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Larry Jaques
 
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On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 10:25:15 GMT, Gunner
calmly ranted:

With the good graces of our esteemed colleague Leigh from MarMachine,
Im now the proud owner of a Real Trailer.

My old and very tired 4x8 box trailer was on its last legs when Leigh
called and let me know he had found a 5x10 tilt bed single axle
trailer for me rotting away in some fellows back yard.


Cool. Let's give her a trial run. Pop a small, inexpensive
vertical mill on that puppy, run it up to me, and I'll put
all new wiring and lights on it for you, no charge.



After replacing the rotted tires, and temporarily installing 1" thick
plywood deck (Leigh again) I brought it home tonight. The critter
pulls like a dream, and after a bit of practice backing it up around a
parking lot, I found its very agile and controllable. This thing is
gonna be a goodie!!!


Excellent!


The trailer was commercially made and at one time pin striped and
probably painted red..but now is pretty much a solid sheet of very
thin rust.


Trailers are like that. Yeah they are.


Probably the best thing to do is find a tank blaster and have it sand
blasted, but other than a cup brush and a day grinding the rust off,
are there any other options? Some chemical or paint that will stop
the rust and coat existing rust? Its very well made with lots of
angle iron and channel and its gonna be a real PITA to wire wheel it
clean.


Some of the brush-on Rustoleum primers are made for pre-rusted
metal. I redid my front wrought iron railing with it 3 years
ago and it hasn't shown any sign of rust yet. I used their
black brush-on over it.


Just pondering. Pretty is not important. Utility and cheap is. G

One last thing. Its a tilt bed. Pull the pin and the bed tilts. Now
this is a very nice thing for machine tools. But I was pondering the
fact I might put a big lathe (for example) on it and not be able to
get it perfectly balanced..how the heck do I get the bed back to level
again? Or the other issue..if the heavy thingy is a bit far
forwards..how to I lift the bed to tilt?


The quick answer: Carefully!


Im sure someone here has addressed this before..so before I go all
Rube Goldberg and reinvent the Framistan Feebelfexer 9000 All Tilt
Gizmatcho...anyone got any good ideas? Trailer is rated at 5000lb
according to tounge stamp,,but its only a single axle..so figure
2000-2500 max load.


The old comealong-around-the-tongue-and-front-railing (in front)
or lift-the-rear-with-a-pocket-hydraulic-jack (in back) both work.
Sitting on the front rail and hanging over the edge to find the
pin hole sometimes works, too. DAMHIKT.


Im quite proud of the way I put in the decking. It involved a
forklift, hoisting slings and 210lbs of dead weight G


210 whole pounds on a forklift? Gee, pushin' it, aintcha?


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