This is my m416B1 Rescue Thread

[Digglesby]

I found this old man on fb near me for sale and after a little back and forth brought him home.

I see all these cool overland builds of these things and while they really are awesome, I’m not sure I’d ever use a tent, but the better half and I do sometimes have need for a utility trailer and we do plan on taking some long road trips where extra storage might be nice in the Jeep and doing some light off road trips and we want to go kayaking now and then and not have to rent one. So my thinking is eventually to end up with a trailer with some kind of solid lid on it, a tailgate on the back (since the back came already removed) and reasonable off road ability.

I also recognize that there is only so much time and money available so... I’m going to tackle this in phases. I am currently in Phase 1, which I will call “Stop the Bleeding!” As purchased, the trailer bed is pretty rusty with holes all the way through the metal in several areas. The frame however is pretty solid except for one of the bed supports which was eaten through with rust after the bed got eaten through there. It does seem structurally sound, if not ideal. When I dragged it home behind my Jeep there was a pretty strong burny smell coming from the trailer... either stuck parking brake or worn/dry bearing (I discovered during tear down it was the brake). Anyway, my goal for the Stop the Bleeding phase is simple: take everything apart, remove the surface rust, get everything protected from future rust and get the thing roadworthy. After that I can use it for some light duty trailering and decide what is really most important to me. So... here we go.


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[Digglesby]

The Tear Down:

I first took everything apart and found through some sandblasting archaeology that the old man was a USMC (as I later found out allB1’s are) trailer and probably belonged to the 1st battalion.

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[Digglesby]

Here he is, broken down to most of his requisite parts. Had some trouble with the spring mount threads (as detailed) in another thread. Turns out that just one of the 4 U bolt nuts is reverse threaded. How weird. Why? I don’t know.

After I got it all apart, I made an inventory of all the parts that I wanted to replace and bought what I could locally and ordered the rest. I decided that since the hand brake cable was stuck and causing problems, I am just not going to reattach it for now. I’ll deal with that later.


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[Digglesby]

Now we are up to today: I got the tub and the frame sandblasted and covered with Rust reformer so hopefully that will keep it from rusting any further.

Next steps will be to finish sandblasting the smaller parts, give them the rust reformer treatment and then paint everything and put it back together. I think I’m going to go with flat black for the tub and gloss black for the frame components and the wheels. Maybe that will look stupid. But I’m going with it for now. Eventually when i get around to patching up the bed, I want to color match it with the Jeep, but it would be worthless to do now since the tub is such a mess.


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[Digglesby]

In my garage, I have:

some inexpensive trailer lighting to put on (the original lights were trashed and the wiring was all hacked up so no point trying to restore them at this point)

New shocks
New wheel bearings and races and seals
New spring mount bolts and U bolts with their funny little grease fittings and the one ridiculous reverse threaded one, and the brass sleeve for them which I was able to get pretty cheap from Kaiserwillys.com
Some other stuff I’m forgetting.


Arriving today from fastenal will be all of the new bolts to put it back together. I decided to go with the wholly unnecessary grade 8 hardware as it wasn’t really much more expensive.

So hopefully this weekend it’ll all be back together and functional and then I can begin considering what’s important for Phase 2.



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[Digglesby]

Got the frame all back together and the tub set back on it last night. Still have to finish securing the lighting wires, put the fenders back on and a few more minor details... but the old man is just about ready to be registered.

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[Digglesby]

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[77TLCFJ40]

Did someone weld a new loop on the lunette? Maybe it’s just the angle and lighting, but it looks much smaller than others I have seen.

 

[Digglesby]

Did someone weld a new loop on the lunette? Maybe it’s just the angle and lighting, but it looks much smaller than others I have seen.

Probably just the angle. It looks original to me.


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[Digglesby]

Mostly back together now. Waiting on on new u-bolts to arrive to finish the axle. I put the old ones back in temporarily because I couldn’t find new ones locally and had to order some. They should be here today so I can get the old man out on the road for a good test run tomorrow. I cut some floor underlayment and sprayed it with bedliner for the floor and then covered that with a rubber mat. Eventually I’ll get to welding up the holey metal on the floor so it doesn’t need that but for now it makes the trailer useful and protected from damage. I’ll just have to take it out to dry if it gets wet. For now it’s living in the garage with the cars so it’s safe from the elements unless I decide to take it out.

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[Digglesby]

So question for those who have more experience with fabrication than me (which is pretty much everyone, I think) : since someone already cut the back off, I am probably going to figure out a tailgate, but for now I am concerned about the integrity of the sides. What’s the best way to reinforce them to keep them from being so flexy? If you happen to have pictures of what you’ve done that would be super helpful.

Once I get to reinforcement and fixing the metal I want to do it as right as I can so it doesn’t look like someone butchered the poor thing and Frankensteined it together. Thanks for any advice anyone has! In the meantime, I’m going to find some similar metal to practice welding on so I don’t blow any holes in this thing or anything. Lol.


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[Flyfishjeep]

I don't have pictures, but I think I can explain it well enough. If you weld an extension on the rear cross member to extend out as far as the trailer side of the top, you then weld a bar to the top round bar to the end of your extension of the crossmember. Then you can weld a flat piece of 14 gauge sheet metal. Now you can even mount drop in tail lights into this flat sheet metal. I had one like this on a homebuilt trailer. Made the trailer sides stiff as could be and no real flex in the sides at all without a lot of force.

 

[Liam5638]

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Do you have a good garage, albeit a small one, or do you only keep a trailer here?

See you make your garage yourself. I wanted to ask you for advice, I can not find a topic where I can send my question, therefore I am addressing myself.

Now there is a construction of my garage, it is one and a half times larger than yours in the photo. Faced the problem of lighting, I can’t imagine how much and how much I need, can you advise something from here https://wisepick.org/best-garage-lighting/? Or hang the cheapest light bulbs from the store, will there be a difference in lighting?

 

[Flyfishjeep]

How's your progress? Did you get the tailgate figured out?

 

[Digglesby]

How's your progress? Did you get the tailgate figured out?

It is currently Frankensteined, but doesn’t look too awful. I have not had time to get practice welding so it is what it is for now. When weather gets colder I should have more time to mess with it since I will have less time to be out on the trails with the Jeep. Lol. The weather has been so perfect we have been out of the house nearly every weekend. Lol. This is what it looks like now though. It’s functional.

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