Trailer dolly

[schmidjo]

I use a hand dolly ( *harbor freight special with 21c and can move it. (* IIRC however I did have get bigger wheels and reinforce them, the sheet metal hub/rim cracked from side loads)

We are on concrete (albiet poor) and its flat (mostly). I need grippy shoes and some rocking motion to get it going. Summary: I can move the 21c with a hand dolly but Barely.

On gravel ? maybe with two strong people? You could try it? A hand dolly is pretty cheap compared to a power valet (but keep the receipt .

[Note I did make a drill power hand dolly using a harbor freight worm gear winch (to gear it way down) and a bike chain etc... tack welded it up... It kind of worked, but needed a lot more tweaking, which I quit working on when I figured out that I could move the trailer "by hand".] IIR Traction was an issue also, any sort of slope and it was a nope.

[Escape from Dallas]

https://parkit360.ca/

We use the 5k version for our Escape 19. We park the trailer on a small downward incline. I really appreciate that it is motorized and activates the trailer brakes when not moving. Moving that much weight could be a setup for catastrophe without the brakes in my opinion. The motorized function would also be very helpful when pushing against gravel. I could not park my trailer in our narrow driveway without it.

[dfandrews]

If you like to build stuff, check out Ian's dolly.
https://www.proud-canadian.com/diy-p...#comment-83601

[Civilguy]

We need a trailer mover to jockey the trailer a short distance and tuck it in between the garage wall and a curb.

Having a heavy dual-axle trailer poses challenges. We likewise blew out one of the steel wheel rims on our inexpensive manual trailer dolly. I replaced the wheels with solid-hubbed ones. However, pushing the 21 around with the manual dolly on our aged concrete slab just plain requires more oomph than I can reliably provide.

I've been reluctant to purchase an expensive powered mover, particularly as the reviews are quite mixed, and I certainly don't want to maintain another battery as some require. I'd also prefer not to have a large unit to store in our small garage.

I've been impressed by the ratcheting-style trailer movers which are popular in Australia; Manutech, Alko, and Ark are three of the more popular manufacturers. However, after connecting with some retailers in Australia I found that shipping was on the order of $300 for the cheapest FedEx option.

Then I found that Ark markets two different ratcheting units here in the USA, the XO350R and the XO750R. The numbers represent their static load rating in kg. The 750R is dual-wheel and has the higher load rating.

eTrailer sells these too, as "Xtreme Off-Road Ratcheting Trailer Jack"s.



https://www.arkcorporation.us/produc...e-trailer-jack

The Australian market is apparently based on a ribbed 48 mm diameter shaft which appears to be used pretty much universally for attaching and readily removing trailer jacks and these ratcheting-style jack/movers.

In contrast, Ark's USA model has a square shaft and an integral bracket to attach it to the frame.

From what I see on the eTrailer reviews, the rubber wheel looks to be a wear point, and there are some plastic caps which break, but the basic performance as a sloow but sturdy trailer mover seems to satisfy users. And the price is right; under $300 USD for the 350 kg unit delivered.

However, as I don't have either the room or the inclination to attach the ratcheting jack directly to the A-frame, I'm going to have a "clever and cunning" adaptor fabricated separately by a local metal shop so I can quickly attach and detach the mover here at home.

One of the shortcomings on the Trailer Valet and Parkit and many other motorized trailer movers is that they (attempt to) connect the mover to the trailer's coupler. The coupler is designed as an articulating ball-and-socket style joint, while what is needed is a joint that can rotate horizontally while resisting moment vertically.

Kaad Engineering is one of the outfits that recognizes the inherent weakness of using the trailer's coupler as an attachment point. They provide a dedicated connector to interface between the A-frame and their trailer mover. While this connector would not be suitable for connecting to the ratcheting style, they also provide a sketch which I plan to adopt as the basis for my connector.



Although this concept connects to the coupler, the portion of the bracket which wraps around the top of the coupler would serve to resist moment in the vertical plane.

It will be a while before I'll get a chance to get an adaptor bracket fabricated so I wanted to post and see if anyone was using one of these ratcheting units and perhaps also learn how they were connecting them to their trailer.

[SageRpod]

A friend of mine has a toy hauler and was having difficulty squeezing it into a tight space. He mounted a receiver hitch to the front of his tow vehicle and jockeys the trailer into place using the front hitch setup. He says it works well. I have no experience with that arrangement but thought I would mention it.

[Civilguy]

A front hitch can be a great approach, especially if it is offset to one side so you can see down the side of the trailer as you move it.

In our case, we are located on a steep street and at a right angle to the street we have to follow a jiggy-jog path with horizontal angles which also drops very steeply vertically down from the street to a narrow flat area beside the garage. It's challenging as the views in the mirrors shift quickly and radically as one moves through all the transitions.

(I've thought about mounting a birds-eye-view camera above the garage roof so I could monitor the process on a screen on the dash. I should probably look further into that.)

Anyway, swapping safely from back to front hitches would be a bit tenuous in front of our place due to the grades. Alternately, I could perform that operation some distance from the house and "push" the trailer home. It's doable, but it would add another step to the process of stowing the trailer after a trip.

Pulling the trailer up the driveway out of storage is easy as the trailer just follows the tow vehicle through the narrow gate.

Our tongue weight runs about 450 lbs. Curt has a published 300-lb. tongue-weight limitation for the 31033 front hitch which fits our '17 Grand Cherokee.

I asked Curt if they would provide me additional information concerning the published rating. I asked if the vehicle or the hitch was the limiting factor in determining the rated capacity. I figure there's always a substantial safety factor involved. (Looking at the hitch, I strongly suspect that the vehicle sub-frame is the limiting factor.) Anyway, I promptly received the following not-very-informative reply:

"Good day Mike,
If you exceed the weight limit of the hitch you could compromise the hitch as well as the underbody of the vehicle."

Just for giggles, I followed up by asking "As ball-mounts come in various lengths, what is the allowable projection distance of the ball beyond the receiver?" and there has been no reply in over two weeks.

After studying the hitch installation instructions and various videos such as winch installation videos which show that part of the vehicle, I decided it would not be worth risking damaging the vehicle's subframe.

I was also a bit daunted by several reviewers' installation experiences. One noted:

1. The rectangular "washer" that you fish with the bolt in the box rail is too long for the rearmost mount and must be trimmed to fit. Not a show stopper, but it would have been nice to know, or been provided right sized "washers" for that portion.

2. The "washer" on the lower front support actually blocks one of the holes for fastening the splash guard back on. Again, not a show stopper, but would have been nice to know before hand. Maybe this is why Curt says putting the splash guard back on is optional.

Drilling the holes is easy. "Whallering" them out is difficult without the right tool.. They recommend a a die grinder which I did not have access. So their recommend install time of 45 mins was approximately 6 hours for me. When it was completed, it looked fine. The U-bolt tow hooks don't hold a candle to the Factory Tow Hooks. Don't know how tough they will be when needed.

Another said:

Fit perfect, only problem i had was finding someone to do it. [moving company] wouldnt just let u know. Found a shop that installs snow plows that did it. Took them 2 1/2 hours

So, yes, front hitches can be awesome. They just don't appear to be a great fit for our particular situation.

[Ron in BC]

Originally Posted by Civilguy

Having a heavy dual-axle trailer poses challenges. We likewise blew out one of the steel wheel rims on our inexpensive manual trailer dolly.

I hear you. For my Scamp 13 the manual dolly made maneuvering pretty easy. I expected moving my 19 around would be more work but I pretty quickly realized that I'd destroy the manual dolly if I persisted.

I did build an electric dolly very similar to the one shown previously. But I found theat despite a fair bit of tongue weight I got wheel spin when trying to move the tongue sideways.

I'm lucky but I managed to get on top of backing in the zig-zag path with the truck.

Good luck with your efforts, I'm sure that it'll be a well thought out solution.

Ron

[Civilguy]

Originally Posted by Ron in BC

Good luck with your efforts, I'm sure that it'll be a well thought out solution.

Thanks! And, yeah, nobody ever accused me of failing to over-think the living daylights out of things.

I'll post pics and the how'd-it-go stuff when I get the bracket fabricated and give it a trial, likely in a month or so. Hopefully it will help someone, somewhere, someday.

[Read Newman]

I was told the difference between the Parkit360º 5k vs the 10k is only a sprocket and longer chain. The 5k is selling for $1600 vs the 10k for $2400. That's a $800 difference for two parts that shouldn't cost more than $20 for the upgrade. I was looking at the Parkit, but friends of mine said that I couldn't use my own trailer balls, and if I lost one, I would have to get one from them for $50 plus shipping. The other option I was looking at was the air tug, as they use standard hitch balls, but their dolly is a bit too big and expensive for my tastes, and the Trailer valet wasn't going to cut it when I was parking in the grass or a grade. Thankfully, a family member gave me their old powercaster PC-1. She is an old bird that I have to plug in with a long extension plug, and it did the trick for a while, but the motor got damaged when I was trying to push my RV up a grade, and when I let go of the switch, the dolly started to come down at me. My brother-in-law purchased a Trax dolly, and he had good success with it as long as he had enough tongue weight. For the most part, the dolly worked great, but when he was on a grade larger than 12%, the dolly would lose traction, and the wheels would start to spin. TRAX now has a weight plate adapter much like the air tug, and he also purchased the wide tire upgrade that helped him a lot. I wish I noticed the X2 trailer mover as this thing looks like a real game changer as the price is so much better than the Valet RVR12, and it can adapt to 5th wheel and gooseneck trailers easily. I don't have a 5th wheel, but I'll have to jump for the X2 dolly if or when I do. www.traxdolly.com/trax-x2/

[Civilguy]

Originally Posted by Civilguy

I'll post pics and the how'd-it-go stuff when I get the bracket fabricated and give it a trial, likely in a month or so. Hopefully it will help someone, somewhere, someday.

Funny thing, I came home from the last trip and managed to align the trailer and tow vehicle such that I got a straighter shot through the narrow gate and tucked the trailer away brilliantly.

So, the bracket project has been on the back burner here. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up deciding I don’t need a mover after all. I do like simplifying things when possible.

[ko6dr]

I have been using the PowerCaster unit since 1996 (www.powercaster.com). I originally used it for a 29 foot trailer weighing about 6000 pounds. It does forward/reverse and has a switch for the trailer brakes. It sat dormant when we bought a 34 foot 5th wheel and I was able to back the new trailer into the hanger (the 29 ft trailer had to go in tongue first). I am now adapting it to use on my 5.0. I will post pics when it's complete.

[Ron in BC]

Welcome to the forum.

We always like to see the mods others do.

Ron