[rfuerst911sc]

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.