driveway gate question
 

The home I purchased last year has a garage in the backyard. There is a concrete driveway leading to it from the main house. There is a double door gate that is basically a farm style pipe frame structure ( 1 1/4 diameter ). The gates swing on the vertical pipe on the ends. The top hinge is just the pipe wrapped by a clamp if you will that is a little larger than the vertical pipe. The bottom pivot which really carries all the weight is the same type of clamp but all the weight of the door rides on the bottom horizontal bar and it sits on the bracket. So every time you swing the door open/closed the friction of the horizontal bar scrapes/digs onto the bracket. I hope that description makes sense. Adding to the problem is all the wood on the gates, way too much in my opinion. So I want to do two things. Remove the wood and replace with something lighter I have no problem/questions about this. What I do have a question about is how can I add a bearing or similiar so the gate really pivots on something made to pivot ? My thoughts were add a big washer to the top of the bottom bracket, this would provide a larger flat surface and maybe use a small lazy Suzan type bearing ? Any ideas are appreciated. The doors currently are just a pain in the a$$ to open/close because of the poor pivot/hinge system currently in place.

I helped my dad fab a gate made out of trees that probably weighed in the neighborhood of 1000-1200 lbs when it was hung. Big T gate like you find out in the country. He had some brackets fabbed and mounted some wheel bearings we picked up at the junkyard. That gate swung so easily it was incredible. Only problem was you tended to forget how much momentum it had. If you weren't careful it'd knock you over.
The bearings sat at the bottom and top of the T on the brackets that were attached to the post. Very simple design that worked great in IMHO.

There are all kinds of thrust bearings that would work. You might try drilling and tapping for a zerk/grease fitting first.

thrust bearing - Google Search

If the driveway is flat, you could put a caster on the bottom of each gate at the end so most of the weight would be supported there.

Since most casters have four holes for mounting, you would need to get creative in the way you attach it, but that shouldn't be too difficult.

Well, well, well... just did a search and it looks like someone has made things easy for ya:
Gate Casters - Caster City

I had a single, full-width steel driveway gate and the hinge was just a collar/axle setup with grease in it. No trouble in 18 years of ownership. A bearing is nice, but it's overkill.

I was planning on installing casters I should have mentioned that. Lowes has gate casters that will work fine. I am probably over engineering/thinking this but that's how I do things. I try to make everything last at least a 100 years :D

No, dude, you HAVE to do this:

http://www.automaticsolutions.com.au...-hinge-top.jpg

http://www.automaticsolutions.com.au...nge-bottom.jpg

I like it Milt ! "just a collar/axle setup with grease in it" -is- a bearing. ...just not a ball, or roller bearing.

rfuerst911sc - Maybe you have some old rear wheel bearings out of the SC? --those would do the trick.

Also, don't forget wind loading. That is, if you go for 'light structure' it had better let wind pass thru.

Milt those are sweet :D. I think what I'm going to do is bolt/weld heavy duty hinges to the vertical/horizontal bars to have a real pivot point. I'll raise the gates about 1/4 inch so the " friction " will be gone. Cheap and easy to do. Thanks for all that chimed in. SmileWavy

I'm tempted to build a gate just so I can use these!