Finally figured out a way to publish a photoshow web page where those interested can see the many mods and good times we've had with our '72 Boler.

Made in Witchita, Kansas, this rig is a little different here and there. But it sure makes a great toy and has harnessed a lot of new acquaintances.

Anyway, fire up http://photoshow.comcast.net/lancemac274 for a LONG photoshow. It will take awhile to load up. There are many photos in high res.

Our 2005 winter mods were cut short because we moved, and are really busy with house remodeling projects. But we did get a new counter, sink and stove. Hope to use it soon.

Very nice Lance.

Too bad Donna won't get the full impact Got that sound working yet woman?

No And I can't view the pics at home either...DIALUP! Pictures take too long to load.

So, I'm here at work viewing....way cool Lance, you did a lot of very nice work.

I got Server not found' with FireFox.. i will try with I.E..????

ok I.E worked.. GREAT MODS and fantasic slide show!!

Great slide show. Worked ok on my Firefox. Wish I had magic working hands like you.

Lance, you are a magician with these Bolers. Super web show - and super job.

Wow, wish I could do half as good a job on ours.

Lance,

Great job on the slideshow and great job on the mods...

Somehow the word IMPRESSIVE just dosen't seem to cover it here does it?

W O W !!

Spectacular presentation!
Spectacular workmanship!
Spectacular ideas!

Did I mention - Spectacular!

Wow! Amazing job on the slide show.... and on the trailer too

Lorraine

Wow! Really enjoyed that slide show! Nice work... All of it is unique and very creative!

Lance,
That sink looks nice and deep! Where did you get it and how much did it cost? I want one!!!
Sandra

Sandra -- found the sink om Ebay for a good price. Try looking up bar sinks and find one that's 8" deep. Believe me, its a whole lot cheaper than I could find in other places.

Great slide show!
I would like to know where that campground is on the Mississippi? I wanna go there
I want your spot right next to the water. Looks like a great place to camp

Fantastic slide show. Tune was cool too Great job on the trailer

Karalyn--

That park on the Mississippi was truely one of the nicest, most restful places we stopped at on our last cross-country trip.

It is Pettibone Resort in the LaCrosse area of Wisconsin. You can check it out at www.pettiboneresort.com on the web.

Another park I would return to was Lionshead RV resort in the West Yellowstone area. I've had water that tasted good from many places, but the water in this park is truly the best I've ever tasted. They have their own artesian well there. All I can say is amazing!

We're taking off on another cross country venture in March, after a stay at the egg meet in Pahrump, NV. The park there, Terribles RV, is no slouch either, offering great spaces around their big lake, nearby gambling, and a lot of nice folks.

Thanks for all the kudos on the slideshow. It was fun to put together. I'm thinking I might try to document our next trip with more pix, and do it again.

Can't view either as my puter can't handle thttp format
Lew

Lance,

I'm a bit new to this site so this is a bit of a late response. I just saw your bolerweb. What a terrific way to view the renos! Great job on your unit! Looks fabulous!

- Miriam

GREAT slideshow. The only thing is I couldn't read the captions b/c they went by too fast
Thanks for sharing

Lance, congratulations for mods and show !

Hi Lance,

Hey - I really like your under bed storage. Can you tell me a bit more about it please? How did you construct the frame? Are there rollers or wheels on it to help it slide out?

Great job on your renos.

Adele

Lance, thanks for posting the show with lots of interesting content. Strangely, it failed to play every time I tried it before today.

Lisa, I couldn't catch some captions at first, either, but then I learned the power of the pause button (looks like "||") and the back button to repeat the last picture).

That is one unusual suspension, with a coil spring in torsion (which really means the loops of coil are bending). A coil doesn't have any inherent damping - are there shocks in this setup, Lance? I didn't see any.

Thanks for the kind responses.

Adele, the under-bed storage frame is made from 5/8" aluminum angle, available at most hardware stores or Lowes/Home Depot. I just cut "V" angles and bent to 90 degrees for the bottom and used pop rivets to fasten things together. I used furniture slides (the kind that have a peel and stick back) attached to the aluminum on the bottom. Works fine on a slick-surface floor, but you'd probably want to attach rollers if you were going over carpet.

Brian, I've been trying to find out more about this suspension ever since I got the Boler. No one seems to know anything about it. It doesn't have any dampers or shocks, but then it doesn't bounce a lot either. I'm guessing that it has tork? tubes, but I don't know how to check. It had flanges for brakes, which I added, and I put on 14" wheels and radial car tires, which have more than 5000 miles with no problems.

Well, we're off tomorrow morning for another cross-country trip in the boler, heading across the sourthern deserts, the gulf coast, florida, up the coast to Maryland and back across the midsection, hwy 40. Hope to see some of you along the way. I'll take a lot of pix and post another show later in the summer.

Thanks for the additional information. All I have is the photos, but it looks like the hubs are carried on trailing arms, which are functionally just like the arms of a rubber torsion axle system, but they happen to be made of tubing with two 90 degree bends. My guess is that it works in one of two ways:

1. The tube across the frame is fixed (doesn't rotate) and serves as an anchor for inboard end of each spring; the other (outboard) end of each spring is then attached to the arm, so for the arm to move up (compress the suspension) the spring has to wind up. The arms must then pivot in the tube. This would be completely independent, just like a rubber torsion suspension, and is essentially the same idea with steel coils instead of rubber rods.
2. the tube across the frame could be allowed to rotate in the frame brackets, with the arms rigidly fixed to it; the inboard end of each spring would then attach to this tube; the other (outboard) end of each spring is then attached the bracket on the frame, so for the arm to move up (compress the suspension and rotate the tube) both springs have to wind up. This would also be independent, because the alignment of each arm is separate, but would mean the arms are linked by a very stiff anti-sway bar, because they couldn't move different amounts without twisting the tube. This is like the linked trailing arms of many automotive rear suspensions (including my Toyota van), but with strangely mounted springs.

The way to tell which scheme is used is to make one side of the trailer move up and down enough to see the arm moving while watching the tube across the frame and the springs to see what moves with the arm. My guess is that it is design #2, and the tube will move with the arms, while the outboard end of each spring stays anchored in the bracket.

In the end, I guess all that matters is that it works, but I'm still curious.

That axle design looks VERY much like that which can be found on older Scotty trailers.

Here's a page that shows a fix for bad bushings.

Another page that has a picture of the same type of axle. Scroll down about halfway.

They are described as "Linco" axles, but I did some websearching and found just about zero on them. There is a company named Linco that does agricultural equipment; perhaps they used to also make light duty trailer axles, as well.

The axle is free to pivot in the bearing blocks, which hold one end of the spring. The other end is attached to the axle. The axle itself acts as an anti-roll bar. This setup is similar to that of a twist-beam rear axle from a front-wheel drive car, except that the spring is located coaxially with the axle - reducing the space required to package the unit. Neat! I wonder why this isn't used more often?

I wonder if replacing the automotive radial tires with trailer-specific ST tires would be a worthwhile change, as well. Conventinal wisdom says that it would, but experience is the best guide.

Great info, Lee! Looks like my #2 guess was right, confirmed by the axle rotating in bushings as shown in your first link and confirmed in your description.

I think the neat thing about this design, compared to other trailer systems, is the roll stiffness, which I think these tall (compared to cars) trailers need.


This is the same scheme used in many very small applications such as lids that a spring-loaded closed. The biggest springs I have seen used this way are the ones which counterbalance the weight of a normal sectional garage door.
I know of two reasons why it isn't used more:

1. The wire of the springs in this design is forced to bend to resist deflection, while in a conventional coil mounting (the spring is under end-to-end compression), the wire is twisted by deflection. The twising motion more efficiently uses the metal of the spring, so the conventional mounting requires a lighter spring for a given force.
2. If a coil spring is mounted near the hub in a suspension, the suspension arms (the bent-back parts of the tube in the Scotty-Linco-Lance'sBoler design) only need to locate the axle; in this setup the arms have to carry all of the weight, the anchoring bracket is under a lot of stress, and the arm pivot carries weight. The same disadvantages apply to automotive torsion bar suspensions, which is why they are now rarely used (only some 4x4 pickups in need of design updates still use them).

Hmmm... I wonder if that was intended to be a rhetorical question?

Heh. Partially rhetorical, partially not.

That make sense. I suppose you still would have to locate a shock somewhere, at least for automotive use. Not sure why you can get away without them on trailers. I know the rubber torsion axles don't need it like the metal springs do because of the design, but even conventionally-sprung trailers don't usualy have shocks.

A favourite topic of mine...

The conventional wisdom is that rubber-sprung trailer suspensions don't need shocks because the rubber is inherently self-damping due to hysteresis (some of the energy absorbed on compression is not release on extension, but instead dissipated). While that has some validity, I notice that the few cars which have been built with rubber springs (most notably the real Mini) still use hydraulic shock absorbers, and Airstream even puts shocks on their trailers with rubber torsion suspensions.

Assuming that "conventionally-sprung" means leaf springs, well, they have their own damping, too. Multi-leaf springs have friction between the leaves, which provides some (poor damping); single-leaf springs when used on trailers use a sliding mount on one end (instead of a pivoting shackle) so they have sliding friction for damping, too. In cars and light trucks, inter-leaf friction is recognized as bad, and addressed with friction-reducing layers and a minimal number of leaves.

Finally, trailers are so stiff that much of the suspension deflection occurs in the tires, which are somewhat damped. Basically, trailers "get away" without shocks because they are stiff, and aiming for a very low standard of performance. I don't think heavy trucks universally got shocks until they went to air springs; when they had many-leaf springs (now rare in except in medium-duties), inter-leaf friction was the only damping.

I certainly noticed that lack of shocks in this novel coil-spring setup. I suspect that vertical bouncing is just tolerated, side-to-side rolling motions are so severly restricted by the high roll stiffness that the suspension damping doesn't matter much compared to the tires, and the bushings that the tube turns in probably have a pile of friction, adding some damping.

Wow!!! have just gotten into the 20th century and out of dial-up so of course had to see the great blue bloer show.
wow!!
lance, if you two would like to stop on your current trip i would love to have you stay for a time. my friend denise who has an old trailer would love to find someone with your skills to help her get it on the road. she is a frequent visitor to this forum and her decorating of the trailer is fantastic. unfortunately, the basic problem seems to be the support of the flooring.
it would be so great to get the opinion of a disinterested party as to how to proceed. the rv places are too busy to bother with a little fg trailer and they have discouraged her.
Harpers ferry is a great place to visit with all the parks nearby and D.C. and Baltimore each just 60 miles away. if you are anywhere near on this trip please contact me if you can spend a day or so.

now if i can just learn how to use the smilies so they show up "in person" instead of showing up "banana banana" alice

Note to Lee --

We're out on our cross=country trip on the east coast now, and went to a campground in Florida where they had an old Scotty trailer. Checked out the axle, and it's a dead match for the one on my Boler. I'm guessing someone added a crossbar and welded on the axle sometime before the last owners had it. No trouble with the setup, so far.

Re the radial tires -- I'm up to 12,000 miles so far, and they show no wear or sidewall stress. I check them after long runs, and they are cool to the touch. So I'm not too impressed by those who think using them is a bad idea. They are about half the price of "trailer" tires.

A long run like this (about 6,500 miles when we're done) brings out new ideas for renovations. We met some folks in Savanna with a Boler who made some great doors that opened to the areas where the dinette seats are in the back from the outside. Nice touch for accessible storage. I'd like to add a reel of some sort that would bring in the electric cable. Front stabilizers would be nice. Some additional upper storage, like a shelf across the back, would be nice.

I'm still trying to figure out the banana!

Alice, before you hit reply and below where you type your message, you need to make certain the "Enable Emotiocons" check box is checked. I fixed your first post.

I am also generally unimpressed by the idea of "trailer-specific" tires; however, in the stock size it is usually difficult to find a passenger car tire with adequate load capacity. Trailer (ST) and light truck (LT) tires routinely run at higher than 35 PSI inflation pressure (if load range C or higher), while passenger car tires are generally not available in higher-pressure versions; since load capacity is fundamentally dependent on pressure, that limits car tire capacities.

Lance, can you tell us what the complete spec for the 14" car tires is, complete with load index? For instance, a "P185/70R14 87T" has a load index of "87", and a speed rating of "T".

There's certainly nothing wrong with radial tires, for just about any application. The most common recommendation I have seen in this forum is for the Goodyear Marathon, which is available only as a radial.

On the topic of helical torsion spring axles.....

I ran across this ad: http://boston.craigslist.org/for/153474185.html



I think we have a match...

It certainly does look like a match, and the ad photos are very clear. Great spotting, Lee!

Lance, I guess this slide show is not available any more. Just curious about taking a look at your modifications.
Thanks..

Oh no! Comcast quit supporting Photoshow on March 31. I had Lance's Blue Boler bookmarked, because he had the slickest A/C mod I think I've ever seen. This is the problem with hosting pictures on other sites, when they go down... we lose them here as well. I'll see if I can send Lance an e-mail too.

Thanks Donna

Donna,
Did you get a response from Lance?
His mods are too good to be lost forever in a digital black hole.

Yes I did, and he said he'd work on getting the pictures uploaded somewhere else. He was surprised so many people were looking.

Thanks to both of you.