"Wingin' it" 4x6-ish Trailer Thread

[nnnnnate]

I got everything done I wanted to this morning.



No sheet on the sides for now, I'll add it next week.


After getting back from the car wash, its sits a lot higher than SUA.


I started packing and was super excited for how much room I have. Now I'll actually be able to contribute with firewood.

 

[zmotorsports]

Trailer is turning out really nice Nate.

Mike.

 

[jeeper]

Way to go Nate! looks great!

 

[BlueWolfFab]

Guard and full face shield always, for me.

 

[sixstringsteve]

nicely done nate

 

[Tonkaman]

Dude you really nailed this project! Seems you really have a talent sir

 

[bryson]

[video=youtube;28GLa9T2CtI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28GLa9T2CtI[/video]

 

[CobraNutt]

Way to go Nate! It's looking better every day!

Sent from my mystical handheld gizmo.

 

[nnnnnate]

We got back from the Swell last night and had a really good time. I was very pleased with the trailer, it handled 80 mph perfect and did decent on the bouncy dirt roads getting to camp. We camped at the typical swell Cruise Moab basecamp right next to Lone Warrior and headed home via Locomotive Point/Head of Sinbad (pretty sure thats what it was called.) On this route you go down a pretty steep slope with some ledges and decent rocks littering the trail. I was a little nervous how the trailer would do with my 2" ball coupler I used but it did great.

Here are a couple pics of my campsite with my guard dog.





Impressions after the shakedown trip:
So when I posted pics of the spring hanger I mentioned that I thought I might have moved it too far forward. This was confirmed when I looked under the trailer at camp on Saturday. The shackle had flexed all the way up and was resting on the frame. I think I moved them forward about 2.5" or so. I'll need to move them back about an inch.

I was happy with the tie down points but want to add a few more. If I remember right I did 4 on each side with a couple up front.

I really want a functional tailgate to use as a table. If I had that I think I could leave home the little lifetime table I bought last year. It would also be nice to use as a seat at times. The front tongue and sides were a nice place to leave my storage boxes while in camp to have things accessible.

I need a lid for the box super bad. The dust covering everything drove me nuts. I'll need to seal the seams and add a gasket to the tailgate but putting a lid on it would improve me feeling filthy the whole time. I was going to put this off until later this summer after I got another project or two done but its moved up a lot on the list. I'll build this before I paint the trailer.



I'm curious about what would change if I added some shocks to the trailer. I'll need to look into this a bit more and see if it will be worth it for me.

 

[Box Rocket]

Nice job Nate. Looks like a great first outing.

 

[Sawtooth]

 

[nnnnnate]

After being really busy last week I found some time to work on the trailer last night. I picked up some latches from Marshells Industrial Hardware (I love that store) on my way home and bolted them up. Then I crimped the coated cabling and fixed it to the tailgate. My mount points for the cables interfere a little with the tailgate closing unless they are in just the right place which is kind of annoying but it'll work fine for now. I'm thinking that with a functional tailgate I won't need to bring my table anymore when I go camping which will be nice. My wife came outside right as I was finishing up the cables and asked if they were going to hold. I told her to sit on it to test it for me since she was lighter than me. She didn't go for it and when I sat on down on it the tongue lifted up rather than me breaking the cables.





I've been moving the trailer from the garage to the rv pad since the trailer became a roller and I'm really getting tired of lifting it up, its getting heavy. A while back I bought a HF wheel that I was going to try and mate to the jack I have but the base plate on the jack is smaller than the top plate for the wheel. I don't know that I can bolt them together because of this. I also don't know that I want to weld the wheel to the jack. I'll see if I can figure out something for it though this weekend.

 

[I Lean]

Instead of making a lid, have you considered a tarp? I just had one made for mine, and if my trailer were designed a bit differently ( more like yours) I could have done a "box" lid that would have been slick. Think of a shoebox and lid...and there are a few options of what to do at the back to use the tailgate still.

 

[nnnnnate]

A tarp could probably work but I think it would be a hassle to get in and out of the trailer quickly. I also would like to have some load bars that I can lash long things (lumber, steel, etc.) to and wonder how a tarp would work around those. Having a lip on the lid does sound like a good idea, I just wonder if I could pull it off. I figured I'd just find some wide rubber like is on the bottom of truck shells that I could attach to the lid that would compress when its latched shut. I don't know who would have that though, I looked at Marshals yesterday and they didn't have it.

 

[UNSTUCK]

Napa has rolls of it. I have one that's about 2 inches wide, with a sticky back. works great for random stuff. Think they just call it camper seal. I can look when I get home.

 

[zmotorsports]

Very nicely done Nate. That thing turned out awesome.

Mike.

 

[nnnnnate]

Yesterday I was able to get a couple things done but didn't snap any pictures, there wasn't much to show anyway.

I boxed in a few tube ends and welded on some sheet for the small area behind the wheels. I was going to do the same to the larger area in front of the wheel but decided I wanted to use thicker sheet, the bits I had were to small for the area so I'll need to pick up some drops this week.

I also welded a big wheel I bought from HF to my tongue jack, its pneumatic so hopefully it'll hold air. My back was hurting as I would move the trailer around. Now the jack sits too high so I need to chop the mount off of it and re weld it on in a different position.

I had planned on moving the spring hanger but my brother needed some help with his Tundra. It was having some delayed starting issues after sitting and I had suggested he replace the fuel filter for a start point. He stripped the engine side fuel line nut since he is a student and is just starting out didn't have many tools. He pulled it in my garage and I was able to get the line loose and get fuel all over. After getting it swapped out and tightened up it started right up so we'll see if that does the trick. I'm betting it will need more attention but I'm not sure that the filter had ever been changed, if it had been changed it wasn't in a real long while. Its a 2000 Tundra with 89k on it.

 

[zmotorsports]

Nate, it's funny how the little details that people hardly notice seem to be the most time consuming and after working for several hours look like you hardly did anything.

Mike.

 

[nnnnnate]

I've stalled on this the last few weeks but am resolved to get it finished up and painted. I finally added the last sheet to the side wings last night and got everything ground down like I want. I stopped at the paint store on Thursday and talked to some real helpful people. I picked up some KBS RustSeal that is supposed to be very similar to POR15 that I'm going to use on the bottom of the trailer. It isn't UV stable (like POR15) so if its going to be in the sun I'd need to top coat it. Supposedly one of the guys that developed POR15 left the company to start this other one because he wasn't happy POR wasn't updating the product with new advancements. Whether thats true or not I'm not sure, it was about $10 cheaper though for a quart. I need to go back and get the pre cleaning stuff today.

I'm still planning on doing raptor liner for the inside of the tub but am undecided on what to do on the outside and the front and side decks. I'm a little concerned that if I did the raptor liner on the outside the dirt and dust would get in it and I'd have a hard time cleaning it out and that it'd always look dirty. I think it might just come down to how much I have left after doing inside the tub.

As I've looked at the spray liner I've started to wonder if my cute little air compressor is up to the job to spray it on. Its a Husky 26 gallon 1.5 HP rated to 5.0 CFM @ 40 PSI and 4.0 CFM @ 90 PSI. The tech sheet says to shoot the liner at 40-60 PSI but I don't really know much about compressors and if mine will keep up. The liner is shot out of a schutz gun if that makes any difference. Do you guys think this is doable with what I have?

So my plan is to pressure wash the trailer today, pull the axle, flip the trailer upside down and set it on some dollys so I can move it around in the garage. I'll then do the pre-cleaner and rust converter before putting on the rust seal, all of this on the bottom of the tub. Then after letting it cure I thought I'd do the seam sealer Monday or Tuesday but I wasn't sure if I'd need to put that on just the tub side or if I should add it to the underside too where the sheet lays on top of the tube. That would set me up to be ready to spray the liner next weekend.

 

[nnnnnate]

So yesterday I finally got some work done.

I used the degreaser then the RustBlaster that converts the rust into something else. I only focused on the bottom of the trailer but in the pic you can see its run down the side of the tub and got rid of some of the flash rust.



It turned the metal a bluish color.



Closeup of the side after rinsing off the RustBlast. The RustBlast had to sit on the metal for 30 minutes without drying off, the bottle came with a sprayer which was the worst that I've ever used.



After letting that dry I start to coat it with RustSeal. It self levels so the brush marks mostly go away, I had several of the bristles fall out of the disposible brush and get lodged in the paint which was kind of annoying. It took me an hour to get the first coat down but the second went on a lot faster. It took about 3 hours to dry enough between the coats. The next pic is between coats. On the second one I went ahead and painted the sides of the bottom rails as well as the very bottom.



I'm going to do the axle tomorrow as well as add seam sealer to a few places before flipping it back upright and getting going on painting the top side. It was a pain flipping it so I'm hoping I can get it done this time around without hurting the paint.