Trailer troubles

[RogerLennard]

I almost went for my first sail today. Sadly, one of the arms that holds the lighting board would not retract correctly. Consequently I couldn't slide the boat off the CLH trailer without the possibility of damaging the gelcoat with the arm.

It looks like there are a couple of brackets that are riveted onto the main box section, into which the lighting board arm retracts. The rivets in the two brackets prevent the arm from going completely in or coming out.

When I picked the boat and trailer up, Matt had to exchange the lighting board as it was not working properly. In fact the replacement one is now only showing one brake light when the brake pedal is pressed.

This is very disappointing as I would have expected the trailer company to have tested their product before passing it on to Swallow Yachts.

Has anyone else had the issue with the lighting board or arm?

Can anyone suggest the best way to sort it please?

[Graham W]

Roger,

I’m afraid that CLH have a certain notoriety for quality problems that have been extensively reported on this forum, particularly in the earlier years.  It’s disappointing that they’re still occurring but I suspect that they’re not alone among UK trailer manufacturers in having such problems.  They do things better in the USA and Australia but that doesn’t help us here.

I haven’t had problems with retracting the brackets but had one drop out on the motorway.  After that traumatic experience, I stopped using the brackets altogether and rigged up a stainless steel bracket bolted much higher up on the boat’s rudder stock.  Is it correct that the rivet protrusions are inaccessible and therefore can’t be sorted out with an angle grinder?  As a temporary measure, you could knock up a wooden bracket with bungees that could help you secure the lighting board to the back of the boat instead of to the trailer.

With lighting boards, you mostly get what you pay for.  The cheap ones use incandescent bulbs that break frequently.  More reliable boards are based on LED bulbs but often cost much more.  Also, the LED indicators sometimes don’t work correctly with older cars unless you modify them with ballast load resistors - something to do with LED’s using very little current and therefore not being recognised correctly by the car’s electronics.

By 2015, I was so hacked off with the multiple problems with my CLH trailer that I posted this https://www.swallowyachtsassociation.org/smf/index.php/topic,1151.msg8086.html#msg8086.  Every item on that list had afflicted my 2010 trailer and later that year this happened too https://www.swallowyachtsassociation.org/smf/index.php/topic,1182.msg8803.html#msg8803.  There have also been complaints about poor (or non-existent) wheel suspension, uneven tyre wear, dodgy brakes and misaligned trailer frames.

[Sea Simon]

Sorry to say...I  tend to agree with GWs general thoughts about CLH. Search this forum.

These sliding lighting arms are, imho, a dangerous bl00dy menace (even when working "properly") and how it is allowed for major trailer components to be secured to the chassis only by friction/pinch bolts astounds me, as an Engineer. Obviously, they may very easily become lethal projectiles.

This issue is not however, limited to CLH. The requirement  for these sliding arms arises from some sort of Euro "Construction  and use" type regulation, so I was told. The rear limit of the trailer must be marked/illuminated. Attachment to just the hull over hang is apparently  "not legal"?

I have never towed in Europe, and likely now never will...and I of course stand to be corrected by any experts.

When a very similar design of "Euro compliant" trailers were first introduced to my previous brand of racing dinghies, I  opted to retain my original (non-Euro) roadbase and over many years loaded on top a succession of new launching trollies. I mounted the lighting board on the rudder pintles, as is/was common on many dinghy classes.
I was advised that this satisfied insurance , UK Police, and "Euro b0ll0x" regulations?
...I never tested that theory in France tho....

Perhaps UK gets what it deserves as it might be said that perhaps we do not take trailers in general seriously  enough?

[Graham W]

I’ve used my modified lighting board bracket in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy and Greece.  I haven’t been pulled over by anyone so far, although I’ve had Italian and Greek officials comment on how beautiful my BR20 is, even when stowed on its trailer with the mast down.

The bracket is also used for attaching a telescopic stainless swim ladder.  To save weight on the lighting board attachment parts, I originally used carbon fibre rectangular tubes.  However, they were quite brittle and cracked too easily (especially when I hit anything even lightly with the lighting board) so now everything is robust stainless.

[RogerLennard]

There are many tortured souls here, who have had trailer troubles. I feel for you. All we want to do is go for a sail.

Thank you for your advice. I think I will need to drill/grind out the rivets to give the sliding arm enough room to move. The next step could be to tap the hole and put in a short machine screw that will not go too far through the hole.

[Nicky R]

It’s no help to you now, but we had a similar issue on our mersea trailer a few years ago. The threaded handles that held the arms in place seized. We eventually freed them by applying heat and lubrication, and replaced them with new ones. But until that happened, we wrapped the ends in bubble wrap while launching to protect the gel coat. It was a bit time consuming, but did at least mean we could carry on with the sailing season. We were more diligent about lubricating the replacements and didn’t have the problem again.

[Sea Simon]

. I think I will need to drill/grind out the rivets to give the sliding arm enough room to move. The next step could be to tap the hole and put in a short machine screw that will not go too far through the hole.

Imho, this is probably not worth doing, if I  correctly understand  your proposal?
1. The thin wall section won't  allow many threads to be cut (the connection will therefore be weak), and they will be very corrosion  prone. They won't  last. Hence you commonly see nuts welded onto thin box section material. At least you can grease these...
2. The chassis itself, being dip galvanised, will not be improved by cutting/drilling.
"Galvafroid paint" and similar may help, but like many Engineers/maintenance  materials it does not seem to be as good as it once was (perhaps a little like me?). It is also now very expensive. It cannot protect threads.

I contemplated drilling through and using lynch pins or similar...but see 2 above.

In the end, on the odd necessary occasions, I  removed the bent-bar clamping /pinching handles and replaced them with stainless bolts, long enough to have a free nut on the bolt stem. Well greased as they run in "galv" threads.
This allows the board rail to be pinched with the bolt, then locked off by backing down the free nut on to the captive nut on the chassis. However, you will then need to carry a shifter, no hardship for Engineers 

GWs solution is far better!

[Graham W]

I agree with Simon that the method of securing the sliding lighting board arms with pinch bolts is dangerous, as I found out to my cost on the motorway.  My main problem was that despite doing up the pinch bolts securely, one of them came undone, presumably through vibration, one sliding arm was jettisoned on to the motorway (never to be seen again and I hope that no-one hit it) and one side of my lighting board was destroyed as it was dragged some distance before I was alerted by a loud noise from the back.  It's also possible to over-tighten the pinch bolts, thus stripping the threads and rendering them useless.  And any other ways of securing the arms come with their own problems.

There are three other downsides with the sliding arm arrangement:  the lighting board isn't very visible as it is so low down.  If you're being tailgated (which happens frequently on a certain nation's, er, autoroutes), the lighting board and your lighting signals are completely invisible to the driver behind.  If you're trying to negotiate undulating and winding tracks, the lighting board catches unless you remember to retract it. And because it is so low down, it's always possible to forget the lighting board before starting to back the trailer towards the water, with soggy consequences.

So my intention until I'm pulled over and scolded for not following stupid regulations is to keep my lighting board up high, where it's much more visible and less likely to be shed, damaged or dunked.

[RogerLennard]

It seems from what people are saying that the main problem with this arrangement is that the arms slide out because the pinch bolts slacken off. My main concern at the moment is that one of the arms will neither pull out nor go all the way in. If I can sort out the rivets that are stopping the arm moving in, I can then launch the boat. This is preferable to my current position, which is sitting in the boat pretending that I am on the water.

I contacted Swallow Yachts and they have arranged for someone at the trailer company to contact me about my next move.

[Tobias L]

Here is my first post.
I am happy to participate in this forum.
It has been on my mind since I picked up the trailer and could not connect the light plug to my car a month ago.
On my trailer from C.L.M. the plug "A" of the light strip is plugged into a plug "B" on the winch stand.
Is it correct that the 13 poles of this plug "A" are not connected in the same way as the European cars expect? Because when I plug the connector "A" into my car connector "D" the rear light flashes on both sides instead of on the right and a reverse gear does not bring a reverse light.
From plug "B" on the winch stand for a second cable to the car with plug "C", but despite 13 poles it does not fit into plug "D" of the car. The pins are too thick.
Is it the case that this second cable changes the poles to the European wiring?
If so, I would just have to replace plug "C" with a new plug and simply solder the individual wires in the same place.

Has anyone had this problem or can help me in any other way?

Tobias

[Graham W]

Tobias,

That setup sounds odd to me.  Does anyone know if there is some weird new regulation that says that the cables have to be set up in this way?  I can’t imagine what purpose it would serve but perhaps someone else knows better.

My lighting board cable (10m long) plugs straight in to a 13 pin socket next to the towbar on my (German!) car, without any other plugs or cables intervening and works well.   You’ve tried plugging your lighting board cable directly in to your car socket with strange results, which suggests that at least one of your problems is a badly wired lighting board plug.  Or (less likely) a dodgy car socket.  If you can sort that out, I would try to eliminate the other extra bits, unless, of course, your cable isn’t long enough.

[Sea Simon]

Welcome Tobias, where are you?
New boat? New CLH trailer?

No towing expert, but i have some recent experience.

Two consecutive new VW Tiguans, since 2016, Golf before that.
I declined VW factory-fit very expensive towbars (they tried to flog me some semi-detachable, electrically folding piece of nonsense) offered only 13 pin "Euro" electrics (they then offer a ludicrously overpriced >7 pin adapter). so as my several trailers are UK 7 pin (confusingly  known as "12N" standard...why?..) I opted for aftermarket towbars, a Brink (UK) and a Westfalia (German). Both available with much cheaper 7 pin UK electrics.

Advert. I just remembered I still have a 2019 MK2 Tiguan towbar cluttering up my shed, if anyone wants one cheap!

There is no mistaking UK 7 v Euro 13 electric plugs/sockets.

So...IMHO...if your 13 pin trailer board dosent work properly on your (presumably?) 13 pin Euro wired car, then you may have a faulty trailer board?
Have you tried another? Assuming this is not the first thing that you have plugged in to your car?

As to the intermediate lead....I have only seen this sort of thing on larger modern trailers, where the trailer itself is hard wired (rather like a vehicle, the lights being permanently attached to the trailer itself, not on a removable lighting board) the bridging lead then jumps across from the trailer to the towing vehicle.
Is yours a 20ft or 26 ft boat trailer?

On UK 12N 7 pin, you can just use a simple extension lead for similar duties...no "adaption magic" involved...and this can be used with your standard light board on bigger/longer trailers. This is what I use.

By the way. This post is another example of why informative information in "forum signatures" is very useful.

[Llafurio]

For 13 to 7 pin conversions there are adapters available.
Plug / socket pin assignment /wiring is different for lefthand and righthand traffic vehicles and trailers. Easily fixable through opening the plug and swapping wires or pins. Instructions must be somewhere on WWW or Youtube. I think it's just one pin that has to be swapped with another.

[Ape Ears]

Tobias,

 I share your pain. If the connection from your car D, goes to the plug C, this leads to the winch post B.
Winch post B is hard wired to the orange and red LED lights on the perimeter of the trailer to make it more highly visible from the side. (in answer to Graham, hopefully reduces risk of being T-boned). Winch post B socket provides connection also to plug A to lighting board. Plug A may be connected directly to your car D.

I suspect there is a problem with the lighting board itself if it does not perform correctly when connected directly to the car. You may wish to remove the 4 screws to each light cluster on the trailer board to check the bulbs and connections, and have the trailer board next to the drivers seat as you try each of the lights. Does your dash board indicate faults ? My Skoda Yeti shows 'blown bulb' or fast blinking indicators to identify problems. There may be a compatibility issue if LEDs do not provide sufficient draw for the car electronics to trigger the lights correctly depending on your vehicle.

I suggest you try another lighting board with your vehicle to check before considering fiddling with the wiring or making any further attempts to try and rectify the situation at the risk of further problems. I inherited 'Craic' from Claus (Llafurio), and using the adaptors it was a simple case of 'plug and play' in spite of their German, Irish and English heritage.

I suggest you contact the dealer who supplied the Boat/Trailer/Lighting board at the earliest opportunity to seek to remedy the problems as you are not alone.

Kind regards,
Andrew

[Sea Simon]

As per the above posts.

"So...IMHO...if your 13 pin trailer board dosent work properly on your (presumably?) 13 pin Euro wired car, then you may have a faulty trailer board?"

The LH v RH drive issue gets my vote. Perhaps a RHD UK 13 pin trailer board? Seems likely?