"Adrian Brentnall" adrian-the papers and the
wrote in message ...
HI

On Thu, 9 Feb 2006 16:56:24 +0000 (UTC), "news.btinternet.com"
wrote:

I would like to build a light car trailer. It seems that this would
be
cheaper than buying one.

Can anyone point to appropriate websites for plans and parts etc.?

Or is this simply a daft idea?

Thanks


Depends on how small / light you're after....

I obtained the chassis from a scrapped caravan (£20) and had it cut
down (thought 19ft long was a bit excessive !). Local garage did some
welding, I added plywood sides, hinges, lighting board and there you
go..... trailer takes 8ft x 4ft sheets flat between the wheelarches...

Resulting trailer carries between 1/2 - 1 tonne of firewood - looks
ugly but works well g. Not the lightest of things to lug around
though - original chassis is (thick) box section steel tube....

There are many problems with using old caravans: the suspension was
usually designed to carry a very narrow range of weights - loading a
caravan with a few melamine plates and a bottle of blue gunge doesn't
make a lot of difference to its weight - whereas a trailer may easily
have a gross weight four or five times its tare. So it will either
change considerably in height from tare to laden, or bounce around like
a pea on a drum.

A caravan old enough to be scrapped has probably got old, seized,
worn-out brakes - and trailer brake prices are ridiculously high,
particularly from places like Indespension. They may not even be
auto-reverse, which is a real pain.

Similarly, a worn-out, undamped hitch can make towing fairly miserable.

People fit all sorts of tyres to caravans, then leave them standing,
flat, for long periods. Adrian mentioned putting a ton of firewood in
his trailer, so that's an axle load of say 1500kg. For that load, you'd
need at least 97 rated tyres, which you'll be hard pressed to find in
13", not a pair of 5.60x13 crossply remoulds with a few good cracks.
Plenty of caravan wheels won't even have the correct seat profile for
tubeless tyres.

Some caravans seem to rely on the body to provide torsional stiffness,
so trailers based on them would be flexible, to say the least.

I know a lot of people use Indespension units, or copies of them, but I
find the whole principle of them very dubious. Some of the rubber
suspension beam axles (e.g. Avonride) are almost as bad, and can easily
leave you with wheels pointing in odd directions. I think there's much
to be said for the Ifor Williams approach of sticking to leaf springs.
My next trailer will almost certainly be one of theirs, although I'd
like to be convinced that their parabolic springs are sufficiently
damped.

www.towsure.co.uk have got some sound stuff about trailers and the law,
so I'd suggest reading that and then staying under your limit for an
unbraked trailer. Or get a new one off ebay for a couple of hundred
quid.


--
Kevin Poole
**Use current month and year to reply (e.g. )***
Car Transport by Tiltbed Trailer - based near Derby