Trailer tongue extension
- Thread starter Dhamil6490
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Yes, pretty easy to do. I have seen them made of wood, aluminum, and steel. My buddy and I made mine out of steel. If I had it to do over again, I would weld "ears" to the extension to stick up over top of the trailer tongue, with a hole to insert a pin to hold in place, instead of the plates bolted to the tongue. Works pretty well.
Here is a rather small pic I found of a similar extension to mine, but with the "ears" I mentioned. Hopefully you can see well enough to get the gist of it. In this picture, the trailer's tongue is toward the left, and the extension goes out to the right.
I really like this design, but I have a V shaped piece of metal welded about 6" in from the trailer (female) hitch, so I can't get the extension to mount as shown here. Looks like my design need some modification. Thanks for the photos.
I have one of these plugged into one of these to use when I need to get a couple feet farther down a ramp.
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The ramp we use is fairly shallow . I used a 2” square steel tube with 1/4” wall thickness . While heavy , the strength allows me to back the trailer up with complete confidence. The guide for the end of the extension has 5 ton swiveling caster bolted to the bottom . This keep the trailer from dragging along the ground . It has two positions. I also keep the through bolt and clip attached with a small permanently attached cable
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V-shaped metal underneath the coupler on the tongue? I had one too, it's like a rest for the tongue on the ground. Since I have the trailer jack, I just hacksawed that bit off, because the extension was worth more to me than some thing that is no longer likely to touch the ground.
Catalina 250's have an extension made for and on the trailer. Having said that: it is not long enough to launch the wing keel models at many launches. I had another 7' extension made for the truck receiver in order to get out to 6' of water depth at Bodega Bay's launch. Using a long chain wrapped around full length of extensions for safety and the hitch wheel set at lowest position to prevent drag makes system work well. Chief
For a trailer that needs an exceptionally long extension, there is often some form of third wheel mounted to the front of the trailer. We have several boats with fixed fin keels with 4.5' of draft (Impulse 21, Santana 20, J/24) in our club, and their trailers have 25' long extensions. The flimsiest wheel on the front is a trailer jack, although a beefier model. Others have a jockey wheel which pivots down from the trailer, and has a pneumatic tire. That's a pretty damn nice trailer, too. Triad Trailers seems to be a pretty good brand for building this kind of stuff into a trailer for a deep keel boat. The worst trailer, unrelated to the extension or jockey wheel issue, has a keel tray (where the bottom of the keel rests while on the trailer) that is not too much longer than the actual bottom of the keel. Every year at haulout, we have to do all kinds of crazy cranking on the bow of the boat to pull it forward and up on the bow stand, because as the boat pulls out of the water, and begins to level not with water's surface, but with the actual trailer, the dang keel tends to slide back on the tray. If it's maybe 1/2 way off, we can get it pulled forward, but I really just wish the owner would get a longer damn tray welded on during the summer when the boat is off the trailer. I've been through this with him 4 or 5 years, and each year there are no trailer modifications. I suppose I should count my blessings, as 2 years ago I shamed him into buying a new carburetor for his outboard, so now he can successfully start the motor and run it to the ramp, as opposed to the previous 3 years when we had to tow him to the ramp every time. Ahhh, he's a good guy though, and I wouldn't trade him!
Using the drop down spare tire rig is more trouble than it's worth. I just use a double wheel trailer jack at full retraction and it works fine. Keep it simple!
Chief
Chief