Mangled trailer fender

[GoVols01]

Went out last weekend with ~6 friends on the new boat - 2nd outing. Asked a friend if he was good to back the boat into the water with all of us on it b/c my wife still isn't comfortable driving the new boat yet. He backed us into the water like a champ and then drove off to park the car and trailer. A few minutes later, he swings back by the ramp and says I need to come look at my trailer because he hit someone else's trailer while parking. Thankfully, the damage isn't too bad. He basically hit someone else's bunks with the front-side of the port fender as he was pulling into a parking space. The fender is not pushed up against the tire and the yellow LED light is OK as well. He offered to pay to have it fixed, but I told him not to worry about it. I shouldn't have asked him to do it - I blame myself. I simply can't get a break!

I think I can unbolt the fender and bang it back into rough shape. I can probably heat the plastic up with a heat gun and try to reshape it as well. I'll try to post a picture over the weekend.

 

[Julian]

Better than what happened to me 2-3 years ago....(hope this makes you feel a little better)

My wife and I drove separately to the marina, me towing the boat to put her in and she her car as she had to leave the lake early. I went to the ramp, she parked her car in the lot and came to help with the boat. She offered to park the trailer....and meets me at our slip.....

She gets there and says...."I hit my car with the trailer!" TWO FOR!!!! Whoops! She now refuses to park the car/trailer combo!

 

[haknslash]

Dang that sucks. Thankfully nothing too serious as it could always be worse...

 

[GoVols01]

*Update*
I was able to pull the 7 bolts off the chrome diamond plating piece and straighten it out with a rubber mallet. I then used my heat gun to heat-up the plastic molding and shape it back into place. I put it all back together and it looks pretty good. From a short distance, it looks fine. Even up close it looks OK, but you can tell there's some light cosmetic damage there. Trailer's construction is pretty simple.

 

[Matt Phillips]

Very nice on the repair.

My mom clipped another guy's roller trailer (pretty much wrecked on set of approach rollers) while parking the trailer when I was a kid. She was a wreck when she told my dad about it. Dad went up to look over the damage, and there was no way he'd be able to get his boat onto the trailer. Luckily though the guy has the same make of trailer that we had. So my pop starts yanking parts parts off our trailer to put onto the guy's. Long about the time my dad gets about 1/4 way through taking parts of this guys' trailer, he came walking up.

Although he was initially saying WTF...after my pops explained what happened, what he was doing, and that he was going to make the guys' trailer "right" out of our trailer parts. Next thing ya know, it's my dad and the other guy fixing his trailer...and he even helped get ours into enough good shape so that we could get our boat home.

Morale of the story...the guy was totally thankful we didn't leave him stranded at the ramp.

 

[scokill]

I clipped a guy's trailer and left him a note. I had to bend back a light bracket and upgraded his lights to all LEDs and upgraded his crappy twisted connectors to watertight and shrinkwrapped connectors.