As some of you know, I recently purchased my first boat. One of my criteria was that this boat needed to fit into my garage straight up so that we could still keep one of our vehicles in there, too. I found the boat and it fit, but it was a very tight fit. Remove the transom saver, tilt the motor down, and lots of jostling around to get it in there just right. Now, the last thing I want to do when I get home at 1:00 or 2:00 am is to mess around fitting the boat in the garage, so I decided to do something about it.
I purchased a folding tongue/coupler kit made by Fulton. This kit included the hinge, a new front section of tongue tubing, a coupler, new extra-longe saftey chains (the chains need to attach to the non-hinged part of the trailer), and all the required hardware. Alternatively, you can buy the hinge alone. The kit allows you to shorten your trailer by up to 21″.
Since this past Sunday was pretty crappy, I decided to start on the project. First step was cutting off the old tongue and coupler. A bit daunting, yes, but things went well. I got my wiring harness out of the way, clamped on the template that comes with the kit, and went to work with the Sawzall. With the old tongue off, it was a matter of drilling holes. The template makes sure that your holes are in the right spot. You start off at 1/4″, then enlarge to 3/8″, and finally finish them off at 1/2″. Lots of WD40 is your friend here. I would recommend using a corded drill. I didn’t have one that could handle 1/2″ bits, so I was stuck with a cordless. I went through 5 batteries in drilling the 8 required holes.
With the hard part behind me, I called it a day.
Monday, I set to work to finish the project. In installed the hinge with the appropriate hardware. The bolts need to be torqued to 100 ft/lbs, so a torque wrench is required. I found that you can get one on loan from O’Reilly Auto, which is about 1/2 mile from our house, so that worked out well. With the connections properly torqued, the hinged is connected with a bolt on one side and a removable pin on the other. The bolt is secured with supplied nut and torqued to 35 ft/lbs. Once secured, the coupler is attached to the front of the tongue, and those bolts are torqued to 35 ft/lbs.
That completed the bulk of the work. I then set about finishing my wiring. I soldered my connections and secured the ground wire to the trailer frame. After confirming that all of the lights functioned properly, I shrink-wrapped the connections, enclosed the wiring in some flexible plastic casing, and threaded the plug through the proper channel.
All in all, I would estimate that the entire project took me about 3 hours. It is pretty straight-forward (the instructions are great), and I think anyone that is somewhat handy could tackle to project. I have not towed it yet, but I have not heard any complaints from people who have this hinge on their trailer.
Please feel free to ask any questions. I am very happy with the way this job turned out. I will post a few pictures this evening–it was dark when I wrapped it up yesterday, so I didn’t get to take any photos.
