Triton XT trailers

[nick80lf]

Just wanted to share this one. Some know that I have a 1999ish Triton XT with topper. I bought this trailer when it was about 10 years old and have owned for almost 15 years now. The last ten years it has been stored in side but I'm pretty sure it has spent most of its life outside.

Anyway, I had always looked at the pivot bolts, they were rusty but appeared solid. When I went to load the 82 for the Honda East show i noticed the trailer tilted harder than normal. I've been dealing with lower back issues and thought it was me. When we returned from the show Larry had issues tilting the trailer and that's when I said....wait let's see why. Right away I noticed one side of the trailer was not sitting on the wishbone tongue after tilting the trailer we found this.

If you look closely you will see the pivot bolt appears to be in two pieces. In my case the bolt rusted and fractured with a small stub holding things partially together. I always assumed there was nothing in the tube but it turns out they weld an extrusion in the tube that acts as a bushing to spread the load of the bolt across more than the edge of the hole. It was sort of miserable to take this thing apart. We tried using the air hammer to remove the bolts but no dice. In the end we used a sawzall to cut the bolts and then used the air chisel to bust up the extrusion then we were able to get heat on the bushing part and drive the bolt halves out with an air hammer. The bolts were very corroded into the aluminum extrusion. Here is the largest remaining piece of the original extrusion.

[nick80lf]

I stopped by my local Triton dealer and asked if the extrusion could be purchased......no sir. So i set out to make my own. Just for the record, I'm not a professional welder and I have not done a lot of aluminum welding so please go easy on the appearance my welds.

As I thought about this project I decided it would be nice to have the ability to pump grease into the pivot to hopefully avoid this in the future. Here's what I ended up with. The shorter ones went in the wishbone tongue and the longer ones went in the deck frame.

[nick80lf]

I bolted the tongue to the trailer before i welded the new pieces in place. The pieces in the deck frame were pretty difficult to get to. I had the front of the trailer lifted as far as I could and rolled under it with a creeper. It was pretty tight quarters and nursing a bad back didn't help the situation.

For the tongue I welded one side fast on each piece and then unbolted the tongue to weld the sides closest to the plastic spacer. The reason I un-bolted it was to prevent melting the spacer.

[nick80lf]

Not sure why the one photo is upside-down.

Anyway, the trailer is finally back together now. After this ordeal I'm seriously thinking about replacing axle mounting bolts this summer as well as new coupler and coupler mounting bolts. Also bought a gallon of aluminum brightener if the weather holds out I may try to spiffy her up a little.

[snowmoer]

Nice fix!

[400brian]

I had to do some serious repair to the underside of my 90s vintage R&R two place clamshell a few years back. While I wouldn't buy anything other than an aluminum trailer, they are susceptible to cracking and failure, especially if they are overloaded or pulled over rough roads.

Good job on keeping the old trailer in the fight!

[nick80lf]

Thanks guys.

I didn't mention this part of the story but my son told me he thinks the bolt was broken by my wife. She borrowed the trailer to move some stuff for a school activity. I guess she told my son the trailer made a loud pop and asked him to look it over. Sounds like they didn't notice an issue and neglected to tell me this info. Realistically I think this failure has been in the works for quite some time.