As promised (in another thread): My $300 trailer build!

[Martinjmpr]

First off, this is not an "Expedition trailer." At least, I don't plan on taking this one off-road. It's strictly a low-clearance street trailer.

Okay, so last year I thought having a trailer would be a good idea. Especially with having 2 motorcycles in the family, a trailer would be a good way to haul a bike to the shop if that became neccessary.

I posted a message on a local 4x4 board (http://www.Colorado4x4.org) asking for information on ramp-gate utility trailers, and one of the members replied that he had a trailer like that in his yard that his wife was bugging him to get rid of. He'd sell it to me for $100.

I figured it would be an easy project, so I jumped on it. Here it is when I brought it home in August:

As you can see, most of the floorboards are broken or rotted (one is missing), and the wiring was completely inoperative. I bought a set of magnetic-mount lights to bring it home from Longmont, about 40 miles away.

At first I thought I'd have it done by the end of August or maybe September at the latest. Well, life has a funny way of messing with plans like that and a lot of other stuff intervened.

By late August, I had at least gotten all the old rotten floorboards out of it, though that was rather difficult. I ended up buying a wrecking bar and using the steel-cutting blade from my Sawzall to cut off the rusted-in screws.

Next came the de-rusting. My stepson helped me with this and it took quite a few hours with the wire stripping wheel on the drill to get the worst of the rust and dried-bird crap off of the frame. He started priming it and then the trailer was more or less forgotten for a few months.

Then, in December I finally decided to finish the priming.

I picked a warm day in December to get most of the priming done.

A few weeks later, on another warm day, I painted it.

(the ramp gate was painted after these pictures were taken.)

Forest green is my favorite color so that's the color I chose. Plus I figured it would look nice with the white wheels and wooden floor.

Continued....

 

[Martinjmpr]

Part 2:

Next up (and not shown), bought a set of cheap lights from Harbor Freight and hooked them up. It was a bit of a chore but once I finally got the grounding figured out, the lights worked fine.

In late April, I decided I'd better get off my butt and finish it.

So I bought a set of floor boards. The trailer is 48" wide so I went with 5 2 x 10s. I decided to spend the extra $6 on each board to get treated wood (like you'd use for a deck) since the trailer will be stored and (obviously) used outside.

The trailer has a channel on the front and rear that the original floor boards fit inside. I thought about how to get these to fit (apparently when the trailer was built, the boards were put on and then the top piece of the channel was welded in place afterwards.) Finally, realizing that this was a low-buck build, I just said "screw it" and didn't even use the channel - I just cut the boards to fit outside the channels. Good thing, too, because I discovered afterwards that this treated lumber is too thick to fit inside them anyway!

Unfortunately, the 5 2 x 10's weren't quite wide enough to cover the floor:

I thought about going down to Lowe's and getting a couple of 2 x 12's but finally decided a 2 x 3 stud would fit (very tightly) and cover the gap. It looks a bit odd but a $2 stud is way cheaper than a couple of $16 2x12's would have been, and cheap is the name of the game here.

Even though the boards are treated, I went ahead and stained them with Thompson's Water Seal:

Once they were dry I put them in place:

I call the lighter board my 'racing stripe.'

Finally this weekend I decided to finish up. Got some carriage bolts, nuts and washers and bolted everything down.

Then I got some small eyelets and ran the wiring through them, just to keep everything neat.

Some of the fender washers wouldn't fit because the holes I drilled were too close to the corner of the L-shaped frame bracket. So I just bent them in my vise and used them anyway.

And here she is, on her first drive around the block!

I haven't tallied up all the costs, but the major items break down like this:

Cost to acquire the trailer: $100
Mag-mount lights to get it home: $40
Wire wheels, primer and paint: $50 approximately
Harbor Freight light kit: $25
Floorboards: $75
Hardware to bolt on boards: $10

Total: About $300!

Still needs a license plate but I'm hoping to get that done this week.

So, there it is, my $300 trailer build! :elkgrin:

 

[Photomike]

WOW, great deal and great job!!