Fender Work
Well, haven't updated things in a while so here goes:
Well after several months of nothing to update, I have a LITTLE progress. Not a lot to show, but I guess something is better than nothing. I thought long and hard about fenders and what to do with them. Got sick and tired of the typical trailer fender getting beat up and trashed so I wanted something that would be stout enough to handle the abuse I put my trailers through. Hopefully these will work. Again, this is not your typical trailer, so these are not your typical fenders either. Still not finished, have a lot of welding to go, but figured I better get something up as it's been months now. You can see the basic outline of what is happening and have the general idea of what is going on, so hopefully this makes sense.
This first pic is how it sits overall:
In this pic you can kind of see the DOM tube inserted into the frame on each side. This will be where my electrical and eventually water lines run through, keeping them up and out of the way and preventing them from being run under the trailer. Main lines will go through there. Electrical down the driver side, water down the passenger side. It's 1.75 .120 DOM I had left over from my cage project so I'll have room for other stuff too if need be. Still need to drill the holes and run the tube (smaller of course) for the main lines going out to the LED markers. As the main receiver tube sits 3/4" below the main frame, I also brought up the center line to sit level with the deck when sheet is laid. Still need to cap the ends. Left space in front and behind to run lines over the top of the main tube:
Here's a long shot of the fender overall. If it looks a little crooked, it's an illusion. I off-set the light boxes to account for the distance the LED grommets stick out. They're flush mount LED's and for as many trailer lights as I've broke on my other trailers, I figured I'd build these with not only recessed lights, but recessed boxes too, to account for the grommet. So, the "light box" is set back 5/8" behind the main fender line both at the front, and the back of the main fender. I still have triangular beams to add in so the idea is that when I bash this into a tree, rock, stump or other trail debris, I am HOPING that the main fender line will deflect the trailer off and around the LED light box and the LED will pass just behind the obstacle, leaving the LED in-tact and damage free. That's the idea anyway-we'll see how it works when it's done. Here's what I mean:
Here's a shot of the LED box-have not yet cut the mounting hole out. Electrical lines will be run through the tube. Still need to drill holes through the tube and burn in the other smaller tube inside the main frame leading to the fender tubes at all corners:
Shot from behind-still have a lot of welding and cleanup work to do-it will all be cleaned up before sheet is laid:
Shot from the other side:
Seems simple enough, but a lot of time and work has gone into those damn things and I'm not even done with them yet. Still have triangular tubes to add in front/rear and off the horizontal as well up front, and more welding on them to finish them. Not far from sheeting it though, so it's getting closer. Like I said, not a lot to report, but some progress none the less.
more to come...
Best of Luck,
Mike
