The previous owner of my 1956, 16' Bubble had a similar problem and
solved it by replacing the axle with one from a small Nissan pickup truck
at an agency dealing with stock/ utility trailers. The vendor indicated
the leaf springs were in good shape and reused them. The trailer was
actually raised about 4 inches or about the same distance as the offset
of the original axle. After some poor luck with a name brand 225-15, 6
ply radials which lasted about two years I am now using Carlisle, 8 ply.
They are listed as 29 inches in diameter and a tight fit to get on but I
hope to get better mileage then from the radials.
The trailer had two banana skin panels, just forward of wheels on each
side that had rusted thru. To correct this I found a similar quality
aluminum at a metal fabricating shop and had them cut to about 20" in
length. They then put them in a monster 16' press to shape them or bend
them to approximate shape of a card board pattern I had made. I drilled
out the Olympic rivets holding the damaged panels to the upper side
panels and fitted the new pieces over the exists damaged panels and
under the upper body panel. I then drilled and riveted thru the old
holes. The pieces turned under about 10 inches at the bottom and I
used both pop rivets and stainless steel screws (1 inch intervals) to
attach bottom to the existing belly pan. As you know the belly pan is
shaped up to form the banana skin at the bottom edges so removing the
damaged pieces did not seem practical or desirable without creating a
larger patching job. I ground the Olympic rivets down with a small
grinder wheel in a elect. drill and delicatly smoothed them down, plus
used small hand file and even an emory board to get a reasonably smooth
rounded finish. If you look closely you can note some imperfections but
from the locale of the rivets, and after polishing the trailer, its hard
to note the difference.
Roy Lashway
'78 Argosy,'56 Bubble
WBCCI 1610 VAC
rlashway@zianet.com
web site: www.zianet.com/rlashway
(polishing report included)