Dart 15 Forums

Kevin N.Wales wrote:

Following advice from Clive Wood I got the LDC conversion kit for larger trolley tyres from LDC. I had to cut the aluminium tubing to allow for the extra tyre width. The resulting conversion works well, is a little heavier but the tyres are not so over large that they make removing the trolley difficult on launching. The trick on a sandy beach is to get the boat and trolley slightly into the water, then when you remove the wheels the boat should not sail into the distance while you are parking the trolley at the top of the beach.

Due to metal fatigue the aluminium axle snapped around the rivet holding the supporting trolley cup to the tubing. A local metal works has welded the tubing together and replaced the rivets. The job looks good but I thought aluminium was difficult to weld. Do you think this repair will last ??

George Stephen replied:

can indeed be done, but it requires special techniques. I've had some done by a local specialist firm and it has lasted for some years, showing no signs of a problem.

But if you were to look at your tiller arms, you will see a weld at the angle on each....

I think you could have saved yourself some money by buying some 1 inch (25mm probably ok) aluminium tubing from a local stockholder (look up Non-Ferrous Metals in your local Yellow Pages) and a couple of stainless steel bolts and nuts, and replacing the remains....

PS Whay width of tread do you have on these wider wheels?

Clive Wood replied:

The wheels that I got from LDC have a tread width of 15cm. The tyre has a flat rather than rounded surface profile with quite a chunky tread pattern. The wheel hub is very similar if not identical to the hub on the standard wheel i.e. red plastic. The conversion to the wider wheels only took about 20 minutes and cost something like ?70...well worthwhile!