The stainless steel bolt holding the wooden rudder blade to the aluminium rudder stock had corroded in place. I tried heating it up, but the thick aluminium conducts heat away really well, and the wooden blade will catch fire if too much heat is applied. So I decided to drill it out.
All the documents say that a Wanderer dinghy should be supported under the keel; not under the sides and bilge keel. Mine wasn’t supported under the keel, plus the trolley had bent (probably due to the forces putting the boat on and off the trailer before I built the ramps).
The launch trolley has bent, touching the hull
It wasn’t easy to load and unload the launch trolley from the road trailer before I replaced the suspension units, but now I needed to fix the issue.
I made some ramps to fit under the launch trolley wheels. These have a flat section so that the trolley can disengauge from the trailer, and then a ramp to lower the trolley to the ground. Made from old timber recycled from something else (look closely at the pictures to see the odd holes!) Continue reading
The torsion rubber suspension in my boat trailer was worn out. It was about 40 years old so the rubber had compressed and become hard resulting in no springing. In addition the hub bearings were noisy but hard to replace – they were ball bearing hubs with no easy way to get the old races out. So I decided to replace the lot.
I’ve got an Axminster 4″ MCB100A metal cutting bandsaw, and a wonderful bit of kit it is too! However the blade started coming off and it wasn’t obvious how to adjust it.
I took both of the wheels off – they just unbolt. The driven wheel isn’t adjustable, so it is important to ensure the back of the spigot is really clean so the wheel is correctly aligned.
The idler wheel is adjustable, but I didn’t realise this until I took it off. This is what it looks like:
The two grub screws sit on the marks on the aluminium casting between the springs. You can adjust them without removing the wheel through the two holes in the wheel, although you will need to slacken the centre fixing bolt first.
In my case I wanted the blade to sit slightly further back on the wheels, so I tightened both screws by about 1/4 turn. The blade now runs perfectly with no more jumping off.
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