Homebuilt Kayak Cart

[+Monkeybrad]

It seems like more and more of us are buying canoes, kayaks and other small watercraft to integrate into our geocaching so I thought I would pass along this tip.

 

Even a lightweight kayak (Scoot's weighs 34 lbs.) is a pain to carry more than a couple of hundred yards, so I looked around and found a better way to transport our boats. There are several of these on the market, but most of them run about $100.00, so I looked at how they were made and came up with this one that you can make in less than half an hour with parts from your local home improvement store for around $30.00

 

 

Just take this little set of wheels and place on the bottom of aforementioned watercraft like so:

 

 

Then pull the straps up and attach them to anywhere convenient on your boat or just fasten them to each other over the top of the boat and you have a quick and easy way to transport you boat.

 

 

From the rear:

 

 

You can also use it to transport multiple boats if your stacking skills are up to the task:

 

 

So how do you make one of these beauties?

 

First you will need a few things:

 

1- 18" 2X4

2- 18" 2X2

2- 6" metal L brackets

2- lawnmower wheels, I used 7"

2- wheelaxle bolts (these will be with the wheels)

6- 1.5" lag bolts

1- FunNoodle (the kids swim toy)

2- bungee type straps I used 42" models

2 feet of webbing

8- 1.5" drywall screws

8- washers

6- 3" drywall screws

Some sort of heavy adhesive, I used liquid nails.

 

I picked up everything to make this at Lowe's and Walmart for about $30.00.

 

1. Center 2X2's on 2X4 base and attach with 3" screws.

2. Use lag bolts to secure metal brackets to bottom of 2X4.

3. Attach wheels to brackets using wheelaxle bolts.

4. Cut webbing to make loops to hold the bungee straps. Use 1.5" drywall screws and washers to attach them to the base. You can skip this and attach the bungees directly to the base if you like, but this method allows you access to your straps if you need them for something else, and it allows for easy replacement if one breaks. After attaching the loops fit bungee straps through them.

5. Flip the cart over and cut the FunNoodle to fit the 2X2 arms, use adhesive to attach FunNoodle pieces to the arms. At this point I also adhesived some 3mm foam to the crosspiece, but it is purely cosmetic, as was my choice of lime green noodle and yellow brackets.

 

There you go, your own Kayak Cart for around twenty bucks and less than twenty minutes of construction. You can personalize it in any way, I ended up with my pastel lemon-lime scheme because that was the only color FunNoodle I could find. For a more sedate cart us gray foam pipe insulation.

 

I hope this is helpful for some of you, my yak weighs in at about eighty pounds so I was looking for a better way to get it to the water in places that did not have a boat ramp. This works like a charm. If you place the cart about 3/4 of the way back on the boat you can get a nice balance that makes it effortless to lift and pull. The other nice thing is you can load your gear into the boat and only make one trip. Once you get to the water you can strap the cart on top of the yak, I am sure you could also build this to fold up and stow inside the boat, but I have lots of room in mine so I did not worry about that. On that same note, you can change any of the dimensions to get a custom fit for your boat. Mine was designed to handle my large sit-on-top kayak, my wife's standard kayak and our canoe. You may need to size up or down for your application.

 

I hope that some of you find this useful, there are many more elegant ways to solve this problem, but this one requires no specialized knowledge or crazy tools to construct.

[TopangaHiker]

Well done but I have one comment and a suggestion:

Comment-It's amazing how versatile tubular foam insulation is. I've used it for so many purposes other than covering exposed water pipes. Those pool noodles are the best example for sure.

 

Suggestion-Use larger diameter wheels.

Those lawn mower wheels get stuck once you're off anything other than a flat lawn. They'll get bogged down in sand and dirt especially under a load. Look for something like the wheels on jogging strollers if not small pneumatic wheels. It'll make all the difference when you get to a beach or any kind of rocky, gravely and uneven shoreline not to mention the sand or dirt paths that lead to most bodies of water.

 

The cart I have for my S.O.T. kayak has short posts that slip into the scupper holes from the bottom to hold fast to the of the hull.

Edited August 29, 2007 by TopangaHiker

[TopangaHiker]

sorry. dp

Edited August 29, 2007 by TopangaHiker

[+rock_rat]

That's a cool idea. I bet if I made it collapsible I could fit the pieces in the small compartment in the back of my kayak. Thanks for another weekend project to add to my list.

[+Isonzo Karst]

We've been carting canoes and lately kayaks around for years. I don't think your tires are nearly large enough, or the angle bracket supports sturdy enough to handle much terrain. Here's a home made cart with appropriate wheels. kayak cart

[+Monkeybrad]

We've been carting canoes and lately kayaks around for years. I don't think your tires are nearly large enough, or the angle bracket supports sturdy enough to handle much terrain. Here's a home made cart with appropriate wheels. kayak cart

 

Cool, that is a great link. I agree with you on the larger tires, but I was in a hurry and went with what Lowe's had available that day. So far the supports are holding up fine, but I haven't had to deal with any serious terrain. Thanks for the input, that is one of the reasons I posted the design here, so I could get some input and make the next generation even better. I think that next one I build will be more collapsible. This one works fine for my large SOT, but you have to strap it to the deck of Scoot's more traditional yak and it gets in the way.

[+accbd]

built this cart - breaks down and fits in the kayak - http://www.kayakfishingstuff.com/articles_...yak_Articles=38

Edited September 6, 2007 by accbd

[+Spoon!]

Thanks for sharing! I've seen some similar ideas on my local kayak forums, but this one is even easier.

 

I have to admit, my favorite part is the CJ-7 in the background of the one picture!

[+Lotho]

Even though i dont own a kayak, i have used one and must say youve got a great idea there.

[+Monkeybrad]

OK, time for an update...

 

Over time the cart has worked out pretty well, but I have run into a couple of issues. You were correct about it needing larger tires, the little ones really did bog down in the terrain. The brackets proved sturdy enough for most trips, but we found that if we loaded the cart with both yaks and all of the gear needed for a full day on the water, including big iced down cooler, they flexed too much and while they still worked it was less than optimal. So it was back to the drawing board, for version 2.0.

 

The first thing I decided was that I was going to have trouble finding "off the shelf" parts to accomplish what I really wanted, so I decided to learn how to fabricate my own parts and weld them together. This allowed me to build a much beefier frame without adding too much weight and it was something I wanted to learn how to do anyway. I reconstructed the frame from the original using a 18" piece of channel steel for the crossmember and two 9" pieces of 1/4" flat steel for the brackets. I ground the bracket ends to round the corners before using the drill press to make a 5/8" hole for the wheel axle. I then welded these pieces to the cross member to create the basic frame. I then cut two more 9" pieces of the 1/4" flat steel and drilled two 1/4" holes in each end. I welded the pieces to the top of the crossmember to mount the boat supports to. I liked using the 18" 2X2 wood pieces for the top runners from the original design so I stuck with that using 1/4" lag bolts to mount them to the metal supports. I then mounted the wheels and spot weld the bolts in place. A quick coat of left over Jeep paint, four strap mounts and some pipe insulation and it was ready to go.

 

Adding the larger pneumatic tires made a huge difference when pulling it over rough terrain and the heavier frame means I can carry much more weight. I stress tested it by loading both kayaks, the canoe, a cooler, our gear and my niece and it pulled just fine, although I would not want to pull that load up a hill. This design is about twice as heavy as my original, but most of that weight increase is in the tires. One plus is that even with the increased weight, it still floats, once again due to the tires.

 

So here are the pictures:

 

The old cart and the new cart

 

A closer shot to compare the two

 

On the little yak

 

Under the big yak, actually mounted

 

And a side view of the mounted cart, with the obligatory Jeep picture

 

I am thrilled with the way this one is working out thus far and I am glad that I finally got around to learning how to make some of this stuff in metal. Of course, this one does have some trade-offs, it took most of a day for me to fabricate and assemble the pieces and it cost more than thirty bucks to build, on the other hand it should last forever and it is a much better design, and now that I have two different models, I won't have to haul both of the boats every time.

 

I am still on the lookout for design improvements and I will keep you posted if I make any major changes. I think I really will build a folding one next time, maybe out of a lighter metal...