Trailer Suspension

[Crews]

I was recently gifted this 12’ trailer. It’s got short fat pontoon boat trailer tires and 4 individual torsion axles. My recently deceased uncle hauled his 4-wheeler all over Alaska with it for decades, and even used it to haul all his stuff home to Texas. He had so much junk in it during the move that it was maxing out the torsion axles and popping tires. So he stopped somewhere along the way and had some fab shop install a “body lift”

It’s a great lil trailer with lots of sentimental value. I love highboy setups and the redundancy of tandem axles. But it’s in need of some repair. At a bare minimum the torsion axles are shot and the wheels/tires all need to be replaced. I’m not crazy about the tiny short tires. Because of axle placement, it doesn’t do too well at highway speed if it’s unloaded. And…. The whole thing just looks kinda goofy.

So I wanted to pick everyone’s brain here, and leave it as an open-ended question. If this was your trailer and you were on a limited budget, what would you do?

 

[nm.otter]

Tire life falls off a cliff when torsion axles get worn/bent. Special Trailer (ST) tires are expensive to start with, and (because they're designed for small wheel wells) they burn up fast under load.

If you're not pulling much weight, LT tires will cost less and ride better. OTOH, if you regularly overload them, they can fail in ugly and dangerous ways.

If you are pulling weight and logging a lot of miles, larger diameter wheels/tires can save quite a bit of money over time.

 

[Crews]

It may change one day if I save up the cash to buy a side by side, but for the foreseeable future it’ll be a light duty utility trailer with light loads.

I am curious if torsion axles can be rebuilt, or if it’s one of those things where you just cut them off and replace them.