Is running a singled dually rim on a trailer a bad idea?

[Lonesome7.3]

I have this old military trailer I am making new again. One of the things I want to do is get rid of the fender well inside the cargo area. I want the sides smooth for more cargo space. I borrowed a dually rim just to move the trailer until I can get my own and I liked the huge cap it crated. As you can see on the other side of the trailer I have a conventional rim and it will not give me the room the tire needs to travel if I smoothed out the cargo area. I heard a long time back that running a single dually rim facing out like that is bad. I doubt I will ever test this trailer’s true load capacity to it limits so does it really matter if I run single dually rims that way?

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[TWeatherford]

Its supposed to run a standard SRW type rim, but you want to run a dually rim on it? Or is it supposed to run duals and you want to just run the outside dual? Either way, the engineer in me screams no, you'll be increasing the moment the bearing experiences and may cause failure. But common sense says it might be ok.

How far does this modification move the center line of the tire relative to the center line of the bearing? If it increases it 20%, its probably fine. If its 70%, maybe thats a different story.

Its probably way over engineered to begin with, and designed for constant abuse in unfriendly settings. If you do it, I'd really check how hot my bearings are after a short drive, and maybe repack them fairly often until you see how they'll do. Hopefully you'd see catastrophic failure before it happened and be able to correct the situation.

 

[Lonesome7.3]

It is a real heavy duty set up. I think for the light work I plan to use it for it should be okay.

 

[jam0o0]

trailer axles weight rating is based on the distance between the tire center line and the spring center line. if you increase that distance you decrease the axle's load capacity. so if it's a 7k axle and you only ever put 4k lbs on it then i wouldn't worry. the other option is to just get the correct width axle.

 

[Lonesome7.3]

I doubt I will ever have half this trailer load capicity in it. I would like to get a wider axle but I have already put WAY too much money in this thing as it is.

 

[jam0o0]

side note: that is the strangest trailer axle i've ever seen. raised center, stiffeners outboard of the leafs, spring under brackets with springs over the axle.

 

[Lonesome7.3]

That is why I want to keep it.

 

[gunz]

I doubt you willl ever haul enough weight to cause a problem. Just check the bearings often for excess play and I would think you would be fine with it.

 

[Lonesome7.3]

I was thinking the same thing at first. However, we might be turning that trailer into a tanker.