Trailer project

[ebinmaine 63,100]

1 minute ago, dells68 said:

horse head

It's all good Dell.

 

They call me the other end.....

 

[rjg854 10,733]

There's some of that in all of us,  Eric 

[wallfish 15,919]

9 hours ago, oilwell1415 said:

But like most of my hobbies, it's expensive but it's cheaper than bail and legal fees.

Exactly. There are certainly worse things we could be do'n

[ebinmaine 63,100]

57 minutes ago, wallfish said:

Exactly. There are certainly worse things we could be do'n

I got nuthin....

 

I was trying to think of any.... 

 

Face it folks. We're a bunch of hardcore rabble-rousers.

 

Trina's probably the worst...

 

[tom2p 2,393]

12 hours ago, oilwell1415 said:

I think we all invest in things that we know are bad investments financially, but they pay off in other ways.  I'm going to have around $1000 and who knows how many hours in this trailer before it's usable.  But like most of my hobbies, it's expensive but it's cheaper than bail and legal fees.  I am 100% convinced that the only reason I haven't committed a heinous crime worthy of news coverage in all 50 states is my hobbies.

I'm a sucker for many things - including small trailers 

 

had a number of them - including a small Sears trailer - but it was not as neat as your trailer 

 

got rid of most of the trailers - but still have a few - including a neat custom built low profile aluminum trailer with torsion axle and also a small vintage aluminum folding trailer made for VWs or touring motorcycles 

 

it folds and carries like a piece of luggage or suitcase 

 

believe it was manufactured in France - Besco ?

 

my trailer buried in garage - but found pictures 

 

 

Edited February 5, 2020 by tom2p

[oilwell1415 563]

How much does that weight and how much can it carry?  That's pretty slick.

[tom2p 2,393]

10 hours ago, oilwell1415 said:

How much does that weight and how much can it carry?  That's pretty slick.

been a while since I had it out 

 

the folding trailer part might weigh around 80 lbs ?  
 

the folding part includes tires/wheels, fenders, and lights - but without the tongue

 

can lift the folding part with the strap/handle and carry it like a suitcase ... sorta/kinda 

 

my guess - the trailer might be rated for 300 lbs or so ... ? ... maybe 400 lbs ... ?

 

 

[tom2p 2,393]

 

your story about driving home with the bad tires reminded me of one of my trips with a small trailer 

on way drive home a bearing seized to the hub - and when I pulled into the driveway the wheel fell off ... hub assembly sawed right through the axle  lol

 

 

[oilwell1415 563]

I had that happen on a friend's 64 Ford truck one time.  Thankfully it was not far from my house so I knew everybody.  I walked up to the nearest farm house and borrowed a front end loader, scooped up the back of the truck, and pushed it home.

[tom2p 2,393]

3 hours ago, oilwell1415 said:

I had that happen on a friend's 64 Ford truck one time.  Thankfully it was not far from my house so I knew everybody.  I walked up to the nearest farm house and borrowed a front end loader, scooped up the back of the truck, and pushed it home.

lol

 

we had to load (lift) a small pop-up trailer into the bed of a truck to get home one time after two tires went 

 

you and I alone could probably fill a thread with trailer stories - and I'm sure others on this board also could

 

actually wish I still had some of my old trailers

 

one neat trailer started as a Holsclaw motorcycle trailer ; one of my fav motorcycle trailers - it had tilt rails - it could be quickly  transformed into a small flat tilt / dump trailer 

 

still have the custom low profile aluminum trailer with the torsion axle - this trailer was built by a close friend and currently being used by another friend (who still rides dirt bikes in his upper years)

[tom2p 2,393]

btw - a Besco small folding aluminum trailer is currently listed on eBay 

 

I was not sure of the manufacturer - but this looks a lot like the one I have 

 

 

[tom2p 2,393]

we had an old HD5 Allis Chalmers front loader ('high lift') - similar to one in below pic 

 

but thr guy that bought it did not have a trailer (low boy)

 

he loaded it on to a car hauler and drove home (with it loaded on the back of the car hauler)

 

thought that machine was going to crush the car hauler ;  HD5 small but very heavy machine 

 

 

Edited February 6, 2020 by tom2p

[Mudrig150 298]

After doing some research, the besco folding trailer can haul 340 pounds.  @tom2p

[oilwell1415 563]

44 minutes ago, tom2p said:

you and I alone could probably fill a thread with trailer stories - and I'm sure others on this board also could

 

I don't really have very many.  When trailers are involved I try to go out of my way to make sure no stories come from the job.  About the only one that comes to mind is pulling an 11,000 lb trailer half way across the state with my 1990 F-150 and no trailer brakes.  It's a longer story than I should tell here (unless someone really wants to hear it all), but the Cliff's notes are that a friend bought the trailer thinking it was full of junk water heaters and I agreed to pull it home for him.  We took it to the scrap yard to ditch the water heaters and after we took them off we found a bunch of railroad iron under them that we didn't know was there.

 

But I have lots of truck stories.  We had a wheel bearing go out on the same 64 I was talking about above and on the Ford 9" rear end if you lose an axle bearing the axle slides out of the rear end and you can't go anywhere.  We stabbed it back in twice and got about 20 feet each time.  Unfortunately this time we were 10 miles from the nearest telephone pole and cell phones weren't a thing yet.  All we had was the truck and what was in it, which luckily included a cordless drill, some scrap metal, and the usual stuff you have in a truck.  I ended up putting the axle back in, drilling some holes in the front and rear of the wheel opening, and bolting a piece of metal across the wheel to hold it in place.  We smeared some grease on the tire to keep the metal from wearing through it. Not pretty, but got us home.

[oilwell1415 563]

Just an update on the trailer.  I've received the lights and the material for the light housings.  I got an email from Online Metals for 20% off a $200 order that was only good for yesterday, so I went ahead and ordered everything to convert to a dump bed and extend the tongue.  Looks like this project may get moved to the front of the line so I can get it finished up and out of the way.

[rjg854 10,733]

 Get 'er Done 

[oilwell1415 563]

Been knocking out other non-tractor related projects lately, but got to spend an hour or so on this today.  I got all of the metal in to convert it to a dump bed, extend the tongue, and upgrade to a 2" ball.  Step 1 of doing that is a piece of channel for the tongue to ride in, so I worked on that today.  The tongue is going to be 3" square tubing (3" square was cheaper than the 2x3 I think I mentioned earlier) and I needed something that would hold it firmly.  I had several thoughts on this, including just buying a piece of channel that would work, but I didn't find anything off the shelf that met my needs for a reasonable cost.  Another thought was to get some 1/8" steel sheet and form it around the tongue, but I know I would have struggled to do that to my standards with the equipment I have available, so I scrubbed that idea.  I ended up just getting 3' of 3.5" square tubing with a 3/16 wall and cutting one side out of it.  This is a lot more strength than is needed, but it will make things easier later.  In theory, 1/4" wall tubing would have fit the tongue perfectly, but add some paint and a little bit of torque and it would have been locked together.  1/8" wall would have been easier to work with and more in line with the needed strength, but would have left a lot of slop to get rid of.  3/16 seemed like a good compromise.  I cut out the side of the tubing with the weld in it for a couple of reasons.  Number 1 is that if I left the weld it would probably interfere with the tongue despite having 1/16" clearance on either side.  The other reason is that the weld introduces stresses to the material that can cause it to warp if you leave the weld and cut out another side.  I've still got some grinding to do, but here's what I ended up with as the sun was setting.  The blue line you see in one of the pics was a strip of masking tape I laid down to use as a cutting guide since I was near the edge of the material.

[oilwell1415 563]

It's been a while, but the weather has finally cooperated a little bit and I've gotten a little bit of work done the last week or two.  I've been less than motivated since I'm into a part of the project that requires a lot of grinding and I hate grinding.  The first thing I had to grind was the channel the tongue will ride in.  This is what it started like on the left and what it ended up as on the right.  Did I mention that I hate grinding?

 

 

[oilwell1415 563]

After that I needed to mate the tongue to the channel above.  The material for the tongue is 1/8" thick and the channel is 3/16" thick.  I don't like putting a lot of load on material that thin, so I needed to make some inserts to spread it out.  I used a piece of 1" OD x 5/8" ID tubing to make the inserts.  I don't have a lathe, so I had to cut them to a rough length and the trim them to the exact length.  I rough cut them using a sawzall and then finished them using a disc sander.  That's also a really good way to make sure the ends are square.  I made 2 inserts that were 3-1/8" long to put in the tongue and 4 about 9/16" long to use in the channel.  I couldn't do both sides of the channel inserts on the sander, so I just trued up the end and then cut them leaving one end rough knowing it was going to get ground down anyway.

[oilwell1415 563]

After I cut the inserts I had to drill the holes in the tongue and channel to put them in.  It is nearly impossible to do this one at a time and make them line up, so I did both pieces at the same time.  The most common mistake when doing this is usually forgetting to allow a little space for paint between the pieces.  My solution to that is to fold up some paper and put it between the two pieces before I clamp them together.  The I put them on the mill and drilled the holes in several steps.  The mill is at my work, so I have access to it.  I was originally going to do this on my drill press at home, and that would work if it was all you had, but that would have been a nightmare.

[oilwell1415 563]

With the holes drilled it was time to weld in the inserts.  The inserts in the tongue were easy; just put them in the holes, center them up, tack them in place, recheck the location, and weld them in solid.  Pretty easy stuff.  I welded as much as I could reach on the rear insert where the tongue will pivot just because I had access to it.  The front one where the pin will go I was only able to weld on the outside.  These inserts don't just spread the load over a wider area, but they prevent the tubing from being collapsed by the bolt.  That ordinarily wouldn't happen if you didn't overtighten the bolt, but this joint will see loads in every direction and that might eventually cause it to collapse.  I'm sure this is way over engineered, but better safe than sorry and it's a pretty easy thing to do.  The pivot joint is shown in the pics.  The bevel was cut in it to allow it to pivot.  I used my LBR (Looks 'Bout Right) meter to decide where to put the hole.

[oilwell1415 563]

The last thing I wanted to get done today is weld the inserts in the channel.  This was a little more tricky than the tongue inserts because they needed to protrude equal distance on each side and be square with each other and the channel, but with two pieces to deal with that it easier said than done, but it's still not difficult.  The first pic is the channel and insert.  You can see here that the insert isn't just going to sit there and be straight because it wants to.  I had to help it.  This part of the project was what reminded me of how long it's been since I've done any work like this.  I like the mental aspect of fabrication as much as the physical part, so solving these problems is fun for me.  The solution I came up with was to lay two 1/4" bolts across the channel and hold them in place with a magnet.  I butted the insert up against the magnet, put another insert in the opposite side, and ran a 5/8 bolt through the whole thing to keep the inserts straight.  The magnet holds the bolt in place as well.  I would have preferred to use a piece of 5/8 drill rod for this, but I didn't have any and wasn't going to go buy a piece just for this.  When it all goes together I'll use a grade 8 bolt instead of this cheap one.  I rough cut the inserts to about 5/8" so there would be a little extra on the inside to weld in the inside as well.  Now I've just got to do a lot of grinding to get the inside of the channel done.  I got a start on that today, but my grinding wheel is pretty worn out and couldn't reach far enough to get it all.  I'll pick up a new one tomorrow and get that done.  Our gym is closed indefinitely for the WuFlu, so as long as the weather cooperates I should start making decent headway again.

[oilwell1415 563]

I made good headway after work today.  Got started with a lot of my favorite thing: grinding.  But got the tongue fitted to the channel.  Despite everything I did to make sure the holes lined up, I was worried that they wouldn't.  But they did.  I will run a 5/8 drill bit through the front one to make it a little smoother since it will have a hitch pin in it, but overall I'm pretty happy with how well it works.

[oilwell1415 563]

Then it was time to mount the hitch.  I put it on the tongue and really hated the way the tongue hung down below the hitch.  At this point my wife would probably tell you I lost the plot, and you guys probably agree.  There was no way I could leave that hanging in the breeze like that, so I decided to cut about an inch out of the front of it and add a taper.  I put some tape on it so I could more easily mark where to cut and notched it with a cutoff wheel.  I squished it down with a C clamp, welded it up, and ground everything smooth.  Turned out pretty good.  Looks much cleaner.  I was getting ready to weld up the hitch when the ghost of my father came to me with his first bit of advice for the day.  "If you ever give wasps or mud dobbers a place to live, they will move in."  This is especially true in areas near where you will be putting your hands, so I welded up the end of the tongue before I mounted the hitch.  They may still move in under the hitch, but at least I can see them there.  If they got inside the tongue I wouldn't be able to see them until they were chasing me.

[oilwell1415 563]

With my OCD impulses satisfied, I welded up the hitch.  I am not a welder.  I can make a weld pretty or I can make a weld strong, but I struggle with doing both at the same time.  This was where my father's ghost gave me his second advice for the day:  "The ugliest weld in the world is the one that fails and leaves your $%#@ laying all over the #$%& road."  I cranked it up and burned it in good.  When I was done I christened it with the phrase that man law states must be muttered any time you weld something, hook up a trailer, or tie anything down:  "Well, that ain't going nowhere."  I put on the loop for the safety chains and called it a night.  Just needs some primer and it will be ready to put on the trailer.