A little more work done today. For those who were concerned about my use of cinderblocks to hold up the front of the trailer, here is the new arrangement:
Note that the trailer is actually resting on the jack stand, and the cinderblocks are just stabilizing the trailer from wobbling. On the back (not pictured) are jack stands, as there should be.
One spring has been disconnected, to move the axle. Before I did this work, I disconnected all the brake wires so I could pull the axle out from under the trailer if I needed to. Unfortunately, the wire runs through the dang axle to the other side, and the brakes on this side are spliced off of it. In other words, unless I want to cut and splice the wire or re-run the wire through the axle, The axle is going to stay right where it is until the job is done. I really have no idea how they threaded the brake line through the axle, unless they removed the hubs or something.
Both axles are removed and the springs have been reinstalled.
Here are the new spring perches provided in the Dexter kit. They're basically just standard spring perches with bolts welded to them--literally. Bolt heads and everything. Not even, like, all-thread. The one on the right has the threaded spacers installed. These spacers butt up against the existing spring perch on the other side of the axle, to transfer load to it, since this one will not be securely welded on. These threaded spacers are the "magic" that allows the kit to work without having to weld the new perches to the axle.
Here, you can see the new spring perch on top and the old one on bottom. The spacers must be adjusted so that the new perch is within 1/32" of parallel with the old one, and so that the new perch is tight against the axle. This was easier to do than it might seem like it would be.
Now that I see how it all goes together, I have a better sense of why tack-welding the new perches in place might be good. There is nothing except the pressure of the U-bolt holding the perch in place against the axle. There's no way that the perch is going to come out, but it's not out of the question that the perch could slide laterally against the axle. I dunno. The manual says, "strongly recommend" the welds, but the lazy man in me says, "Ahh come on. Surely the U-bolts will squish it all together nice and secure." What do y'all think?
I am actually attending a welding workshop tomorrow, so I put off the question of whether I'm going to weld them or not until after I get back. No way would I trust myself to weld on new perches, but if all I was doing was tacking it on to keep it from sliding, I might give that a go. I'd still rather save myself the trouble if I could, though.