Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Tired of being stuck to the trailer and having to back my truck down to the durn rear axle. So whats y'alls favorite bunk slide/glide solution? I've seen a few of the commercially available glides. What y'all got?

Glad you asked as this is something I encountered 2 years ago.. Got ready to take the boat out one day and noticed that one of my bunks was rotted and the carpet, while still useable, wasn't in the best of shape.. since I had to replace my bunks I decided to go ahead and get rid of the carpet altogether. After I bought new bunks i also bought some new polymere plastic glide ons. The ones I bought are made by a company called Tie Down Engineering.. the model number for these in case your interested is 86162. and these work GREAT.... I did all the measurements and pre cuts in my garage and then installed the bunks and bunk glides the next day.. took me about 6 hours.. anyway I think they look good, they work perfectly and hopefully I'll never have to deal with this again.. My son liked them so much I ordered several sets for his pontoon boat.. again in case your interested the best price I found on these was around $42 a box from black bear sporting goods. Each one of my bunks is 16' long so a total of 32'. Took 4 boxes to do mine. I love em. Hope this helps... I've put in a bunch of pics so you can see them from just about every angle. Now just in case you don't want to take this project on, you can always use a spray lubricant on your carpeted bunks. Up until the time I decided to change out the bunks, I always usesd a product called Liquid Rollers... Just saturate your carpet with it once a month or so. Works okay, but not nearly as well as the plastic bunks.

ok, thanks for that. do you think they would fit over the existing carpet or do I have to strip the bunks down to bare wood so they will fit?

boocat wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 25, 2018 6:37 am

ok, thanks for that. do you think they would fit over the existing carpet or do I have to strip the bunks down to bare wood so they will fit?

I don't know if they would fit over the existing carpet or not but I wouldn't put them over carpet. One of the benefits of getting rid of the carpet is that carpet stays wet a long time when you pull your boat out of the lake, and that wetness can hasten rot in your bunk boards... with the plastic system bunk boards still get wet, but dry out much much faster.. Also in my case I didn't strip the carpet off.. my bunks were rotting so I just replaced the entire bunk board.

that is something to consider

Has anyone used the recycled Waterproof plastic lumber 2 x 4 for bunks and if so, is there any issues with them and the toons? Thanks, Bill

I thought of that too. and I also saw the post about the guy using pvc post sleeve but dang,, even if you can split them in half the math still didn't work but he already had one in stock, I found a 100 inch piece for $44. Also read about some guy using split rain gutter but I don't know how that turned out.. Seems kinda light weight. Trex deck stuff is a thought.

I used composite decking (1" X 5.5") and installed it on top of the new wood runners. I countersunk the bolts in the decking. It works much better than the carpet for me. The boat slides on and off much easier and the toons would cut the old carpet if it started on the trailer just a little off center. I bought the decking from Menards because they were the only local store that I could find with 20' pieces which were long enough for my 25' toons.

Been about 5 years since I did mine, but check with superslide.com. They used to sell 2 inch wide x 5 ft long scraps of their Blue Iron product. You should be able to search this forum for "Blue Iron" and find old posts. Very slick stuff and I installed it over treated lumber.

Just a word of caution....maybe....
I replaced the carpet on my old fiberglass cat trailer with the grooved plastic bunk covers.
Drove my boat 300 miles launched it and found that the plastic groves actually grooved my fiberglass hulls.
I guess the road vibration was just enough to slowly create enough friction to do damage.

I have no idea if it would bother the Aluminum but fiberglass is pretty hard stuff and it grooved ????
I would go with the solid stuff like the blue picture above.

riplipper.. thank you for the heads up.. I'm the one that posted the pics of the plastic bunk glides up near the beginning of this thread.. so far I haven't noticed any "grooving" or anything out of the ordinary.. but I'll sure keep an eye on it.. thanks again.

Roland,
Mine were pretty hard plastic with pencil thin grooves that ran the length of the whole trailer. Yours look quite a bit different than what mine were so there may be no issue.
I am taking delivery of a new boat and trailer next week. If its got the grooved hard plastic, that will be my first project to replace. I will go with
starboard sheeting probably or something similar before I take any real long road trips. Learned my lesson.

riplipper wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 24, 2018 4:32 am

Just a word of caution....maybe....
I replaced the carpet on my old fiberglass cat trailer with the grooved plastic bunk covers.
Drove my boat 300 miles launched it and found that the plastic groves actually grooved my fiberglass hulls.
I guess the road vibration was just enough to slowly create enough friction to do damage.

I have no idea if it would bother the Aluminum but fiberglass is pretty hard stuff and it grooved ????
I would go with the solid stuff like the blue picture above.

Are you sure you had your boat strapped down tightly? It would seem that for tha to happen, the boat would ahve to be moving quite a bit on the bunks.

I always strap mine down VERY tight. I am wondering if the groved plastic was a harder plastic than what I see out there today
Frankly I was shocked as hell to see the damage but I don't think you can really stop vibration no matter how tight you have it.

boocat wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 24, 2018 3:58 pm

Tired of being stuck to the trailer and having to back my truck down to the durn rear axle. So whats y'alls favorite bunk slide/glide solution? I've seen a few of the commercially available glides. What y'all got?

See what I did at http://pontoonforums.com/viewtopic.php? ... nks#p99089