Lightist trailer ever!

[AZ Outlaw]

Do you have any drawings or construction details you could share? I'm about to make a 2 boat trailer but my 4 cyl car has a pretty low towing capacity so it'd be good to make it as light as possible.

Thanks!

Halestorms current rig

[bill boyes]

You can always skip the trailer and go back to the old school route :-) this photo was taken last weekend at Brodenbach. As you can see many Euro teams still do it old school style :-)

How do they haul those huge Easy-Ups?

[bill boyes]

We used to haul Matts Pro J on top of my wife's Mini Van. Then one day the pit boss would not lets us into the pits with a vehicle. Race Boat or not. we had to use another racers 35 foot trailer for our little equipment that we had. The next day the jerk would not lets us drive into the pits to off load an ice chest and chairs. Needless to say we packed up and went home.
Common sense here should rule. Not all have race boat trailers and some have those huge toy haulers that take up LARGE amount of pit space. I can remember when some would put the race boat on the roof and the sleep in a tent or in the van. You know what many still do. Lets not forget about these racers.

[halestorm]

I can remember when some would put the race boat on the roof and the sleep in a tent or in the van. You know what many still do. Lets not forget about these racers.

you mean like this? (my trip to Newberg last month)...

Incidentally, the largest factor in gas milage is speed, not weight. The power needed to propel a vehicle (through air) is proportional to the cube of the velocity (v*v*v), and linear with the frontal area and drag coefficient. It is actually independent of the mass if you're moving at a constant speed. The mass only comes into play for acceleration (when you're changing your speed), and for hills, probably also for friction effects, too.

[Yellowjacket]

you mean like this? (my trip to Newberg last month)...

Incidentally, the largest factor in gas milage is speed, not weight. The power needed to propel a vehicle (through air) is proportional to the cube of the velocity (v*v*v), and linear with the frontal area and drag coefficient. It is actually independent of the mass if you're moving at a constant speed. The mass only comes into play for acceleration (when you're changing your speed), and for hills, probably also for friction effects, too.

Yup, all true, I am surprised that they do a lot of car topping in Europe, but taxes are crazy there, so there could be a real incentive to do without a trailer.

Putting a boat on the roof, as shown above really smacks the drag coefficient, as well as increases the frontal area. It's a "double whammy" so to speak. The reason is that the drag coefficient increases from around .4 to about .6 (or more) and the frontal area goes up by 25%. Net increase in aero drag from carrying a boat on the roof is going to be something on the order of 60 to 75%. That's ok if you don't want to go very fast, but if you don't want to 65 mph or more it's going to really smack down the gas mileage.

It would be a lot better to get a narrow, light trailer and tow the boat behind the car since the boat would then sit in the wake and "draft" the tow vehicle, and the aerodynamic drag increase is then pretty small. What you want is a trailer whose wheels don't stick out beyond the sides of the tow vehicle and the boat stays down in the wake of the tow vehicle. Do that and the drag will stay really low and you won't see much loss of gas mileage even if you are moving at a good clip.