Adding Trailer Ramp Springs

it's taken a while to get back to it I said I would add springs to the trailer the new drop gate I put on some time has gone by so I decided I'd get to it I've got the bracket installed that I've already pre-drilled and welded in this particular design the spring is going to stay captive to the drop gate it's above rather than a below and so what that means is that both ends have to be able to play against each other and compress you need a left and a right hand and spring so you can tell the difference when you hold them like this one goes on one side one goes on the other obviously so we're about ready to install the spring and test it there's a groove that's cut into the steel here and the spring that has the dogleg on it drop it into position get the bolt through it hold it and then just going to take this piece of aluminum pipe and test its compression and let's see we're going to go up this is dangerous if you do this be careful to hold on to it a little hard feeder till but the spring the bottom of the spring is still in the groove we should be able to go over about that far roughly 120 degrees and come back without any Distortion let's take the train out take a look at it I think we're in pretty good shape I should point out that the hole through the spring the opening is 3/4 of an inch this is a 5/8 inch bolt and it fits a loose fit just in case there's any I don't think in this case there could be but there's no way it can bind and I don't want to find out if it what happens if it does bind no ready to test the second one let's go ahead and get see what happens here be careful when you do this that's about it seems to be okay so now from vertical let's go ahead and see how it works ladies know pretty well looks pretty good to me notice also that there's not much gap here two less than two fingers so this trailer being set up that way you're not having you know big deep gap that a wheel gets caught in this is a picture from another manufacturer I mentioned that they in that particular case decided to put the hinge or the bracket on the bottom of the the trailer gate now you can see that I'm doing pretty much the same thing they're doing except that my bracket is in inside the frame and that means that when my gate opens that I don't have this huge air space that you're starting to see here when this thing opens that they've got you've got about a good three plus inches and so if you've got a lawnmower or something you're bringing it up that ramp it's gonna fall down into that groove I decided I did not want to do that and they've got a major product here it's a very excellent piece of work they also have their drop gate able to fold over back onto the bed which is a huge plus one thing to remember though that when you do that you don't have any spring support so the weight of this thing is enough that you don't want to be in the way of it and also you don't want this sharp end sticking out here I've got an idea for how to deal with that the problem can be resolved by simply putting a bend into that string it takes some doing and I've got a way to do it I'm going to demo that but this way there's there's no way anybody can be speared if this thing's in the reclined position there's a handy bending jig you can make yourself out of a heavy piece of steel bar drill a hole in it towards the top then take a round bar put it on the lathe and cut a groove into it round it groove cut it off after you've milled in there about a quarter of the way so it's square and you can get it on to the steel bar then you may have to experiment but you mount that on a vise or something that you can hold again and put the steel bar through there and you can put a pretty nice Bend on there to knock that much money one time use which is what I'm going to do to protect the free ends of the spring from sticking out when the gate is in the reclined position anyway however you can do it be careful when you're working with Springs like this because they're a lot more powerful than you might think and get a steel bar for the bending part of it that fits tightly on there so that it won't slip at this point what I've done is I've put the bending jig that I've built into the vise and I've made a wooden washer it's got a cutout here for clearance and then I'm going to insert the free end of the Springs leg into here and enter the apparatus the bending Jade like this it should be held pretty steadily and all this does is ensure that we don't have any free plate between where we need to wind up and where the spring is now I went ahead and built an additional tool out of a steel bar I drilled it out just a little bit oversized so we should be able to put that on the leg of the spring here and surf the bend and when we end up we should be over here with not too much problems and clearance a little bit of hand work may be involved here because of the part of the dog leg I put a nylon tie wrap in here to be extra sure that there's no way that this moves and then tighten down the vise very very very well because there could be pressure on it when I start this I don't want to stop so this should hold it pretty well let's try to bend this thing I'm going to need the helper bar let's put the bending arm on there looks pretty good I'm going to need to go around the corner with this should be good to go here we go oh it takes an effort oh that takes some effort I'll tell you what got done a lot of been very easily but again Wow I seem to get more than I bargained for on these be very careful when you're working with this oh the strength I've got to do it I'm gonna to take it from the other side I'm still in business it just doesn't look as good you've gotta weigh at least 200 something to do this well you get the general idea I'm going to actually end up having to do some hand work with the Vice in the plant but we've got it bent and then if I can get another little sweep in it I will but I can disassemble this and show you the end product one down and one to go not quite as nice a bend as I'd hope for but definitely workable and so now we've got something to work with and we can install just have to do it one more time and then I'm through with it

Channel: Michael Bradford

Views: 151,414

Keywords: Ramp springs, drop-gate springs, trailer upgrades

Id: zkatI-412Xc

Length: 9min 2sec (542 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 08 2018