Broken Cross Member

Not good. That last pothole must have been a doozie.

I managed to order a replacement cross member from EZ Loader today. The website says they are working with a warehouse shipping backlog. I hope it doesn't take too long for it to get here.

This is right at the front bunk bracket. It looks like the bracket bolt put stress on the cross member. The cross member is 3" channel with "dog ears" to bolt it top/bottom to the side box frame. I think the dog ears (don't know what else to call them) are the weak point. The other side looks fine. I'm not sure why this happened. I'm thinking of beefing this connection up when I put the new cross member on.

Jacked the boat up and removed the broken part. UPS says I should have the replacement part by Thursday. That is some good news.

I may use try to use the old cross member as material to fabricate something to add some structure to those joints. Still scratching my head on that one.

Here is another view of the one that broke.

That looks like it acts a little like a drop bracket. I would imagine that is the stress point where the tabs or ears extend from the rest of the bracket. How heavy is your boat when normally loaded? Do you have a livewell that you leave full when you load the boat back onto the trailer?

JL8Jeff said:

That looks like it acts a little like a drop bracket. I would imagine that is the stress point where the tabs or ears extend from the rest of the bracket. How heavy is your boat when normally loaded? Do you have a livewell that you leave full when you load the boat back onto the trailer?

Click to expand...

The bracket in its normal form goes straight across from one outside box frame to the other.

My boat's dry weight is 750#. Outboard is 215#. In the stern is a battery, 12 gallons of gas, two elect down riggers & DR weights (maybe another 150# - 175#) . Up forward I have one group 31 battery and a trolling motor. I don't have a live well. Rods, lure boxes, PFDs and other storage is not adding much weight. I don't put the ice chest in the boat until I get to the lake.

The forward bunk bracket is mounted on this crossmember fairly close to where those tabs are cut out of the channel (shown in the OP pic). I can see how it could contribute to stressing that point of connection, particularly on rough roads. Essentially that 3" channel's strength is reduced to those two tabs (top & bottom each side).

One of the local short cuts to get to the lake is 8 miles of pretty bumpy road. I probably need to slow down.

I wish I was 100% confident of the cause. I sure don't want this to happen again.

That made me go take a look at my crossmember to see what it looked like. It just has a C bracket bolting the crossmember to the outer frame rails with a single bolt going through it. But it's a boxed crossmember vs an open sided C channel crossmember. I think my boat is listed around 425# dry weight but it has floors, sides and a center console so I'm not sure if they are included in that weight. Add around 220 for the motor and then a single battery under the console and 9 gallon tank in the rear. My boat is pretty easy to move around so it might be correct. I may look into ordering some spare C brackets and bolts to keep in the truck or boat just in case something like that happens and the bracket cracks I would be able to fix it.

I figure my whole boat & equip comes in slightly under 1200 lbs.

I reviewed the mfg info again and they are pretty adamant that maximum pressure be on the bunk at the transom. I thought I had done that but now think I had too much weight on that forward bunk bracket. I'm kind of embarrassed to be honest. I'll get it right this time.

Getting the spare parts is a good idea. Usually, having the spare part means you never need it! Haha.