An Odometer for the trailer

I think this would be an easy addition and a fun way to track how many miles are on your teardrop.

 

Yah, there's been another post on this... they have those trailer/truck meters that attach to the hub/axle that the industry has all the time..

Probably wouldn't take much to track one down and use..

 

Hubodometer

http://www.stemco.com/product/standard-hubodometer/

 

I have found that those won't work for us. They have a fixed calibration so you have to order it for your specific tire size revolutions per mile and they don't make them for tires as small as ours. However I have found the Tristar model 47000 electric hubodometer can be programmed to work. I have one and it looks pretty good. I have made a mount for it to fit on one wheel based on some measurements I got from Cary. I will try it out next week when we pick up our trailer (yay!) and I hope it works.

The mount I made requires removing the hubcap and mounting it to the wheel studs. It may need some optimization after I get the trailer home. I intend to try to make a large hole in the hubcap to go back on the wheel around the meter to cover the lug nuts again.

The one big problem I see is the meter will stick out fairly far from the wheel and may be vulnerable to whacking on things if I drive too close. As part of the optimization I am planning I will make the mount as short as I can to reduce this risk.

I will try to post a picture later if I can figure out how.

 

Here is the information on the Hubodometer I have. I bought the odometer here.
This is the mount I made for it. It requires five 1/2-20 thin locking nuts to attach it to the wheel studs after you remove the hubcap.

After we get our trailer next week, and assuming it actually mounts up, I will take more pictures.

 

After much messing around, testing, and long conversations with the manufacturer of this Hubodometer, I am giving this up as a failure. The problem with this unit is, in spite of being programmable for small tire sizes, it is really designed for large semi sized truck tires. It is accurate at low speeds, but at freeway speeds it just stops counting because at freeway speeds the RPM of a small size tire exceeds the frequency response of the electronics.

Back to the old fashioned recording of the TV odometer. Oh well.