Malone MicroSport Trailer for 2 Kayaks - Saddle Style - 13' Long - 800 lbs

Video Transcript for Malone MicroSport Trailer for 2 Boats Review and Installation

Colin: Hey everyone, it's Colin here at Etrailer. Today we're going to take a look at one of our Malone MicroSport Trailer Kits. Now in this kit you are going to get the trailer itself, as well as two Malone SaddleUp Kayak Carriers and the spare tire kit as well.Now with this trailer kit, you are going to be able to get two of your kayaks loaded and strapped down with our included straps, and get them to and from the water without really having to hassle with getting the kayaks on your roof rack. At the end of a long day on the water, probably the last thing you want to do is try to struggle with getting those heavier kayaks up on your roof, and secured for the trip home.The kayak's going to sit nicely onto the saddles. You can see the rubber part of our saddles really forms nicely to the contours of our boat on both sides, which is going to make for a nice and smooth ride, and it's going to be a lot easier to get secured. And that nice, soft rubber is really going to help protect your kayaks from any type of scratches or abrasions.Each part of our SaddleUp Carrier is going to attach to our square crossbars pretty nicely.

We're going to have two sets of bolts and wingnuts, which secure and basically sandwich the crossbar between the bottom of the saddle and the rubber-coated bracket. That rubber-coated bracket's going to help make sure it doesn't cause any damage to your crossbar.Now like I said, you are going to get a spare tire mounting kit with the trailer. It's going to consist of a mounting bracket and a spare tire, which is the exact same size of the tires that come with the trailer. We're going to have two of these threaded brackets up here. You thread them on the U bolts individually, and tighten them all the way down.

Once they get to the bottom and meet at the top, you have the option to get a padlock and put it through both of those brackets, and that's going to keep your spare tire secure, and it's going to be a great theft deterrent. You can see that U bolt goes up and makes contact with the bottom of our trailer frame right here, and then it comes up and goes out of two of your lug nut holes on the wheel.The trailer itself is going to be 13' and 3" long, however something to keep in mind is that with a kayak loaded like we have right here, we are adding an extra 2-1/2 to 3' to the back, which is something you want to keep in mind for when you're towing.Now like I said, you're not going to have to struggle with getting it on your roof. It's really at my waist-level right now, and I'm about 5'9", so I'm a little bit below average, but it's still very easy for me to get it off the carrier, into the water.Now the backs of our saddles are going to have these sleeves that go over the top of the rubber pads. That's going to help you with loading it from the back. The rubber's not going to catch onto your kayak.

You can just set it on top of these and then push it forward to the other saddle. You can see when I try to push it on that rubber, it'll move, but you definitely need to use a lot more force, whereas on those sleeves, you can just push it forward and back with ease.When securing your straps it is going to work like most kayak carriers. We're just going to have our strap sitting on top right there, and it's actually going to be a lot easier to secure our straps. We don't have to stand on our tires to reach up to our roof rack, or our running boards, we can just stay on the ground and be comfortable. When coming under the crossbar, make sure you go on the inside of each saddle where it's mounted to the crossbar of your trailer, inaudible 00:03:19 over top, and then we'll come under, making sure to stay on the inside.Now Malone's got this nice padding right here under their metal buckle.

It's going to help make sure that that metal buckle can't damage your kayak. Going to feed the strap through the slot, and then through the cam buckle, and then pull all the way through, and then pull it down. Now you can just tie off your excess.The trailer's also going to be very easy to hook up to your vehicle, and unhook. Now it does have an 800 pound weight capacity, but with our current load, we're not even coming close to touching that weight. We can still handle the trailer by ourself. It's going to be very easy to unhook. We just get our wiring, and pull it out. We can just wrap that around the tongue. We'll get our two safety chains like that, just flip the lock up with that nice, rubber handle. I can just pull it right off of my ball mount.Now at the end of a long day, probably the last thing you want to do is have to get home and unload your kayaks from your roof rack. Now with the trailer, once you have them secured, and you're at home, we can just roll it into our garage, and then it's going to be there for the next time we need it.Now we have our trailer in our garage and unloaded so we can have a closer look at it. Our crossbars are going to be 78" long, which is going to be more than enough space to get even two of your bigger kayaks loaded and secured while still keeping some space in between them. Now if you've got some smaller kayaks, you could scoot both sets of carriers over to the sides and may even be able to fit another carrier in the middle or even if you got a bike rack you maybe want to take out, you could put that in the middle as well.Something that I really like about the trailer itself is that it's an all galvanized steel construction, so it's going to be very durable. It's going to hold up a lot longer than some other trailers that have plastic components. Not going to have to worry about those smaller components wearing out sooner or breaking. This thing's going to be very sturdy and hold up a long time.Both of our trailer tires as well as our spare tire are going to be good for speeds up to 75 miles per hour, so it is going to perform great even on the highway. Now what's great about having this spare tire kit with your trailer is that you never know what's going to happen out on the road. You blow a tire out on the highway, you don't want to have to leave behind your equipment to go out and find a repair for your tire, or even try to find a new tire. You're going to be able to get this one off, replace it, and be good to go.Our steel fender's going to make sure that our tire doesn't throw any type of dirt or debris up onto our kayaks, so they're going to be clean when we get to and from our destination. We're going to have to leaf springs connected to our axle, which is going to help absorb a lot of the hard impacts that you might encounter on the road. And it's also going to do a great job of taking out as much road vibration as possible to make sure it's a smooth ride.Now I really like how easy it was to get our wiring installed. All it took was running it through the frame of our trailer, and then clipping it up in those spots to make sure that it's nice and neat. And then it's really just plug and play with these bullet connectors; you just get the connectors from the wiring, and then from the light, once you plug it in, your lights are going to be ready to go.Our LED lighting system is going to be very bright. It's going to be visible even during the day when the sun is out, and we're also going to have a light under our driver side taillight. It's going to illuminate our license plate to make sure that is visible at night. And our two amber LED side marker lights are going to be great for auxiliary safety lights.A couple of things that really stood out to me with this trailer is one, just that convenience factor of not needing to unload my kayaks at the end of the day. I can keep them strapped down on my trailer and just store the trailer itself in the garage. Then I can pull it out when I'm ready to go back out. And like I said, I also like the wiring and how easy that was to get it installed, and I really do like that all durable steel construction with the galvanized finish to help resist rust and corrosion.Well now that we've gone over those features, let's show you guys how to assemble the trailer.Now the first thing we did was we set up the frame how it's going to be put together. You might notice that we do have it upside down; we're going to put it together that way, so that it's a little bit easier to get the spring and axle assembly installed.Now the first thing we're going to do is get the brackets for our spring and axle assembly installed. These C-shaped ones are going to go on the back of our trailer, while the U-shaped ones go on the front. They're all going to bolt together the same way. You can see right here just the two holes on the frame of the trailer, the bracket sits right on top. And then we just drop a couple bolts through the bracket in the frame of the trailer. Take a couple of locknuts and thread them on. You want to make sure you're installing the locknuts on the inside of frame of the trailer. And now we'll just grab our wrench and socket, and tighten it down.Now at the front end of the tongue of our trailer, we're going to feed our wiring that's going to go all the way through the tongue and towards the frame of the trailer. How we know that we have the front end is one, there's a sticker right here, the warning sticker's going to go towards the front of the tongue. We also have that triangle set of holes right there, that also lets us know it's the front. So we're just going to let gravity do the work, and just feed the wire all the way through. Now we have it out he other end. Just going to feed it through the connecting bracket right here. Just leave it right there.Now we're going to take the bolts included in our kit . this is going to be the longest bolt of your assembly. We're just going to pull the frame, line it up inside that bracket, and because our trailer is upside down right now we're going to pick it up and then feed it through the bottom. Just like that. Now we'll get a lock washer and a locknut, and all we're going to do is hand tighten it for now.Now we have the bracket slid in. We're just going to get the carriage bolts installed on the bracket. On the inside, go flat washer, and locknut. Just like the bracket bolt, we're just going to hand tighten for now. And then repeat this for the other side. And now we'll just apply a flat washer to our bolts, and feed them through the two slots, connecting the tongue of our trailer to the frame. Go flat washer on both sides again, and then hand tighten our locknuts.With our carriage bolts, we're now going to get the center beams installed on the frame with the locknuts on the inside. Just hand tightened. Make sure you go around, and get the other six hand tightened as well. Now we're going to go around and get all the bolts tightened down. We're going to start here at the back, with the carriage bolts on these center beams in our frame, and then make our way up towards the tongue of the trailer.Now we can go ahead and assemble our spring and axle assembly. There's going to be a bolt right here, goes into the hole on our axle, and then we'll put the U bolt plate on that knob, and we'll bring our U bolts up through the bottom, and then put two locknuts on. Do our second U bolt, and now we'll just tighten everything down.Now we'll repeat this process for the other side, making sure we set the spring in the exact same formation. Now we'll set our assembly in place, making sure to get the flat part of the springs into the C brackets, and the eyeholes of our springs into the U brackets. Now we'll feed the bolts through the eyes of our springs, the locknut on, hand-tightened on both sides.Now we're ready to get our wheels installed while the frame is still upside down. We're going to take our hubcap first and slide it through the back of the wheel, like so. It'll catch on the sides. We'll put it on the axle of our trailer. And now we can get our lug nuts hand tightened. Now in a star pattern, we'll go around and tighten down all of our lug nuts, then repeat this process for the other side.Now we're going to get the light end brackets assembled. The brackets right here are going to go on the side of our trailer, and you see the big hole right there is where our light is going to go. So, just put it on the side, stick a couple bolts in there, and we'll put some locknuts on and tighten them down. On the driver side of your trailer, don't forget once you get the bolts through the slots to put your license plate holder on there as well.And now we'll plug in the wiring from the tongue of our trailer to the wiring that's going to go back to our lights. From there, just make sure you run the appropriate wires to the appropriate lights. And then don't forget to clip your wiring to the sides to make sure it stays out of the way.Now you will have a little bit left over right by the bracket which is connecting both the sides. However, make sure you don't get the two heads right here inside the tongue of the trailer. That bolt right there is to prevent them from being pulled by the other side and disconnecting your wires. But if you want, you could just grab a zip tie, put it right there, and then zip tie it up to clean it up a little bit.Now when installing the brackets on your fenders, we're just going to set it from the bottom, apply our bolts through the top, hold them there, and then apply our locknuts. And then repeat this for the other side. Now with a flathead screwdriver we're going to hold the other side of the bolt in place, and then tighten down all four bolts.Now a flat washer and a bolt, we're just going to feed it through that center hole right there, and then apply another flat washer and a locknut. And do that for both sides. Now we just tighten up all the bolts.Now on our coupler and safety chains, we'll get the safety chains installed first. We have a flat washer and the ends of our two chains on there, we'll push it up through that bracket and hold it there. Then we'll just apply a flat washer, and a locknut. Just get that threaded on there and tightened down, and now we'll tighten it down all the way. Now with our coupler, we'll just set that down and line it up with the holes. Before we install the bolts, we want to pick which side the handle goes on; doesn't necessarily matter too much, just whatever you feel more comfortable with. We'll apply the bolt through the handle, and then through the coupler. Get it all the way through, and then the other bolts, and then apply locknuts to the other side. Now we'll tighten everything down.Now we're going to start assembling our upper deck with the crossbars. The support bar's going to go one on the back end of the trailer, the other one's going to go about 48" up towards the front. Now we'll just drop our U bolts on top, bring the plate, and then we'll put two locknuts on. Once you have it set where you want it, we'll tighten everything down.Now we have one of our crossbars just sitting on top of the support bar right here. I'm going to take these brackets, it's going to go over top like so. Make sure you line up the bottom holes with the bolt all the way through, and then we'll put a locknut on there. And now with the crossbar, what we're going to do, that's going to come straight up, and the second bolt's going to sit right under it. And do this for both sides. And then we'll go around and tighten all four bolts. Now on both your crossbars, be sure that the one hole on the outside of each side of the bar is facing towards the inside of the trailer.Now our final step is going to be to get our D rings installed in those holes. I'm just going to apply a flat washer, and put the bolt through there. Now, I'm going to slide my finger in and line it up with that hole, and then start to thread it on there. Once you've gone as far as you can with your hands, what I'm going to do is a nice little trick; take a pair of needle nose pliers, we're going to feed the pliers in, and clamp down on that locknut. Get a good grip. Now we'll tighten it down. Doesn't have to be super tight, but you can see it's pretty snug. Now just repeat this step for all the other sides, and then put your end caps on.When getting your saddles installed, it's going to sit right on top of your crossbar. Just drop your included bolts through the top two holes. Then all we're going to do is take our rubber-coated bracket, bring it up, and through like so. We'll hold that in place, and then get one of the wingnuts installed. All we need to do is get it threaded up there, make sure you get that other side in, and then we'll grab our other wingnut. You also want to make sure it's even on both sides before you tighten it down all the way, and you want to make sure that it's even with the back two saddles as well. Once you've confirmed all that, just get it pretty snug, you're going to be good to go.For the spare tire, once you have the spot where you want to place it, bring the U bolt up through the bottom and through to the lug nut holes, and just tighten down your threaded brackets.Well thank you all for watching. That's going to do it for our look at the Malone MicroSport Trailer.