#Boat trailer jack stand full

You need to be careful when drilling through metal: When the bit breaks through the back side, the tip of the bit can catch and set a piece of metal spinning or, if the metal is well anchored, wrench the drill out of your hand.Įven with the two oversize wheels, the jack will still fold away. Chucked into my 20-volt battery-powered drill, it did the job just fine. My 1/2″ drill bit was not up to the task, so I invested in a hardened metal bit at about twice the cost. The caster plate’s socket is fitted with a 1/2″ bolt, so I needed to drill a matching hole through the tube and PVC. The pipe was a bit too thick, so I used my angle grinder with an 80-grit disc to thin it down for a snug fit in the caster-plate socket. I cut a short length of it, then sawed a slot in it so I could open it up to fit around the tube. One of the forum users found a bronze pipe of the right size, and there is mild steel tubing with a 2″ outer diameter and a 1-1/2″ inner diameter, but I happened to have a piece of 1-1/2″ PVC pipe. Mine was only 1-1/2″ in diameter, so it needed a bushing to fit snugly. The Croft caster plate is built to fit a rotating 2″ jack tube. The author’s plastic-pipe adapter, with a small gap where it it split, is visible here. The caster plate is bolted to the jack-stand’s extending tube, which must be able to rotate for the wheels to pivot.

#Boat trailer jack stand full

It could have been done with a hacksaw, but it was much faster to use a grinder with a cut-off wheel, while wearing, of course, gloves, a full face shield, and ear protectors against the sparks and noise. To fit it to my existing jack stand, I had to cut off the welded-on caster wheel. I often need to move the trailer when I’m away from home, and a hand dolly isn’t easy to carry along. At $90, the kit seemed pricey, but the other option I’d considered, a two-wheeled hand dolly, costs about the same. One was especially interested in using the wheels with a light aluminum trailer that he pushes by hand across sand. Several forum users bought the Croft wheel kit. The grease fitting for the far wheel is visible on the inside of the hub. The rope coiled around the winch post is what the author uses to pull the trailer the jack-stand wheels follow on their own. The two 10″ pneumatic tires provide lots of support on soft ground. Between the wheels is a plated-steel caster plate with a 2″ socket. The plated-steel hubs have grease fittings to lubricate the axle and bushings. Croft makes a pneumatic-wheel kit with dual 10″ wheels. “Thorne,” the forum member who started the thread, discovered Croft Trailer Supply in Kansas City, Missouri, not a place I’d think of for boating gear. My jack wheels can create a lot of serious drag in grass, and they’ll dig holes in dirt when I straighten them out.Ī thread on the WoodenBoat Forum, an immensely valuable resource for me, addressed this problem. They always seem to be on grass or dirt somehow I’ve never had the luxury of paving. For years, decades really, I’ve struggled moving boat trailers around by hand.