Hey everyone, new to expedition portal, but I have been browsing for a couple weeks for ideas and brainstorming. Anyways, I have a interesting trailer to play with, and thought it might be worth sharing.
The girlfriend and I have been planning on putting together a little camping rig for this years camping. I think last year I spent a little less than 45 days in my tent, either off the KTM, or out of the back of my car at the drop zone while skydiving. While ground tent camping is great when your are riding your bike around the Northwest, it gets a little old when you are laying on a hard packed desert floor and all your friends are in trailers.
So after much debate, we decide a roof top tent is the ticket for us. Ideally it would be mounted to an expedition style trailer, so we can unhook the truck and leave it parked at a camp site. However, a trailer was not in the budget this year so we planned on working on that part next year. Until a couple weekends ago weekend, while helping her get some stuff from her dads, I saw this..
I stroll over to check it out while she is inside. Obviously ex-military, strange torsion bar suspension, and just the right size. I ask her about it when she comes out, and she agrees to talk to her dad. Long story short, he has never used it and is fine with us taking it. We came back for it the next day.
Than came the fun part, tying to figure out what the hell it was. I tried for hours in vain before I had the trailer in my possession, but I could find absolutely nothing like it. When I got a hold of it though, I found this...
XM52, number 004. An experimental trailer, way cool! Now I had something to go off of. More research turn up just one useful link, a US Army R&D periodical from 1987, describing the trailer and its purpose. This is #4 of 14. Built in 1984 as a test platform for moving a 4.2" mortar. In 1986, the Army was R&Ding a high speed, desert operations platform for special forces. This included a HUMVEE modified with bucket seats, 5 point harnesses, a motorcycle, and a trailer to put the bike on. The Army decided that no current trailers in the pool could do the job, and turned to the XM52. It shared the tires, wheels, and shock absorbers with the HUMVEE, and the soft, long travel torsion bar suspension made it ideal for high speed desert driving. Two of the XM52 trailers were taken and made into utility trailers as a test bed. This is one of the two, as far as I can tell.
The trailer is all aluminium, and beefy as ****. The belly is one solid sheet, for easy dragging across rough terrain. No axle to get hung up on ****.
Anyways, we got to work stripping it down. Pulled out all the wood, including a heavily rotted piece of plywood flooring. Under the plywood we find... 100lbs of desert sand!
Then we got to work scooping all the soaking sand out. If this trailer had been made of steel, I am afraid it would have been destroyed. The aluminium however, looks great! There is some rust on the steel torson bar beams, I have yet to determine how much.
Anyways, that was all last weekend. This weekend I have pressure washed it, finished cleaning it up, and temporarily patched up the wiring. It's good enough to run until I replace all of it. Then I took the wheel of with the purpose of identifying and trying to remove a shock for replacement. Unfortunately, I am working with limited tools, only having what I threw in the truck before I came up. It looks like I will have to remove the torsion bar to get the shock off.
The girlfriend and I have been planning on putting together a little camping rig for this years camping. I think last year I spent a little less than 45 days in my tent, either off the KTM, or out of the back of my car at the drop zone while skydiving. While ground tent camping is great when your are riding your bike around the Northwest, it gets a little old when you are laying on a hard packed desert floor and all your friends are in trailers.
So after much debate, we decide a roof top tent is the ticket for us. Ideally it would be mounted to an expedition style trailer, so we can unhook the truck and leave it parked at a camp site. However, a trailer was not in the budget this year so we planned on working on that part next year. Until a couple weekends ago weekend, while helping her get some stuff from her dads, I saw this..
I stroll over to check it out while she is inside. Obviously ex-military, strange torsion bar suspension, and just the right size. I ask her about it when she comes out, and she agrees to talk to her dad. Long story short, he has never used it and is fine with us taking it. We came back for it the next day.
Than came the fun part, tying to figure out what the hell it was. I tried for hours in vain before I had the trailer in my possession, but I could find absolutely nothing like it. When I got a hold of it though, I found this...
XM52, number 004. An experimental trailer, way cool! Now I had something to go off of. More research turn up just one useful link, a US Army R&D periodical from 1987, describing the trailer and its purpose. This is #4 of 14. Built in 1984 as a test platform for moving a 4.2" mortar. In 1986, the Army was R&Ding a high speed, desert operations platform for special forces. This included a HUMVEE modified with bucket seats, 5 point harnesses, a motorcycle, and a trailer to put the bike on. The Army decided that no current trailers in the pool could do the job, and turned to the XM52. It shared the tires, wheels, and shock absorbers with the HUMVEE, and the soft, long travel torsion bar suspension made it ideal for high speed desert driving. Two of the XM52 trailers were taken and made into utility trailers as a test bed. This is one of the two, as far as I can tell.
The trailer is all aluminium, and beefy as ****. The belly is one solid sheet, for easy dragging across rough terrain. No axle to get hung up on ****.
Anyways, we got to work stripping it down. Pulled out all the wood, including a heavily rotted piece of plywood flooring. Under the plywood we find... 100lbs of desert sand!
Then we got to work scooping all the soaking sand out. If this trailer had been made of steel, I am afraid it would have been destroyed. The aluminium however, looks great! There is some rust on the steel torson bar beams, I have yet to determine how much.
Anyways, that was all last weekend. This weekend I have pressure washed it, finished cleaning it up, and temporarily patched up the wiring. It's good enough to run until I replace all of it. Then I took the wheel of with the purpose of identifying and trying to remove a shock for replacement. Unfortunately, I am working with limited tools, only having what I threw in the truck before I came up. It looks like I will have to remove the torsion bar to get the shock off.
