The boat trailer spring hanger bracket seen in Figure 1 above is made of steel. Steel can often be welded to repair cracks or other damage. Your illustration does not show much detail or where there is damage, but it certainly looks like a weld could be redone to restore the part's strength.
The unique part of this spring hanger bracket is the inclusion of [unseen] welded-on hangers to mount the trailer fender (based on the OEM catalog page showing the part in full).
You can probably find a replacement part for the spring hanger bracket from generic trailer parts or other E-Z-LOADER parts. Every boat trailer using leaf springs will have a similar bracket for mounting the spring to the trailer frame. The principal variable would be the width of the trailer frame that the spring mounting bracket needs to mount onto. This part could be welded onto the undamaged portion of the original assembly.
Re-mounting the fender could also be done with some improvisation using off-the-shelf fender brackets
As can be seen in Figure 1, most of the loading on the trailer spring mouting bracket is in compression against the trailer frame member above it, along with some lateral forces from the spring acting on the bracket to move if forward or aft on the trailer frame member.
Similarly, the repaired bracket seen in Figure 2 is also being acted upon mostly by compression, and the welds really are not involved in that stress. The welds connect the mounting tangs by which the bracket is maintained on the trailer frame fore-and-aft.
itsmemagic wrote:Q1: how can a boat trailer spring be tested to determined if the spring should be replaced?
I don't know of a particularly good method for testing a boat trailer spring. I would suspect that the cost of testing would be greater than the cost of a replacement spring. On that basis, a close visual inspection of the spring is probably the best way to assess its present utility. If there is any doubt, just replace the spring.
ASIDE: in July 2004 I had the misfortune to have a trailer spring hanger bracket break during a long highway tow of my boat. However, it happened in a situation that proved to be very fortunate. There was a boat launch ramp very close by. I carefully towed the boat to the ramp, and launched the boat off the trailer. Then using a jack to support the empty trailer, I removed the cracked bracket. I then left the trailer, the boat, and my wife at the ramp, and drove to the adjacent (very small) town in the upper peninsula of Michigan, where on this Saturday afternoon I found an auto service shop that was still open. I showed the broken bracket to the guys in the shop, and asked them if they could weld it back together. They made the welds quickly, and while not particularly attractive it was good enough to get me back on the road for the next 400-miles of highway towing to get home. Curiously, my trailer is also an E-Z-LOADER, a 1992 model, and in 2004 the OEM part was still available. I order the OEM replacement part and installed it on the trailer, but I still have the repaired bracket in my trailer spare parts kit. Perhaps this says something about the method of attaching the spring to the frame as used by E-Z-LOADER.
- Fig. 2. A trailer spring hanger bracket from a 1992 E-Z-LOADER boat trailer after repair by welding.
- DSCN0907.jpeg (41.15 KiB) Viewed 2134 times
