My New Trolley

So here's my latest attempt at making a kayak trolley. After talking with my Dad, he shared the idea of making one small enough that it could be stored with the kayak at all times to facilitate moving it around - in the truck, on the rack, etc. Only time it would be off the trolley would be in the water. I also thought about how I could take it with me in the hatch as my brother mentioned - in case of a portage or a long walk from the truck to the launch site.

So here's my latest attempt. It is made of 1/2" PVC pipe and is similar design to my previous, larger trolley. The wheels are smaller (6" lawn mower wheels) and the overall size is smaller as you can see from the beer can next to it.

Even fully assembled, it is small enough to fit in the back hatch of my Prijon without any issue... though it doesn't leave a whole lot of space for anything else. For this reason, I thought I would try to use a pipe coupling. This coupling mounted in the middle of the one cross piece, allows the trolley to be broken in half. This should make it a little easier to store... will need to see how much structural loss there is due to this coupling or if it tends to spin at all.



Finally, I wanted to include a picture of the axle that I have used. Just a 1/2" tee with a 7/16" washer Gorilla glued to one side. Drilled a hole out the other side and used a 1/2"x4.5" hex bolt and a self-locking nylon nut. Not pretty, but it does seem to work.



I need to do some trial runs with this set-up, but I think it will work pretty well - worked around my basement floor without any problem. Not sure that I would put my $4000 fiberglass kayak on it, but if I had that kind of do-re-mi, I wouldn't be making these things out of PVC on my garage floor.

Total cost: ~$20 (40% wheels, 20% hardware, 40% PVC)

So here it is, the maiden voyage of my PVC kayak cart. Managed to make it from the basement to the driveway, which was the intended usage.

I glued many of the joints, trying to keep some of them 'loose' to allow me to disassemble it and fit it in my hatch (if I ever wanted or needed to do so). Unfortunately, the loose fittings allowed too much play and the PVC shifted and caused the cart to semi-collapse on itself during use. Not good.

So I glued up the remaining joints and now it is plenty strong. No collapsing issues any more - no fitting in the hatch either (but that isn't my main concern). I have seen other creators use special pin/clips that are available at Lowes, but they were about $4 each and not worth the cost and effort to implement for my usage.

My brother showed me an example of a tiny little cart that appears to fit further back toward the point of the kayak. It was only 5"x10", which would easily fit in most hatches and was a specifically molded unit. Very neat! I am going to think about how to create one using readily available materials (Lowe's or Home Depot).