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1st Impressions of the newest Boatmate Trailer


nemalibu

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Last weekend we picked up our new VTX :yahoo: . The dealer is located 2.5 hours from home and we did a "check ride" before heading home, so we got a chance to see how the trailer performed unloading, loading, and driving a fair distance.

We ordered our VTX with a SA trailer for a number of reasons which are particular to our usage. The trailer looks great. Boatmate has added a number of standard features and thoughtful touches which we really appreciate. A few examples are: the double-wheel jack, the loading edges of the upper bunks are beveled, the guide-ons are easiallly removed with a wrench, the fenders have anti-slip pads on them, the backlit Malibu cut outs in the fender skirts, little secure holds for the wire plug and safety cables, the sealed LED lights including backup lights, and an automatic reverse brake lockout which works off the backup light circuit.

The new Boatmate trailers are shipping with Vault hubs. If these are all they are cracked up to be it will be a great thing (no maintainence - a once every 5-year inspection by the dealer). After we were on the highway for 1.5 hours we stopped to check things out. The hubs were completely cool to the touch. So far so good.

This is our first torsion axel trailer and I must say that it really does tow better. I have a direct contrast of using the exact same tow vehicle to tow this boat and my previous similar, but slightly lighter 03 Sunscape. There was noticably less reaction to bumps and dips in the road.

The disk brakes were also a big improvement over our previous drum brakes (maybe this is expected but I tend to be a "show me" kind of guy).

The system of three bunk sets is excellent. The front-most set grabs the "keel" once you are close to lined-up. Between this set and the outer set which picks up the strakes, the boat centers near perfectly without any fuss.

So far, this trailer is the best of the five I have had experience towing.

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Over all the trailer has worked well for me other than the solenoid going out. As you said it is easy to load/unload, pulls well. My solenoid did go out about 1 week from purchasing the boat with locked the brakes in reverse but after having this replaced it seemed to work well.

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I had an '06 BM SA trailer that worked well for me on my other boat. It had a few quirks namely the "plastic see through inspection caps" cracked, leaking master cyclinder. Had to replace the caps with the aluminum ones $60.00 each, but Jerry at BM was very helpful. From what I have read, BM has since started using aluminum axle caps instead. I have read in other forums that BM has had axle issues in the past with '06 and older trailers, but it was a bad run from their axle supplier which was supposedly fixed. I have read mixed reviews as far as maintenance issues are concerned, but IMO it was/is a far better trailer than my 2 previous SA trailers.

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