Buying and fixing a lowboy trailer : Centreville 35 ton detachable

okay guys so i'm going to check out this lowboy this is the fourth or fifth one that i'm going to check out hopefully this is the one i'm about 180 miles from home so let's go see what this trailer looks like and hopefully i'm gonna buy it i'm in new jersey right now southern part of new jersey so [Music] [Music] [Applause] now oh all right we're all hooked up here we're at an airport here in two miles prepare to take exit 15 to i287 south route 17 south on the right did you uh did you set it to that voice [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so here is my lowboy 35 ton this is a 1986 cta it's ground bearing i'm gonna check this thing out i've never run a lowboy i've never disattached one before this is a ground bearing model this is a good deal and it comes with a pony motor so the pony motor hasn't been used in two years i don't even know if it's gonna start up it has electric start and a pull start i got a battery so we're gonna put that in there and we're gonna try to disattach this thing i've never done that before i brought this battery with me but the guy had a forklift so i didn't even need it so now we're going to put this in there and see if it'll fire up [Music] let's see here gas is on [Music] that was easy i didn't even need to do uh so i'm going to put this lever on it's going to lower the jack i'm assuming [Applause] i here i think the whole idea is that i gotta take this and bring it this way i think that's the idea things should drop right to the ground i think i'm supposed to actually disconnect this first so [Applause] i didn't realize i had to put some blocks underneath there to keep it up off the ground like that look how solid that is that's just solid steel right there it's like at this point it's like two and a half three two and three quarters so [Applause] so when i was underneath this trailer adjusting the brakes i could hear that the air tank was leaking so it should be somewhere right around here so there's this plate with these four bolts i should be able to hopefully take that out and it's right there because it's a pain to get to from [Music] underneath [Music] seriously [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] those nuts were supposed to have attack weld on them to hold them but two of them had broken welds so i'd use a vice grip underneath there to hold the other side so you can see this this air tank is not in good condition i think it's leaking somewhere right around here right there but either way that needs to be replaced they're not that expensive so so uh all right so it feels pretty loose but i'm not going to take that out yet until i get all these hoses off of here and then i can take the whole thing out [Music] so [Music] so [Music] uh [Music] [Music] so so [Music] i'm gonna have to cut this line because it's not turning with the nut probably end up just replacing this or part of it anyways okay so one last line here looks like i'm going to have the same kind of problem this one doesn't want to turn [Music] i don't really have a knife on me so in a pinch these vice grips will work they got that little spot right there that they can cut with not the greatest but it'll work [Music] so all right so this tank should come right out hopefully [Music] [Music] okay that's just a standard three-quarter pipe thread it's kind of hard to match up these tanks so i think i found the right tank at a fleet pride but i just want to bring this just to make sure i don't want to drive like 45 minutes to an hour just to figure out that it's not the right one or that they have to order it i got a brand new tank here i think this was like 140 maybe [Music] [Music] so ugh so i really wanted to replace that nipple right there i got another one right here it's galvanized but i just couldn't get that off if i put it in a bench vise i could probably get it off but who knows what it's going to look like underneath there i might be opening up a can of worms i probably should just replace this but i'm sure i'll get another five ten years out of it so i'll just put it back together the way it is put some new teflon on there and put it in it's not rusty on the inside at all there's not a piece of rust on the inside so i think it's fine [Applause] right now i'm working in my field here and there's no tools here but my garage is down that way but i can't make it down my hill i'll bottom out right there because it kind of goes down too quick and the way that this sits like eight inches off the ground um i had another lowboy go through there that got stuck one time so i'm just going to leave it up here because i have plans to rework my driveway instead of coming straight up that hill i'm going to curve it way around add some distance to it so i plan on doing that in the next few months and then i can bring my little boy down where i can work on it next to the garage um [Music] so i got a new fitting to put right in there and it's already got the sealant on it so [Music] so [Music] thank you so both of these gladhands are leaking on the other side so you can see there's just kind of a nub here it's so rusted same thing with that one this is the emergency brake here so let me show you what happens when you hook it up so i'm going to release that break right now and show you so you can hear that loud and clear coming out of there from the bottom [Music] so the service brake leaks too let me show you it blows a bunch of dust that's how i knew that it was leaking i'm just hitting a little trolley on here leaking a lot so both those need to be replaced i got new glad hands here and i got like a through the bulkhead kind of fitting so first things first i got to get these out of here and i don't have plasma cutter or anything like that so i'm just going to use a cordless grinder [Music] [Applause] so [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] do so [Music] keep it on there [Music] uh [Applause] all right that's good no leaks there anymore i'm missing two boards here and as tempting as it is to just go and grab a couple two by eights out of my wood pile i'm gonna mill up some wood for that i'm gonna melt some hemlock because eventually i want to do the rest of the trailer in hemlock right now it's oak but i don't really need oak i don't really have any oak either to mill up so we'll just do hemlock for now for those two and eventually we'll get to this do it all in hemlock [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] that should just about do it it's a small little hemlock log but i should be able to get two boards out of it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] foreign three [Music] [Applause] i think the rights up all right guys well the moment of truth is here so enough working on this thing let's go haul something with it so my excavator is on the job right now it's getting pretty lonely it needs to come back here so i just finished up this job i just did my pre-trip here and we're ready to go um so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so ah [Applause] [Applause] so so so [Applause] so thank you [Music] so uh how much so um so so so [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] all right guys so that was my first time actually pulling a load with this truck it did pretty good this n14 is pretty powerful i was going up a really steep hill at one point and it was just chugging along trailer did good excavator is still there put that little boot up there for the turbo everything seems to be working good so let's talk about some weight so this truck is around sixteen thousand pounds the trailer is about 19.5 that excavator is about 29 000 with that bucket on it so all together what's that around 65 or something summers around there so that's gross so i only got 15 000 more pounds before i gotta get an overweight permit because 80 000 is the limit for truck and trailer combined everything grossed out 80 000 in the united states is where we're at anything beyond that and you need an overweight permit so this trailer seems to be pretty nice i really like it i've always wanted a lowboy i'm just really fascinated by the way they are i really want to take those panels off the back so you can see the wheels but at the same time this really is a nice platform to put something you could put a skid steer here if i reposition this excavator so that the boom wasn't hanging over you could easily put a skid steer or a mini excavator or something like that on there i got plenty of room to move forward here so i know there's a lot of guys that are gonna say that i should have never got a ground bearing trailer and that i should always get a non-ground bearing i totally agree i'm with you on that but they're a lot more money i did look at one but it needed so much work it needed like a month worth of work the whole thing needed to be rebuilt but this one for 6700 that's a pretty good deal with the pony motor because i was either gonna have to do that or pay like 2500 for the wet kit parts and then install the wet kit which i still may do eventually but for right now this gets me going and i didn't really need to do anything just kind of hook up and go so one thing i'm going to work on is making some sort of jack back here to keep this neck up in the air because when you unhook it it wants to just drag on the ground you can put blocks in here and i was doing that and with the combination of that and dropping the airbags and raising them you can kind of adjust to where you need to be so that works for now but i want to come up with a permanent solution but i also want to put a pintle hitch on the back right here so i don't want to impede that i may also put some ramps up here to ramp up to the fifth wheel plate those non-ground bearing trailers are really nice because they pivot on themselves and they scissor up and down to raise and lower it and a nice thing about those is that you can actually adjust the height of them like if you come up to railroad tracks you can kind of raise them up that is really nice about those but other than that you can spread the weight out on the jack they already put a bigger plate on the jack and you can you can put some cribbing underneath that if you get into some really soft spots overall a non-ground bearing trailer would have been a lot better but this will definitely do the trick for me because i'm not going to be moving machines every day and i'm not transporting stuff for other people so it doesn't really matter for me so i definitely want to repaint this whole trailer and make it look really nice but the way i kind of look at things is that they kind of need to earn their keep first so once i figure out that this trailer is everything i want for a while then i'll go ahead and lay it up and paint the whole thing and redo some some little things but structurally it's good it's so much better than all the other trailers i was looking at there was a few times where i hired people to move stuff with a lowboy and they always wanted 175 an hour so if you think about it like that this is actually quite a bit of a money maker if i wanted to transport for other people but i probably won't do that um i eventually found somebody that did it for 125 an hour but even that is pretty good money to be making you know if you're doing it yourself you're basically making that money so that that's that's a pretty substantial savings all you'd have to do is move things like 10 times a year and trailer pretty much pays for itself this truck has a 390 rear ends 3.9 ratio that's actually pretty powerful for what i'm doing it's perfect and i can still reach like 65 70 on the highway actually i can do more than that i think it's 75 or 80 on the highway with this little 10 speed it's it's not a bad combination i'd rather have an 18 speed so one of the main reasons that i've been trying to get a lowboy is the low center of gravity since it's so low to the ground it definitely handles a lot better otherwise you're sticking way up in the air and i can also transport that crane i think that crane's right at about uh 11 foot six or so so you have to have that on a lowboy to transport it um so my deck over trailer would handle this excavator and anything else that i have except for the crane just because it's sitting too high but i just really don't like loading three feet in the air the way this is you start off on the ramps and you're eight inches off the ground that's really nice it's so much safer for loading and so much safer for driving down the roads all right so this is kind of the introduction to this trailer i'm gonna do some more work on it i'm gonna transport some more stuff i think it's worth every time i transport something big i'll make a little video about it my channel could probably use some smaller videos that are kind of faster pace and you know i always have the long videos so a couple videos here and there transport and stuff wouldn't be too bad i'm actually going to go transport another excavator tomorrow so i'll catch you guys on that one [Music] so [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Jesse Muller

Views: 277,289

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Id: rawx1OKoFFw

Length: 63min 19sec (3799 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021