Converting Military Trailers into Overlanding Rigs

in our last video you saw a spring on a deal for three military trailers including two bantam t3cs from the 1940s we have some major plans for these platforms and we couldn't be more excited but first we need to get them home and bring them back to life [Music] okay [Music] [Music] when i think of the ideal over landing setup i think of maneuverability and i think of comfort the samurai dominates in the former but has zero frills or creature comforts and can't afford the top heaviness of a rooftop tent we started to get into the idea of saving weight in our vehicles and opting to incorporate trailers into our setups to get the best of both worlds comfort in the base camp without reduced performance on the trail the first step in the so-called restoration is to disassemble as many parts as possible and expose the rust that pretty much turn out to be the tongue the lighting and wiring and the wheels i chose not to disassemble the leaf springs since this isn't a showpiece and the bushings seemed acceptable i do think my trailer is a bit more tanky than yours though the heavily oxidized gray paint is actually not the original from 1947. the original hunter green coat made for this civilian version was found underneath the gray coat from the factory this bantam t3c c for civilian incorporated a tailgate which adds to the convenience but sacrifices its ability to float in river crossings i'll take the tailgate personally the 500 pound trailer has a gross capacity of about a thousand pounds which coincidentally matches the samurai's stock towing capacity i'd love to keep this as light as possible but after incorporating a fridge lithium battery system a propane stove and tank a 30 gallon water tank and eventually a rooftop tent i'll be approaching a thousand pounds dry [Music] you [Music] [Music] uh [Music] well it's 6 a.m bright and early we decided to get started super early today because the weather is crazy hot supposed to get up to 93 94 today we wanted to beat the heat so we're out here and hopefully we'll wrap up the two coats of pour 15 by maybe 10 a.m and then we'll wait until the evening or maybe tomorrow to actually do the tan top coat i came out here last night pretty late 11 p.m or so and i finished cleaning my trailer completely let it dry overnight i think conrad has to do still the phosphoric acid on his i'm going to get going on the port 15 and hopefully we get this all done pretty darn quickly here the first step in any painting project is to suit up por 15 has some nasty isocyanate in it and the vapors will absorb through your skin if you aren't careful to stay true to the origins of this style of trailer i chose to go for a matte tan look referred to as carc chemical agent resistant coating number 686 there are only two vendors that manufacture the imitation paint gillespie coatings and army jeep parts a gallon runs about 70 dollars with shipping and tax and needs to be reduced with acrylic enamel reducer xylene or mineral spirits three parts paint to one part reducer as with any top coat it always does better with the rust prevented base coat [Music] i'm shooting this one with a 1.4 millimeter tip in my hvlp gun with about 27 psi [Music] i will always love you i keep you in my heart [Music] [Music] is [Music] you know we all got to fall sometimes pick ourselves up off the ground and learn how to rise it's like up and down so long that i just might stay here for a while while i clear my mind so you can cut my leaves but you if [Music] just look at how [Music] look at the reason everyone's sleeping ain't got nothing to believe in streams are tv they [Music] all right well conrad's mom has a cricket machine which basically allows you to create stencils so we've got a couple different iterations here uh for each of our vehicles and we're just gonna see what looks good probably my favorite yeah that looks pretty dang good that fits really nicely in the space you can even lower it down a little yeah kind of like center it yep i like that a lot so we'll stick it right there i pre-lined up that's close enough cool actually just very very little yeah exactly [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] get that old axle out of the way how do the springs look [Music] wait [Music] sounds amazing great yeah sounds like i mean it's a hot well dude but we want it to be right yeah we want it to have great penetration because this is very load bearing looks good it looks pretty good right looks good through the camera oh yeah dude that's amazing dude with the painting out of the way it's time to install the wheels and tires i'm using the original wheels on mine which happen to match the samurai's bolt pattern of five on five and a half meaning i only need to carry one spare but instead of non-directional tread of the 1940s military era i opted for some tubeless all-terrains that ben had left over conrad wanted his bolt pattern to match his 4 under 6 on 5 and a half meaning he needed to procure either new hubs or a new axle assembly he wasn't able to locate hubs with the correct inner diameter and bolt pattern combination so he picked up a 3 500 pound dexter axle with the ability to add a parking brake the width is wider than stock so he'll need to extend his fenders so [Music] we hope you enjoyed us bringing these functional pieces of history back to life we like to think of ourselves as curators in the sense that we'll take good care of these historic platforms for years but we have big plans in the works stay tuned for our upcoming videos on the system build outs to turn these into truly functional [Music] you

Channel: Overtime 4X4

Views: 45,249

Keywords: Overtime 4x4, 4x4, adventure, camping, 4wd

Id: 39pKNb-NqjY

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021