Re: Boat loading crooked
I have a few thoughts: 1) It's not worth the effort to try and readjust the bunks with the boat still on the trailer, jack or no jack. Go ahead, bite the bullet, and float your boat at the ramp so you can work on the trailer in the parking lot. It's just so much easier.
2) Go ahead and buy the nuts, bolts and washers you will need to replace; then buy at least 25% more. Many folks go into this sort of job thinking that they'll just reuse their old hardware but I learned the hard way: it's a lot easier to cut off the old hardware and just replace it. You will waste a tremendous amount of time trying to undo rusty hardware and then you will still have old nasty hardware. You can do better. And of course buy the extra 25% because once you've put your boat in the water, you won't want to leave the site for any reason. Better to have half a dozen too many bolts than be shy one.
3) If you're going to go to the trouble of replacing the hardware on one side, why not do both? Just replace the hardware on the last bunk one piece at a time rather than removing the whole bunk. Then you won't have to make any adjustments. You end up with all new hardware with no weak side. My experience doing this suggested that 3/4 of the total time spent was on getting the first bunk swapped out and adjusted. Replacing the nuts and bolts on the second bunk only took a little while longer.
Let us know how you resolve this, however you decide to go. We'd like to hear about it... it's how we all learn.
