TheGillz Explo Off-Road Trailer via Geotracker90 Build!

[GeoTracker90]

Update 8-16-08

What a great day of fabrication. Clark made it out to lend a hand and help with some of the final design decisions. What a force multiplier Clark turned out to be. With him there I think that we were able to get three times as much done as when I'm working by myself. On to the pictures!!

Clark marked and drilled and dimpled the remaining holes for the rear filler plates. Funny, his idea for the extra holes was exactly what I had been thinking of.

I cut the 1" square tube and marked the start points for the cooler cage bends and ended up with an moment. We completed the first bend and the leg that should have had extra material so that we could cut the tube to the desired height ended up shorter than anticipated. Much shorter in fact. When I was figuring out the marking I ended up using the wrong number and the first bend had a leg that was just barely long enough for what would be acceptable. We made some adjustments for where the second bend needed to start and ended up with things working out like you see here. Not too bad for an moment!

The roof rack was our next area of attention. Clark made some decisions on placement and we were off. The roof rack is being attached with eight 1/4" bolts per rail. With the cooler cage and the roof rack rails this is really starting to come together.

Clark had added these tie-downs or lashing points to the parts purchase when he picked up the axle so we used a couple for retaining the coolers. We also placed one at the middle of the front deck area above the tongue, as well as one half way down each side. We plan to put three on each side of the main box interior as well. That will leave us with three that we haven't found a home for yet.

Overview of the front of the trailer after our day of cutting, grinding, welding, drilling, dimpling, bending, and probably some other stuff that I can't remember right now.

Speaking of bending I almost forgot to mention the third fuel can holder. With Clark's design I was able to put a remnant of sheetmetal to good use. We cut, bent and welded this guy up and then proceeded to get all of the can holders bolted to the front of the trailer.

What's that trailer hooked to??? That doesn't look like the spare for a Tracker. I think a Jeep was getting jelous, and had to mark its territory. Too bad that's all you guys will see... for now. Clark's a big tease. The full Jeep / O.R.T. pictures will be sitting in his in-box shortly.

Well next week it is weld and grind and check things off of the to do list.

More powder coating quotes coming on Monday.

Mike

 

[GeoTracker90]

Update 8-18-08

​

Well I ended up running some extra house stuff out to my in-laws tonight and while I was out there I could help but to do a little on the trailer. Even though it was after 10:00pm I decided to get the safety chain loops roughed in.

I used one of the safety chain loops as shown in the first picture and split it in half. I then drilled clear through both sides of the front frame on either side of the tounge reciever tube. This way I can weld the chain loops on the front of the tube as well as the back side. This ought to hold plenty well in the unfortunate case of needing to put them to the test. I'll have to get a couple chuncks of chain that are a little over a foot longer than the ones shown in this picture.

On a side note.... After doing that much on the trailer I decided to get ready to go home and call it a night. I walked around the front of the van and wondered who had been out there working on a starter?

Not thinking any more of it I hopped in the van and tried to start it up. Nothing. I tried again; still nothing. Could it be, no it couldn't.

Yes it could and it was. The end cap, the plunger, the spring, and one of the screws for the end cap had fallen off the van just three feet from where I parked it. That's nuts!!

It ended up taking more time to jack the van up and disconnect the battery than it did to fix the starter.

I'm gratefull that the parts fell off where they did instead of out on the road some where.

Mike

 

[ntsqd]

That's bizarre, I've never seen one of those starters do that!

 

[IH8RDS]

Do you have squirrels in the neighborhood? That my friend is the culprit. :Mechanic: lol

 

[stomperxj]

Great lookin fab work Mike. I'm more impressed every time you post. I'll have to check it out in person when Clark gets it back to town. I really like the dimple die work. I wish i could afford a set...

 

[Ramjet]

Just read the whole thread. Nice build. Do you plan on doing a production run? Customization?

 

[TheGillz]

Just read the whole thread. Nice build. Do you plan on doing a production run? Customization?

Customization? Constantly

Production? Well you will have to ask Mike about that, but for now I get the impression that he really enjoys it as a hobby right now.

We had a really good time working together on it saturday, wish I had the time to come back again this weekend. Its so close I can taste it.

(and it tastes like steel and rivets and sparks)

 

[GeoTracker90]

Just read the whole thread. Nice build. Do you plan on doing a production run? Customization?

Money talks. No, for a production run let's make that lots of money talks.

Unless you have built a trailer like this you have no idea the number of hours that it requires. But, in building this one I have been learning a lot about what I would change if I were to build a second one. The changes would have a lot to do with dimensions, work flow, and proceedures that would allow me to take better advantage of the tools that I have and the sizes that materials come in.

That said, there has been a pleasingly low amount of scap material produced with this build considering the non standard sizes of a lot of the parts and pieces.

Clark is correct in saying that right now building trailers is mostly a hobby for me. It's a lot of fun to design something and then see it take shape and have life breathed into it.

My hat is off to all of the manufacturers that have been able to design, develop and produce a product that fills this part of the trailer market. My highest regard is saved for the ones that are able to truly find success through their efforts, and still are approachable and freely offer suggestions and advice to those that they come into contact with.

Mike

 

[GeoTracker90]

Update 8-23-08

Well my part of the build is almost done and as such so are most of the interesting pictures that I can produce. It looks like Clark will be coming over on Thursday to pick it up and take it back to Boise for the powdercoating and wiring.

This weekend involved a lot of finish welding on the trailer and the pictures above are the only ones that are even close to being interesting enough to post. I marked out the areas to be stitch welded and then used a clamp to hold down the sheet metal and act as an end point for the weld. I couldn't see the marker line while welding, but I could see the clamp.

Same thing, just for the rear filler plates behind the fenders. My to do list is quickly shrinking.

Clark, shoot me an e-mail and let me know what your schedule is like for Thursday.

Hope everybody had a good weekend.

Mike

p.s. I only had to make one trip to the doctor after working on the trailer on Saturday.

 

[TheGillz]

Looks like the booming metropolis of Boise is good for 25% cheaper powdercoating costs, so I will be picking it up this week and lugging it over here in all its bare naked glory to get the powder done. That means I will have to wire it up too, which I'm not that comfortable with, but how do you get comfortable with something except to just do it??

I am super excited to get it behind the Jeep and see how she pulls. There is one pass on the way home unless I go the long way and catch three, but I don't think that's happening this time, so we'll see how much lag I get up the hills at least empty.

PS. Doctor??? Do tell!!

 

[GeoTracker90]

Oh, I keep forgetting to answer the question about the visit to the doctor. Saturday night while working on the trailer I ended up getting something in my eye. I didn’t think too much about it until I was home and it was still bothering me. I had Kris take a look and se said that there was something just a little vertically off-center from the pupil. I took a look in the mirror and sure enough I could see it as well. I ended up calling one of my friends that is an optometrist and at 10:00 pm he met me over at his office. Ended up being a piece of grit either from a cutting disc or one of the sanding flap discs. It really didn’t want to come out to easily, but there was no rust and no need to drill the spot where the object was lodged.

Mike

 

[go4aryd]

I am very excited for you - and hope to get a peak at your project!

If you need some help wiring up the trailer, I have some experience with that depending on what you end up running.

 

[Martyn]

Looks like the booming metropolis of Boise is good for 25% cheaper powdercoating costs, so I will be picking it up this week and lugging it over here in all its bare naked glory to get the powder done. That means I will have to wire it up too, which I'm not that comfortable with, but how do you get comfortable with something except to just do it??

I am super excited to get it behind the Jeep and see how she pulls. There is one pass on the way home unless I go the long way and catch three, but I don't think that's happening this time, so we'll see how much lag I get up the hills at least empty.

PS. Doctor??? Do tell!!

I'd like to share our experience with powder coaters so that hopefully you get the best work done on your trailer.

What we look for is a powder coater who can produce an automotive finish to their work.

Right now we use two powder coaters. One for the chassis, as they are really good at putting it on thick. The chassis can take a beating so thick is good.

The bodies have to have a consistent coating of powder and all surfaces have to be evenly covered. For this we use a second powder coater, they are considerably more expensive than the first.

The biggest problems we have had come not so much from the spraying but from the ovens. The parts are either hung by hooks or placed on a trolley as they go through the oven. We have experienced contamination from powder on the hooks and trolleys from previous jobs. This results in drips of alien colors in the finished coat.

Ask the powder coaters to pay special attention to contamination from other powder colors. Most powder coaters do their colors in batches. So if you are for example having it sprayed white ask the powder coaters what day they will be batching white through and schedule your powder coating for that day. You may also be able to reduce the set up and clean up charges if you do this.

We also insist that all marked lines on the steel, used by the sheet metal fabricators to mark bends etc. are erased before powder coating. Depending on the powder used these lines can show through the finished coat very faintly.

Set your expectations up with the powder coater before they do the work. Your expectations might be to;
Have an automotive finish
Have even and full coverage
Have no color contamination
Have no drips
Be applied thick enough to in fill seams where stitch welds have been placed
etc.

 

[TheGillz]

Thanks very much for the tips Martyn. I will certainly take your list to the coaters. I'll give you some background on what has transpired. Mike was going to originally follow through on finishing the trailer untill it was ready to be loaded and beat through the brush.

When we first started designing the trailer I called the three powdercoaters in the phone book here and gave them apporoximate size and application of the trailer and all three quoted me prices within 100 dollars of each other, while on the phone on guy stood out as someone that was in the business for over 20 years, was very personable and helpful on the phone, and happened to have the $100 less price. The other two sounded like young guys, seemed very busy to talk and not that I wouldn't go there, they just didn't give me the same impression than the first, not to mention price.

Well later Mike and I got more details worked out and decided on budget and where to start and that with the prices I got we figured it would be close enough to the same price to do the powder over in eastern ID, as there were at least 3 shops close enough to use.

Fast forward to the last weeks, as the trailer got closer to done, we could take exact measurments and pictures to the coaters and get pretty exact quotes. Well I had budgeted $200 more than the general quotes I got here in Boise earlier in the summer, to make sure I had that expense covered, however the quotes that Mike was getting were $250-400 more than the ones from Boise.

That much more facilitated more calls to the coaters here with emails full of measurements and pictures. Again the quotes came back the same as before. Plus the original guy that had impressed me before with his knowledge and attitude was again the cheapest, and in fact remembered my call from 3 months ago. Needless to say I was impressed and plan on using him to do the work. I will definately look at some of his work first and share with him your list of things to look out for, and again thanks alot for the insight.

 

[the dude]

I just wanted to share my experiences with powder coatings. I'll start off by saying that I sell and service industrial coatings (which includes powder) for PPG and have been doing so for 15 years.

In my experince the first question you want to ask is what are they doing for pretreatment. Does it include blasting, wash or a combination of both. What are they blasting with? In their wash are they degreasing, phosphating and sealing? This will have a lot to do with costing and the performance of the coatings.

As for the thickness of the coating. You can have too much paint, be it liquid or powder. It may become brittle and be susceptible to greater rock chipping. Paint can also crack if used as filler. Ask if they have a high heat caulking that they apply before powder coating to fill any seams.

Make sure you ask about those items that Martyn pointed out,

even and full coverage
no sags/runs
no cross contamination

if you really want to go high end look into a zinc rich epoxy primer under you top coat color.