Trailer Brake Life

[Chase4556]

Gents,
Took the boat out(Bluewave 2000SL) this weekend. Upon returning to the house, I could feel some grinding when I hit the brakes in the truck. No way my truck brake pads are gone, must be the trailer brakes. Sure enough, I have metal to metal contact on the left side. Its a venture trailer with Kodiak hydraulic surge brakes(disk brakes).


I bought this boat/trailer in April of 2018. I don't fish every weekend, and a round trip from the house to the ramp and back home is about 40 miles. Tack on 10 miles round trip to pick the boat up from storage, we are about 50 miles driven every time I take the boat out. Less if I use one of the closer ramps we sometimes go to.


My question, how much life should I expect out of these brakes. I'd say I fish less than half the weekends out of the year, but lets go with half. My rough math with the long trip to Emerald Isle added in is about 2000 miles on this trailer since new. Is that about average? I will take this time to replace them, inspect/repack bearings and all that fun, but if this is out of the norm I want to make sure I get it fixed.

[brushtrooper]

Originally Posted by Chase4556

Gents,
Took the boat out(Bluewave 2000SL) this weekend. Upon returning to the house, I could feel some grinding when I hit the brakes in the truck. No way my truck brake pads are gone, must be the trailer brakes. Sure enough, I have metal to metal contact on the left side. Its a venture trailer with Kodiak hydraulic surge brakes(disk brakes).


I bought this boat/trailer in April of 2018. I don't fish every weekend, and a round trip from the house to the ramp and back home is about 40 miles. Tack on 10 miles round trip to pick the boat up from storage, we are about 50 miles driven every time I take the boat out. Less if I use one of the closer ramps we sometimes go to.


My question, how much life should I expect out of these brakes. I'd say I fish less than half the weekends out of the year, but lets go with half. My rough math with the long trip to Emerald Isle added in is about 2000 miles on this trailer since new. Is that about average? I will take this time to replace them, inspect/repack bearings and all that fun, but if this is out of the norm I want to make sure I get it fixed.

I cant offer a mileage number but I would think they would be good for 2-3 years. Does your surge coupler work good? Does it release the brake when pulling forward. Are you putting it in salt water or fresh water. It might just be a faulty caliper that will not release completely. We get several of these in shop for repair, I am no expert by any means but those 2 things come to mind. We recently had a similar unit in the shop. Brakes,caliper and rotors were shot and needed replacement. The guy bought it local in Corpus Christi, drove in from California to get it, the parts were several weeks out. He did not want to wait that long, but wanted brakes. We installed electric brake set for 3,500k Dexter axles and installed a brake controller. Depending on your ETA for parts to come in, that might be an option. You could price check the conversion against the factory parts. It might be cheaper to buy the electric brake with drums and replace when they start to fail. Just some ideas I have for the short term. We are slowly getting into boat trailer repair work, but it will take take sometime.

[bmc4041]

Had a similar issue on our 3 year old trailer. I was kind of surprised too but after talking to a few people and found some research, sounded pretty normal. Like most issues on a trailer, mileage isn’t always the biggest factor. More often about how often it u Is dunked in saltwater, how well it is rinsed, ......

Saltwater kills them. Make sure you rinse the brakes really well after launching/loading. I just had the pads, Rotors, and calipers replaced. If I remember correctly, it was $600-$700. They do have a stainless option but is $$$.