Trailer - Steel thickness

[szymek]

I'm getting a trailer made for my Catalina 25.

Beam: 8'
Draft: 4'
Displacement: Catalina states 4550 lbs. Although one club member checked the actual weight and with standard equipment got approx 5500 lbs.

I've decided to go with tandem 5500lbs leaf spring axles. I was considering trying torflex (torsion) but after doing some reading I'll just stick with leaf spring.

My questions is about steel thickness. The guy that will build it for me recommended to go with 2x6 frame and 2x4 cross members. 1/8 thickness. Do you guys think 1/8 is enough or should i go with 3/16? He told me that 1/8 is perfectly sufficient (given size of the frame and cross members). Let me know whether it's worth paying for bit more steel and go with 3/16 or maybe i should just stick with 1/8.

[bobconnie]

Personaly, I think both the steel and the axels your talking about are to light! I would use 3/16 for the steel and at least 6500 lb axels and spring sets ! When it comes to road trailors a little overboard is a good thing !! Thats your baby your talking about !! Just my ideas after bilding things like this for a LONG time

[Cormorant]

I've got 5" C channel (X 1.75" X 3/16") for both the longitudinals and the crossbeams on my trailer. 30 feet long and 6'8" wide. Two 3500 lb galvanized torsion axles. Has held up well for 9 years so far hauling our 5000 lb. boat hither and yon. . . .

Actually the trailer is a 20' X 6'8" rectangle, with two crossbeams equally spaced, and a 3" box beam out the center front to the coupler, and that box beam is braced by a long triangle of 5" C channel, leaving maybe 4 feet of box beam only.

But all my scantlings were sort of guesstimated. I did look up some engineering formulas at the time I was building it, to try to figure yield stresses and things like that, but I probably only learned enough to become dangerous.

As Bob says, better to err on the side of a little overbuilt than a little under.

[szymek]

Looking at the trailer onlime and what I see at the Marina, this trailr will ne overbuilt. I decided to go with 3/16 steel.