Servicing my small equipment trailer

all right the project at hand right now is with this trailer quick history on this trailer this I made this in 2007 so that's 12 years ago now and it's been a very good trailer but you know every once in a while I got to do a little bit of maintenance to it and repairs and upkeep but right now it needs a few little things one thing that's broken is this the hinge on this one ramp broke and I've been using it like this but what that needs to be fixed that's no big deal and the other thing another thing that's broken on it is the front jack I remember I took it off road and it was when the truck needed leaf springs and it was sitting kind of low and the jack hit something and bent it but so I just need to straighten that out and weld it and the other thing I want to do is I want to address the lights so one issue I've always kind of had is with trailer lights on everything so when I initially put the lights on this thing I wanted to do it so they would last so I put these metal ones on there so let me go over a few different types of trailer lights so let's go over to this other trailer over here okay so this trailer I picked up this year and it's a little bit better for moving equipment but it needs some attention right now and it needs to be fixed it's not usable but the trailer lights on it so it's got these lights here now these lights those are garbage now I know they meet the d-o-t requirements or whatever but they shouldn't the problem with those lights is that they get smashed all the time instantly and they're so delicate you don't even know how they get smashed they're just always broken alright so we'll go over to this trailer here now the other type of trailer lights that constantly get smashed are these ones they every time I look at a trailer with these lights on it they're smashed and you have no idea how it happened and they're just I mean they're cheap but it's the amount of these lights I've changed it's it's just pointless that they shouldn't sell these anymore these just garbage so when I put the lights on this I didn't want the lights to constantly be smashed for no reason so I put these metal lights on it now these ones are better they still get smashed but I at least always know how it happened you know you usually got to hit something before these two get smashed but the thing that does happen to these is these ones they completely rust out and I don't even take this trailer out on assault but the bulbs inside lose contact and then the whole thing just rust up and falls off and it happens in like three to four years so really those lights shouldn't be sold anymore either they're garbage the lights that I found actually stay working or this type of light where it's plugged into like oval or a circle with a rubber grommet they're nice because they don't rust up they don't get smashed because they don't stick out when they do break it's easy to change them because you don't need any tools so let me install matching lights on this whole trailer I'm gonna ditch all those lights those are just garbage and my tail lights on this side these are still working but they don't match that side and you know trailer lighting deserves it's its own video by itself but alright let's get this thing in the garage and get it fixed up [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you I could just replace this I've changed these before but that's not bad this gray coating is called galvanizing don't breathe the smoke from this you [Music] [Music] alright so this got pushed back so I figured I'll just bend it forward again [Music] alright it took a minute but I got the thing perfect on both accesses all right that's best yeah this is plenty high up off the ground now the problem was this truck had some broken Springs and it was sitting too low and I went over like this steep hill and it caught but then I welded that stronger than it was so I doubt that will ever be a problem again [Music] [Music] [Music] but straight I didn't want that to happen all right that's no big deal got to take some extra metal out of this [Music] [Applause] [Music] alright that looks pretty good I just got to do that three more times you I set this up so if you either go here or here my Komatsu really needs the ramp there even the wider stuff though when the ramp is here it's okay the only time the ramp needs to be in this wider position is for like trucks to be on this trailer [Music] all right that's pretty good let's address these lights now [Laughter] [Music] all right yeah that looks pretty good you [Music] all right so I know these didn't turn out I mean that's good enough for what I'm doing they sell machines that what that plasma cutter could go into and they would cut these out absolutely perfect you know I'm kind of tempted to get one of those because you know then I could make pieces like this you know nice enough to like sell them or nice enough to you know if it needed to be perfectly accurate you it could do that way this works this rubber grommet goes in there and and hides these edges anyway and plus these get welded so that won't even you won't even see that but all right let's get these installed that's the only way to make electrical connections soldered with shrink tube all right I got a few more to do now all right so I was questioning changing the rest of these because this is falling under the don't fix it if it's not broken category but look at this light [Music] see that's that's how these are if there's bulbs it's like you know very intermittent its junk all right let's get these out of here [Music] [Applause] all right so another thing this trailer is supposed to have since it's over 80 inches wide it's supposed to have three clearance lights in the center here the reason it's never had them is because I have this Center hitch here and it was just kind of hard to find a spot to mount and where they won't just get smashed instantly well I think I have a plan [Music] to protect these lights even further I want to add a piece of metal like this in the bottom so they're not sticking out all right so if I just left the wires sticking out like that they would just get smashed instantly all right so what I cut out this piece of pipe like that I'll weld that right there that way the wires won't get broken when the back of the trailer hits the ground all right this is what I did here nice nice and clean looking all right that looks nice those are pretty bright too all right and I just added these front clearance lights as well on both sides because the old lights that were on this thing you could see them like 180 degrees these new ones look how once you get to the front of the trailer you I couldn't see it so figured that was a good idea all right well lights are all done on this thing let's pull it outside and wash and paint it [Music] you alright so unrelated to the trailer I was working on the truck had a taillight out it's not the bulb not the fuse alright so as soon as I get under the truck first thing I see one of these things I didn't do that but all right let's fix that right this is where I thought it was that thing I found it right there see that broken wire all it takes one little nick and the wire breaks look at that all right he's gonna be hard to solder because they're corroded they should really use marine grade wires on automotive because it's you know I mean the wires a lot more money like if you go to auto parts store and buy wire or go to a marina and buy a wire the marina is way more expensive but so you think oh they're overcharging but no they're not the marine wire much higher quality stuff the marine wire doesn't doesn't get corroded so easily because it's meant to be in saltwater but really cars should be built the same way because they're in salt the whole time - you know I was just working on that wave runner over there every bullet you touch on the thing comes right out and it's brand-new shiny Bowl because there's stainless steel try to take a bowl out of this truck it's impossible you got you got melt them off of a torch and just put new bolts in all right nice that's a fix that wasn't too bad sometimes it's hard to find growth and wires like that but in this case I had you know this light was out but this was on and that was on and plus the trailer light connector work so I wouldn't have spent forever looking for that I just would have pulled power from somewhere else to make it work that's kind of the rule wouldn't fix some electrical problems on this truck if I can't fix the factory wiring pretty quick I'll just I'll just run new wires you this is the wrong type of tire this is a light truck tire and I'll just make this my spare this is a trailer tire here to reverse treads on this thing alright so that's good the trailer I just finished up the service on it so that's nice everything's fixed on it and then touching up the paint the thing looks like new again so the the biggest thing I did here was kind of fixing these lights I'm hoping now with this style light installed that they're not constantly broken every time I look at the trailer being that I don't think they'll have any corrosion issues or I don't think they'll get smashed either and even when they do break they're a lot easier to change alright so since this video was completely about service in this trailer let's just go back and look at some old photos of when I was making it and some of the first trips I took towing this trailer alright these pictures are from 2007 that's 12 years ago now and they are of making this trailer there's a one-year-old Levi right there so there's the fenders all done there's making the ramps that we just fixed in the video and here it is painted this was the rusty metal primer and then the clean metal primer and I ended up redoing some of this stuff like these old lint ramp catches that didn't last that long that didn't work very well having the chain just going from here to here works much better and there it is the black paint and then this taillight that lasted a couple years like that but I kept smashing those and then to make sure I didn't miss a single spot painting it I brought it outside and used my Jeep with the winch to flip the thing on its side but the paint has held up pretty well that trailer really doesn't have any rust on it so there it is brand-new deck everything looking new all brand new chains and binders and this is the first time mounting this trailer and as I was bringing a load of scrap metal to the scrapyard so this car you know his junk had no wheels on it completely rotted out I used the winch and pulled it up onto the trailer but I had to make some changes immediately the first problem I had you can see even in this picture how it was catching on all these things because the car had no wheels on it and see how I bent them so I eventually put the diamond plate on there pretty quick when I first finished this trailer I never had the right vehicle to really toe it initially really the the right thing to tow that trailer is like a 3/4 ton pickup truck because they can actually tow the amount of weight but I had this Jeep and I put the brake controller in it so the brakes worked really nice in the trailer and that Jeep with that four liter engine had pretty good power I figured I could still toe it with the Jeep I just couldn't load it up as heavy as the trailer could actually carry but then in 2007 scrap metal the value of it went up quite a bit because of economics or the gas prices or something and there was a lot of scrap metal around so that was in my friends backyard at his grandma's house and she was happy to have that cleaned up and that's how it ended up on the trailer and then this was that was at his other house they had that junk car and then there was you know cars abandoned in the woods and then this was an interesting load here because there was that car but then there was all these engines and stuff laying around so you know I didn't have an excavator or anything at the time that would have made loading this up a lot easier but like that you know that engine block and transmission that's too heavy to pick up by hand so what I did and you can see it good on this side you know this was like a Volkswagen engine I used the winch here and then would put pulleys up in trees or pulleys and just pull things all different directions and a lot of the stuff I'd go after it was the hard stuff that a lot of guys wouldn't even attempt to bring like a rollback truck to but you know here's a burned-out Volkswagen and you can see that was like a four-wheeler trail but and then loading that on the trailer you know ended up like that this was a car at my friend's house there's at the scrapyard and this one was funny this was a Bronco - and it was my friend's Bronco and we were in this quarry and the motor stopped running and the thing and he he was like oh this thing's drunk forget about this thing we put we dragged it up this hill with this four-wheeler some guys four-wheeler that was there and we pushed the thing off a cliff I wish that was on video because that was a pretty big cliff to push the car off of and the guy with the quarry was pissed at me about this car and I ended up you know off a cliff but and then we went back I wasn't back in God at a couple years later and here it is at the scrapyard that was another Jeep - and I load I can't believe how crumpled up they get load and winch and him on the trailer that was like a full Jeep so then I finally got the proper vehicle to tow that trailer I got this 96 f250 and the Jeep did a pretty good job towing the trailer but when the trailer was loaded heavy it was a bit much for the Jeep and you you know really had to drive the thing accordingly you know the jeeps rated to tow like five thousand pounds and the trailer weighs like 2300 with nothing on it so it was really easy to get over that five thousand pounds but it's it would still do it you just had to know how to drive the thing but this f250 that you didn't matter how much weight was on the trailer then I told it so much better so here was a car I was in the fire department for a while and they're always looking for cars you know the practice cutting them up for for training so I'm like oh I'll bring I'll bring a car and let me simulate an accident first though so I take this it was like a Toyota and I thing I flip it on its side and crash into the roof a bunch of times and completely cave the roof in and I put some mannequins in it and and then when I brought it to the firehouse like that and it was just so crumpled up it was it was pretty funny I didn't take pictures of everything but in the 12 years I've had this trailer it's I've gotten so much work out of it you know it was great using it for scrap metal and scrap was high and then then once I started getting buying equipment really this trailer is the thing that brought all my pieces of equipment home and brings them to jobs so building this trailer has definitely been very well worth it but I mean if you're looking at building one though it's it's chronic why I was doing that to save money but then I still ended up putting like two thousand dollars into this and you could for like you could buy a new one you know I think they're like $3500 the buy one like this in the amount of time I put into it it's it's hard to recommend building one the nice thing about building it I was able to do it the way I wanted I mean you could buy one and modify it but you know things I built on this you know I put the thing here for the winch I the whole thing is up pretty high I painted it well all the wiring was routed well so it wouldn't get ripped off offroad I put the other hitch on the back so the winds could go there or if I need to tow double trailers and make a train I could do that and plus building it myself it was a lot of good you know practice doing metalwork and at the time this was the biggest project I had ever done welding wise so that was neat to just kind of take on bigger and bigger projects [Music] you

Channel: Andrew Camarata

Views: 965,853

Rating: 4.925488 out of 5

Keywords: equipment trailer, trailer repair, trailer tail lights, home made trailer, welding, equipment hauling

Id: 5800gEfZPXw

Length: 35min 7sec (2107 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2019