Suggestion needed for pushing SNOB in driveway

[bueski]

Help:
Just brought home my first '98 SNOB last week. Trouble is, if my neighbor wasn't home, I would have been screwed. I have a 90 degree driveway where I have to unhitch and then push(under my own power) the boat into the garage. By myself it won't be doable pushing the boat up into the garage. Anybody have any suggestions on how I can push the boat back in with some kind of power dolly on my own. I've looked at those powermovers, but there 900 bucks. There has to be a cheaper way to pull this off for a lot less. If anyone has a suggestion, please let me know. Waited 17 years to get our first Nautique and it has to be garaged, so any help getting my baby into the garage would be awesome.
See ya,
Bueski

[Onthewater]

RE: Suggestion needed for pushing SNOB in driveway

How about mounting a winch inside the garage. You'd need some type of "Y" harness to go to both sides of the rear so it won't pull one way or the other while you sitting in your lawn chair in the garage with a beer in one hand, and the remote in the other.

[TylerO]

RE: Suggestion needed for pushing SNOB in driveway

Bueski

Couple of thoughts.

1) Depending on how your driveway is shaped mounting a hitch on the front of your tow rig might allow you to make the corner and give you the hp needed. Ugly but practical?

2) If onthewater's idea or 1) above don't workout, buy a used golf cart, and mount a ball on either the front or back. It would cost about the same as the powermover and you'd have another toy out of the deal :wink:

[ccskier16]

RE: Suggestion needed for pushing SNOB in driveway

Lawn tractor

[TwinTip]

RE: Suggestion needed for pushing SNOB in driveway

I needed to park my boat with the bow into the garage. Since I decided to prepare before I got the boat, I bought a winch (make sure you buy one that works on AC, not DC unless you have a DC/AC converter at home) and installed it. My driveway has a slight pitch and I thought I would need the extra power to make it into the garage.

To make a long story short, I was able to put the boat in the garage without having to use the winch so I ended up never using it. I had to test it of course. One word of advise, check the length of the steel cable that the winch comes with. I have a long driveway and the cable ended up being too short to make it all the way down. Well, I fixed that by adding a tow strap to the end of the cable. I winched the boat in up to the point that I was able to remove the strap, unwind the cable from the winch, then connect it straight to the trailer (I used a 4x4 on both tires as a wheel chock, this prevented the trailer from going back down the driveway). It was a process but worked well. Again, I did not have much use for it but it was a nice project.

Unless you have some man-power to help you every time you will store your boat, I found that a winch was the cheapest solution (about $100.00). If you are tight on space like I am, this is also the one that needs the least amount of space. I would have loved to be able to get a tractor or some other toy to put the boat into the garage. It would have been a perfect excuse for an ATV.

[97SN]

RE: Suggestion needed for pushing SNOB in driveway

Wheel dollies will be the cheapest solution. You can use a floor jack to place a wheel dollie under each trailer wheel or get a set of GoJaks which have an included jack mechanism although they're a bit more expensive. With your trailer on wheel dollies, you can spin the boat in any direction while leaving it hooked up to your tow rig. Of course this assumes you have a fairly smooth driveway surface for the smaller dollie wheels.

[M3Fan]

RE: Suggestion needed for pushing SNOB in driveway

You can't back it in with your car? is it a tandem? Of all these suggestions, besides backing it in, I like the front hitch idea. The winch or the dollies seems like too much work on a day to day basis just to put the boat in the garage.

[83sn2001]

RE: Suggestion needed for pushing SNOB in driveway

overtons item #23560