I found out that you have to replace the entire axle on Ram-lin trailers in order to replace the spindle. So I broke out the emery cloth. When I did the other side, that didn't fail, I saw that the seal was bad and that the outer bearing was probably close to going bad too. And, I had to replace the brake hub drum on that side because the race wouldn't seat right.

What did I learn. Don't put off till tomorrow what you should probably do today. It's less expensive. The spindles with the grease fittings will just cause you to blow out the seal, and the grease probably never reaches the outer bearing.

if your not sure on the proper way to adjust and pack the bearings fine someone that does or pay someone to do it. it's not that hard but it doesn't take much to screw it up either and if it is then your going to have problems.
best advice I could give is check the rims for heat regularly if there warm then something is wrong, before you start jack up each side and check for play if there is any play get it fixed before you get on the road because it's sucks drinking coldies on the side of the road waiting for the tow truck especially if their not on ice yet.