Car Trailer Mods

I bough this cheap and kind-of poorly built 10,000lb, 18 ft car trailer new about 9 years ago:


It's been good enough to get the job done for most things but it's had a few annoyances.

The biggest annoyance was the junk Chinese tires it came with. Every single one delaminated. It's got a quality set of tires on it now, and I always carry two spares.

The Jack hung too low when retracted so it go bashed on the Colorado Epic trip several years ago. I replace that with a folding jack.

The ramps are to short to load anything but high clearance vehicles. I need to lengthen those some day.

The paint is garbage, but we live in a dry climate so I don't really care about that.

I need to pick up a non-running vehicle in a few weeks and it's driving me to fix two other annoyances:

• It needs a winch mount
• It needs more pockets and rails

Into the shop it goes:


I bought this Harbor Freight winch and receiver mount years ago with the intention of using it on the old F-250 for clean-up tasks. Then we got a tractor and never used it. Everything was still in its boxes. I pulled it all out of the boxes and put it together with some battery clamps:




I'll bring an extra battery along when I need to use the winch.

One of the first orders of business is that the door for the toolbox went right up to the bed leaving no room for a receiver or additional pockets:


Guide clamped on for the plasma cutter:


I welded the back part permanently to the trailer:


I was going to weld the receiver to the top of the trailer but decided that would be ugly and potentially in the way. Instead, I welded it vertically to the front. The receiver is a Curt 2" to 2 1/2" adapter sleeve. It was cheaper than buying metal stock:


Cutting gussets for the bottom of it with the angle grinder:


Gussets beveled and ready to weld:


Holding them in place for tacking:


Done:


Since that's vertical, I needed to a 90˚ adapter. I bought some 3/16" thick 2x2 stock and and another one of the Curt 2" to 2 1/2" adapters.

Drilling the 5/8" holes. I don't have any 5/8" bits, so I started with 1/4", then to 1/2", the then to the stepped bit:


The step isn't quite long enough for the 3/16" stock:


I cleaned that up with the die grinder:


Cleaning the powder coating off the receiver. Heating and scraping got most of it:


Finished with the flapper disk. If you don't get most of it off first, the coating gums up the flapper disk:


Initial welding done. You may note I was so careful getting things lined up, I managed to have the holes in the shank off 90˚. I get to drill some new holes tonight:


Gussets added for strength:


It seems like this will work great:


I need to drill those holes in the adapter and paint it tonight. Then it's on to the pockets and rails.

 

I got the most expensive ones Les Schwab has. Mostly because we used Les Schwab to replace two failures on the road and decided to round out the other two. They can't be worse than the ones that came with the trailer. We'll see how good the quality is....

 

Drilled new holes in the right place and painted my adapter:


Another piece of the winch puzzle I forgot to mention is a removable pulley for the back of the trailer to keep the cable from dragging.

I cut up a Harbor Freight snatch block and welded it to a piece of angle (after grinding off the plating in the welding area):


I still need to weld on a piece to go down through the trailer pocket, and another to pin it in place. Hopefully tomorrow night.

 

Ha! I just cut up one of those snatch blocks for a similar purpose on Tuesday!

 

Stack of random shims to get a .660 gap for tack welding:


While it's not exactly weld porn, I am getting better!


Drilling the hole for the retaining pin through two layers:


The final product in the raw:




It fits in the middle pocket at the back of the trailer and locks with the hitch pin. You can move it left or right a few inches if needed. Should do the job:


First coat of paint is on:

 

Holy crap, nice work Roy!!

 

Thanks much!

 

All done with that. We'll see if it works in practice:


Now it's on to pockets and rails.

 

Welding a couple more pockets on the front:


I'm putting tubular braces on the rails halfway between the pockets:


One rail on:


The other rail on:


I was having a heck of a time doing the overhead welds. No matter what I did, the wire would melt and molten metal would fall back into the cup and or the ground before it penetrated the base metal at all. I tried different feeds and voltages in all combos to no effect. Then I decided maybe the .023 wire was just too thin. I've had it in the welder forever because I've mostly been doing thin stuff and it's worked well enough for the occasional thick thing... at least in normal positions.

To tes my theory, I went to the effort to pull the gun liner and swap everything out for .030 wire and it started working as expected. Thank goodness.

Angled ends welded on because I'm too lazy to get out the Oxy-Acetylene torch to heat and bend the 3/8" thick rail:


Jigging the inner angled ends:


Done welding and a quick coat of Rustoleum applied:


That's going to be it for a while I need to use the trailer next week, but I'm out of town this weekend, and have a bunch of other stuff to work on so I won't be able to get the whole thing done before I need it. I'll have to get to the side rails at a later date. At least I've got the front rails and a winch now.

....and boy do I need to work on my vertical-up welding.

 

One thing I'd do to my trailer is fix the pockets, they are never big enough to feed the hook end of my ratchet straps down into.

 

It might be cheaper easier to just order these from Amazon like I did: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CN8VM3YH

The quality seems good and with the current price of metal, you can't really build something similar for the same money unless you have some scrap sitting around:

 

Dude that is genius!! I’ve needed those probably 100 times with my trailer. I often run axle straps through the stake pockets for better purchase. Dang it, now I need those.