Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

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GrizzlyGuy
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Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

Postby GrizzlyGuy » Mon Jul 25, 2011 4:16 pm

Yesterday I was wondering why my Triton SL-8 trailer seemed to make more rattling sounds than usual while trailering, and why the ramp felt squishier than usual. I gave it an inspection and found that the aluminum and welds had failed at three points on the ramps, near where the ramps attach to the trailer body at the four pivot points on each side. You can see the four attachment points in this photo of the left ramp, and the two points in the center both failed on this ramp:

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Closeup of failed point #1:

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Closeup of failed point #2:

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Over on the right ramp, the front-most bracket cracked all the way through:

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Image

My guess is that this happened over the winter due to the loading of the extreme amount of snow we had. Here is a picture from a prior year showing how I park it next to the garage, and the snow slides down off the roof and into the left ramp (the one with two failures):

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Of course this year we had a ton more snow and you can't even see the trailer down under it all:

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The street and driveway guys did a ton of snow blowing this year, with lots of heavily compressed snow hitting the ramps at high velocity. Me thinks all of that snow lead to the aluminum and weld failures. :(

My neighbor knows a guy up the street who does aluminum welding so I'm going to see if he can fix it. If not, it might be time to replace this faithful 2003 model with a new one. At the new property I can store the trailer inside the shop or garage over winter so no worries about this happening again.
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Re: Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

Postby hemingray » Mon Jul 25, 2011 8:18 pm

Ouch!
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Re: Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

Postby ATV'er » Tue Jul 26, 2011 8:26 am

hemingray wrote:Ouch!

X2
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Re: Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

Postby GrizzlyGuy » Tue Jul 26, 2011 9:01 am

Yeah, ouch! :cry:

Hey Scott, how is your trailer holding up? Other than this problem and the original ramp arm pins having a tendency to fall out, I really like mine.
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Re: Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

Postby ATV'er » Tue Jul 26, 2011 4:24 pm

Mine is holding up good. I changed my pins to one that uses a cotter pin and I have never had a problem since.
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Re: Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

Postby Kendo » Wed Jul 27, 2011 4:26 pm

Hey Eric, I have a spool gun that welds aluminum if you want that thing fixed. Just let me know.

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Re: Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

Postby GrizzlyGuy » Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:02 am

Kendo, thanks for the offer! I just dumped the trailer off at a guy's place in town who does welding. If his work sucks I'll give you a ping!
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Re: Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

Postby hemingray » Thu Aug 18, 2011 4:30 pm

So how's the trailer now?
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Re: Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

Postby GrizzlyGuy » Mon Aug 29, 2011 7:05 pm

It's now better than new! No more ramp rattling. The welding guy really knew his stuff.
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Re: Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

Postby ATV'er » Tue Aug 30, 2011 6:16 pm

how did he fix the rattling.
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Re: Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

Postby GrizzlyGuy » Tue Aug 30, 2011 7:35 pm

I don't know exactly how he did it because he had me leave it then called me when it was all fixed up. He took both ramps off and said he had to do quite a bit of bending to get everything back where 'it ought to be'. Then he redid the welds at the broken points and might have even added another weld or two. His welds look a lot beefier than the original ones.

The only thing that seemed odd was that he reused the nyloc nuts on the ramp pivot bolts. In hang gliding that is a major no-no, we always tossed the old ones and used new ones after doing a repair, but he said not to worry about it. I'm inspecting them each time I go out and have spare nuts and bolts in the Hummer just in case he's wrong.
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Re: Big Snow Damaged My Triton SL-8

Postby hemingray » Wed Aug 31, 2011 12:05 pm

In hang gliding, I think the safety factor says "replace". I reuse nylocs provided they feel like the nylon is "biting" ok - too loose and they get replaced.

If you have time, it would be nice to see some pix of the improved welds. In a couple of your pix, it looked like the aluminum was tearing too.
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Paynes Creek 2016!

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