On my Trailex trailer I have decided to remove the bottom of the keel trough and replace it with rollers. The rollers with brackets are available from Trailex for $48.00 apiece. John has approved of the rollers except to say that the purpose of the keel trough is to guide the keel during recovery, but the trough is made up of three separately bolted-on boards so I was able to easily leave the sides in place. The only problem is the roller brackets would force the sides out too wide as you can see here with the sides removed.
Fortunately the tops of the brackets are sloped inward so the side boards can be moved up and inward quite a bit.
Here a side board has been replaced and you can see why I could not raise the board quite to the top of the bracket--I would not have had any wood to attach the lag screw.
Still, it is high enough to move the board in so the keel cannot fall off the roller and scrape on the roller bracket. Rather than try to remove the original bolts, I sawed them off and put in 3/8" x 1 1/2" galvanized lag screws instead. (Yes there are dissimilar metals here and electrolysis is possible, but I think the only time the area will get wet is during launch and recovery. Besides, Trailex had originally used regular steel bolts here.)
The rearmost roller is mounted on slotted brackets so all I had to do was slide it up.
Also on the two rear brackets I was able to slightly bend the boards inward to bring the opening width down to the original 6 inches at the crucial rear entrance point. At the forward two rollers the width is closer to 8 inches, but as I said the sides are close enough to prevent the keel from dropping down and scraping on the bracket, and the extra width should not create a problem.
So far I am very pleased with this mod. Now the keel does not sit on wet carpet, and I can easily get at it for inspection, painting, or repairs. By rolling the boat slightly back or forward I will be able to get to every inch of the keel. I will update the post if any problems raise their ugly heads later, but for now I highly recommend this modification.