A warning when fitting brakes to a trailer.

Gday Boo Boo
Do you hav a photo of the problems?
Murray

gooday Boo Boo.
what a coincidence , had a phone call from a mate an his family this morning
returning from mt Dare , Cooper Pedy down the Stuart hwy . got within
20 ks from Pimba . patrol seems to be struggling towing the C/T pulls up to find
a wheel on the C/T was not turning freely. found out the electric brake magnets
had fallen off an down into the shoes and jammed the wheel . removed the brake bits and put the spare on ,off they go again . have heard of this before ??
mechpete

Boo Boo
The installer of the braked axle is the villain here, he failed to properly weld the plates on your axle in the first place, maybe he needs to carry some if not all of the blame and reimburse you for the expense incurred.
Hope all is now good.
Colin

The primary function of the plates you refer to are not to prevent rotation of the axle when braking. They have hole in the centre to locate the spring centre bolt and when the axle is centralised across the width of the trailer during construction they are welded in place primarily to prevent the axle moving sideways during operation. Sadly many trailer manufacturers fail to weld them either through forgetfulness or ignorance and if the trailer is "bulk licensed" that fault will go undetected until a problem occurs. This is particularly important on multi axle trailers where a lot of transverse loading is imposed on the axles when turning at low speeds. When reversing a tandem axle trailer on a hard lock you will see rubber left on your driveway or the marks left on your lawn as evidence of this or watch a tri-axle semi-trailer tyres screw across the road surface when tight turning. Sounds to me like the more likely cause was that your 'U' bolts were not tight.