Axle / spring travel quesiton

[sschevel]

Using a heavy duty HF trailer;

I placed a 2,000# axle on top of the springs (axle curve up) and cut a notch of the spring holder.

Here is the problem. I see on the builds where others have cut the notch but, the new axle is 1/2 inch taller than the stock axle. This means I lose 1/2 of travel from the top of the axle to the bottom of the frame.

Unloaded there is 1 and 1/2 inch travel space from the top of the axle to the frame.

Does anyone know how much travel the builders have on the stock axle after building the tear? Meaning that I would have 1/2 inch less.

I am not overly concerned if it bottoms out, but I do not want it to bottom all the time. Only option I can see at the moment is to weld extension on the spring mount and drill a new hold for the spring bolt which I do not want to do.

Comments or suggestions?

[eamarquardt]

You should be concered about bottoming out. A friend has a trailer that is/was undersprung. It kept bottoming out and now the frame is bent right where the axle kept hitting it.

Without seeing all your springs, hangers, etc one can't say for sure what the problem is, but I'd guess that you might need new spring hangers, springs, shackles to get a reasonable amount of travel and proper clearance between your axle and frame.

Post some good pics and maybe more and better ideas will be forthcoming.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Gus

[dh]

Ya, bottoming out is never good. Ever notice on vehicles they have rubber pads to cushon a "bottom out"?

I recently had a trailer in the my shop, it kept bottoming out, but the owner didn't want to pay up for new springs, so I did an axle flip on it and under sprung it.

[sschevel]

You can see the spring, axle, and mount in my album.

When you say that someone had a trailer bottoming out and it bent the trailer, the first thing I would want to know is just how heavy the trailer was on that frame. That would be interesting even for a HF trailer. If you bent a HF trailer at the axle that would be bending 1 "C" channel welded to 1 angle iron, bolted to another "C" channel not counting the floor of the tear itself.

Anyway to my build. From the photos I have seen in the Benroy plans coming from a 5X8 bolt together Red trailer. The Benroy does not show the axle on the frame but it does say that they moved the axle above the springs and cut the notches so the axle has clearance. It just does not say what that clearance is. Which leads me to my question. What is the travel with this setup?
I doubt the Red trailer axle is going to be much different than the axle I have now (an axle out of a carry on trailer). My axle is only 1/2 inch taller than the HF stock axle.
The springs appear to have more arch in them compared to the carry on springs leaving me to welding say an inch extension on the spring hangers to go from 1 and 1/2 inch travel to 2 and 1/2 inch travel. Does this sound reasonable?

[eamarquardt]

The bent frame started life as a pop up tent trailer and was later converted to a teardrop. Not sure what the weight of the tear is but it's not, IMHO, grossly overbuilt (meaning lots of extra unneeded wieght). Tent trailer frames are not that stout to begin with and the repeated pounding eventually took a toll.

I looked at your pics and have a couple of thoughts. first is that you have channel that your springs are attached to. Usually there are just brackets at each end of the springs so you lost a lot of clearance but made up for it by cutting the notches.

Second is I don't see any shackels. Shackes provide a bit of lift that would give you more clearance. Here's a pic of what a typical set up looks like. I welded the hangers to angle iron and will bolt the assembly in place after the trailer is completed and loaded. That way I'll get the balance I want.



Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Gus

[sschevel]

Gus,
Thanks for the reply and your observations are correct except for the shackles.

The type of spring with this trailer kit uses what I could call a floating end and no shackle. Someone might correct my term but that is ok. One end is fixed and the other end just has a curve or hook bent into it. The bolt only keeps the hooked end from coming away from the trailer and the curve floats against the bottom of the trailer and can slide forward and backward. The shackles do the same thing allowing the spring some forward and backward movement as the load and unload.

At this point I think I may simply just purchase new axle plates as I have no way to cut the old ones off, then as carefully as I can weld them to the top of the axle, then move the axle to the bottom of the springs. In doing so my trailer is going to move upwards about 4 inches (unloaded of course). Once built I might suspect that the trailer will drop / settle down on the springs (I'd just guess perhaps an inch?). So really the overall height of the trailer 3 inches taller should not even be a concern.

To get the new plates on the top of the axle and in the correct position, I think I'll squeeze them in between the U bolts now, tack them, then take it apart to finish the weld.

Again thanks for the thoughts and ideas. If you need a photo of the curved spring end, let me know!

Guy