On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 09:09:07 GMT, Gunner
wrote:
On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 20:32:31 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:
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.

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!!!

I hope the tire shop found you a set of good used take-offs - good
tires cheap for trailers. You can get new "ST" trailer tires with
extra anti-ozone compounds in the sidewalls, but for a trailer that
will sit much of the time they'll still rot out before they wear out,
so car take-offs with tread left are just fine. Keep them till you
start seeing weather-checking, then chuck them.

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.

I think Ill try that. Ive made some phone calls, and none of my
buddies has acess to a tank sand blaster anytime soon. Seems to be
something of a shortage of them currently. No one is sandblasting oil
field tanks at the moment. Ill scrounge up someone willing to do a
brother in law job, but winter and the rainy season is coming. The
trailer is not all that bad, but was stored near the ocean so has that
sort of rust on it. Hard to tell how much exactly as the trailer was
originally painted red..shrug.

If you are going to the trouble of painting, treat the rust first or
it'll pop right back out. As a minimum I would get a needle scaler or
a 4" grinder with a knotted brush, or something to knock the big
surface rust off, then use a rust converter before rusty metal primer.
It will come back again, but not nearly as fast.

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?

Do you have an old High-Lift mechanical jack around? (Make a few
brackets to fix it in position.) Or a big chunk of ballscrew and a
nut, and a Heim Joint for the other end? (Make a screw jack that can
control both up and down.) "Slick" would be a 12V deep cycle battery,
12V hydraulic power pack and a double-action cylinder. And you can
find another cylinder to replace the tongue jack if you want to get
lazy.

Anyone know how difficult it is to retrofit a stock axle with electric
brakes? Ive had to do panic braking on LA freeways, and even my lil
box trailer, with a load tended to push my pickup sideways. Something
Ive been thinking about..... Shrug.

If the axle stubs have the flanges for the brake backing plates on
them, its a matter of finding and slapping on the right parts. Any
good trailer supply store can look at them and know in 15 seconds.
If it doesn't have the flanges to mount the brakes on, you'll have to
cut out and change the spindles.

The trailer has a crank up landing gear welded up in the V next to the
hitch, and somewhere in the past it had been dragged on something and
bent backwards, so I chained up to the rear of the trailer and used a
come along to bend it back into place. Only problem with it being
there is it doesnt allow me to open the tailgate of the pickup. I
need to find one of those folding ones that fold horizontally next to
the tounge. Ive had trailers (boat usually) that wouldnt allow the
tailgate down..and it drove me crazy.

Harbor Fr(e)ight. They always have one style or another on sale,
including the swivel-on-a-2"-spindle style that folds flat.

Next thing to do is figure out what the 5 lug bolt pattern is, and get
a spare tire and wheel. Ill weld a bracket on the side near the
fenders and mount it there. Thing is perfectly balanced. I can pick up
the tounge one handed and move it around easily, so would like to keep
it balanced. I want to mount a small tool box also, to keep the
tiedowns and chain binders and whatnot in, so keeping it balanced is
pretty important, while not making it look like a gypsy wagon G,
else Id simply mount a crossbed pickup box on the tounge end.

As someone said, make the spare tire mount on a standard 2" square
hitch receiver and pin so it slides off for odd loading situations.

The slick trick I've seen is, when you find out what size the axle
and spindles are, order a complete set as a pre-assembled unit - hub,
lug bolts or studs & nuts, wheel bearings, grease seals, and spindle.
NAPA has a page of these standard hubs in their PSA catalogs - write
down all the casting numbers, or take the hub in with you.

Weld that spare tire mounting arm up with the spindle and hub to
hold the tire (big tack welds from the mounting arm to the spindle so
they can be cut off easier later, not full beads), and if you ever
shear the lug bolts or spin a wheel bearing and trash the hub or
spindle (or both), you are always carrying a complete set of spare
parts with you all ready to go... ;-)

(Some Assembly Required - 'Hot Wrench' not included.)

This works great on boat trailers with a long tongue where you can
rig it up at the right height for a "driveway drag wheel" that will
easily spin and roll you over the lip. Just keep some momentum in
case it lifts the back tires of the car off the ground...

-- Bruce --
--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
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