Painted Trailer in Salt Water

[kgower]

At this time, we plan on putting in saltwater just this one time. Drop the boat in at the beginning of the week, pull it out at the end. May have to reconsider if became an annual trip. Our original boater order in VA was with a galvanized trailer. About 4 months into the wait, I put a 2nd deposit down with an MI dealer. Got a call about 3 months later and the VA order got canceled. The next day the MI dealer called said he a 195s in stock and that it looked like the financing was going to fall through and did we want the boat. We took it and they adjusted the price for the painted trailer.

 

[Beachbummer]

Don't sweat it, just rinse as best you can after, even on the inside! Have a great trip!

 

[Wayloncle]

Was talking to a friend about this a few weeks ago. We want to go to more Salt Water destinations with our painted trailer. While we won't be 50/50 usage, we'll be doing a couple dunks a visit a few visits a year.

His suggestion was to install washdown sprayers on the side walls of the trailer, and plumb them all back to a single "source" where you could rinse the inside with Salt-Away or similar.

I'm curious, which part of the trailer went first? Was it just the cross members, or was it the main rails?

Either way, I'm with the rest of the crew here. Go ahead and get the boat and the trailer now. Use it when you can, and just plan on that upgrade coming in a few years time. Salt won't eat the trailer faster than you can use it. You should get a year or two from it even in full time salt water dunkings.

I started noticing the inside of the rear main rails were flaking first, then the rear cross member started getting bad, the middle marker light bar fell off at one point because the screws rusted off from the inside. The main rails isn’t what eventually caused me to not trust it anymore, it was the crossmembers that got so bad I could poke a hole in it with my finger is when I said no more trailering. My brakes and such were still in decent condition, maybe because I sprayed them really good after every recovery.

I totally agree, the OP should definitely go ahead and get the boat. I bet he would get a good 4-5 years out of the trailer. I knew when I bought my boat I’d be buying a new trailer at some point. Mine was an ‘09 that I bought in 2013, I was the first owner tohave it anywhere near salt water, I wasn’t going to let the trailer decide whether I got a certain boat or not.

 

[HawaiiBreeze]

In lieu of solving the trailer issue by replacing with a galv or doing all the remedial work you might consider throwing a $100.00 at it and installing a DIY flush/rinse set up to minimize the rust attack while you consider the other solutions. At this writing, my galv trailer has been dipped in saltwater twice a day on 187 outings since November 2017. Below are photos taken at the ramp Saturday after I put the boat in the water. I'm rinsing off at one of the wash stands before parking it for the day. Some times I rinse with plain water and other times I run Salt Away through it. The corks fit the OEM holes and force the water to empty at the tongue and the back plus you can temp. cork the back and get the water to fill up the rails and then release.