Axel mounts bending and cracking?

I've seen a lot of pictures of stepdecks cracking right in front of the front axle. Is that common with flats as well?

 

I called up Hendrickson and got the exact part numbers for my suspension. The mounts are about $350 each everywhere but I found them for $188 with free shipping on www.finditparts.com . Never heard of the site but I seems legit so I'll order and see what happens. For that price, I'll just replace all 4 so I'll just have to clean the frame.

Does anyone know what matterial I can use as a liner that goes between the hanger and the frame?

 

What bushing are you talking about? The hanger looks like this:



The only bushing I see is in the beam end:

 

Well I took special-k's advice and repaired them over the weekend. A little time consuming but it was pretty much free. I replaced the shocks while I was there and got all new hardware so my cost was a little under $300. A local shop quoted me $2500 and probably would've taken shortcuts.

Surprisingly, the hardest part of the job was getting the bolts out of the frame. The nuts came off fine and I was able to drop the axle but the bolts had to be heated, hit with a huge hammer, and rotated at the same time. My dad and I spent a solid 5-6 hours just getting all the bolts out. There was some pitting on both surfaces but nothing major. I ended up giving it a good coat of epoxy paint and also added a polyethylene tape for a liner.

Overall I'm happy with it. For less than 7K, it's a good backup trailer. Plus I just got a backup truck so now I'm not as afraid of downtime for major repairs on my current equipment. Thanks for the suggestions guys!

Lots of dirt and corrosion:


Condition of the frame. Those bolts were a real pain to knock out, especially the ones I broke off.


Grinding:


Heating and straightening the metal:


I only had a 120V Miller 141 but I was still able to weld the crack with it after grinding a channel over it and then preheating the metal to red again right before welding. After grinding it smooth, you can't tell there was ever a crack there. I'll watch it closely once I start using it and see if it develops again. I also painted the mounts and the entire axle with some epoxy chassis paint to make it look a little nicer.