Trailer brakes?

Mar 08, 2007 21 Replies

Just worked on my boat trailer, electric brakes on 7500 lb Dexter axels with Dexter brakes. Pulled the bearings and seals, cleaned out the grease, repacked with marine bearing grease and put bearing buddies instead of the demolished dust caps.

My backing plates are easily reachable from the rear of the wheel with the wheel mounted. If I were to put on new brake backing plates I'd just place them in there drums on the wheels, bolt it all up and adjust the brake shoe adjusters so they would barely turn. Then I'd tack weld in a couple places and take everything off and weld front and back.

The shoes float quite a bit so it wouldn't have to be perfect on center, but I don't see how you could miss with the method above.

Bart D. Hull snipped-for-privacy@inficad.com Tempe, Arizona

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my Subaru Engine Conversion Check
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Tango II I'm building.

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cavelamb himself wrote:

I built my own boat trailer and used electric brakes but one thing I did to help make them last was to drill a hole into the top of each backing plate and threaded in a fitting, 2' length of hose and then a quick connect garden hose fitting. The short length of hose is fastened to the frame rail where I can get to it with the boat on. EVERY time I take the trailer out of the salt water I rinse both brakes and the outboard.

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