Trailering question

[Timm R Oday25]

A friend bought a jet ski trailer to tow 4 kayaks at a time . He upsized the tires from 8" to 12" . This increased load rating and slowed tire rpm . I remember quite well Charles Brennans excellent treatise on tire rpm vs speed from years back .
His question was how to reduce the bouncing his trailer does going down the road at 60 or so .
I couldn't say that installing shock absorbers would do much .
The only suggestion is lighter rated leaf springs . Any other ideas ?

[Wayne Howard]

More beer in the Kayak ice chests? Back to my corner.

[Wolverine]

Can't answer about the leaf springs, but I installed a drop axle and 15" tires to replace the stock straight axle and 20" tires on the Compacs trailer and it made a huge difference in trailering.

[Charles Brennan]

Timm, Seeing as how your average jet ski weighs around 600 pounds, and your average kayak weighs around 50 pounds (times 4, for 200 pounds), your friend's trailer has springs set for 3 times the weight of the current trailer loads.

The operative words here are: Leaf springs.
Solution:
1) Un-bolt the axle U-bolts to free the leaf springs from the axle.
2) Temporarily remove the nut that holds the leafs (leaves?) together.
3) Remove the leaf spring binding strap. (At right hand side of spring, in pic below.)
4) Remove the smallest leaf spring.
5) Reassemble the leaf spring.
6) Bolt it back onto the axle and reassess on the road.
You cannot view this attachment.
If still too much bounce, replace the lower spring and remove the middle spring and check again.

Might be an extreme case, but I've seen kayak trailers that only had the top slipper spring and the other two leafs were missing.

Hope this helps,
Charles Brennan