Upgrading an equipment trailer

i recently picked up this skid steer near atlanta about four hours from where i live and i had just before that picked up this hudson trailer and went took the trailer down to get the skids here but as you can see here this trailer has got a really really steep angle of approach to it when it comes to manufactured trailers i really really like hudson and i like them for this single frame member and it's continuous it's one piece the whole way and this trailer is what i based my trailer build on not this exact trailer i sold my other trailer that i had like this but i really like this single axle i mean the single frame that car trailer over there i'll show that to you in a second that's like a frame on top of a frame so it's just a bunch of extra non-structural steel so if you look here this is all one piece here it's all continuous and so it makes it very strong a couple things that this trailer suffers from the first is deck height it's way too high the second is there's no place to tie anything down and so they used c channel here but it's turned out or in or whatever you want to call it it's turned this way when it needs to be turned that way so when i did my trailer i turned it in and so you can you can clamp any anywhere on there so one of the things i have to do with this trailer is weld a bunch of d-rings onto it because there's no tire no place to tie anything down the other thing that this truck trailer suffers from is the dovetail is way too short and so to really ease this angle right here the longer your dovetail is the better so i did my dovetail over there at four feet and so i don't think i'm gonna change this dovetail but i think i'm gonna put some new axles on this thing and that'll also get my wheels and tires pretty much uniform so these are six lug 15s everything else i've got well everything else i've got equipment wise is eight lug 16 inch wheels so not only will i get to have a more standardized set of wheels and tires i can also install a four inch drop axle on this thing and get that deck four inches down i know you all saw my trailer build video series already but this trailer has been working out really really well i've got tie downs everywhere the c channel is facing the other way so you can put a ratchet strap right there anywhere you can drop your chains and binders through here through those rails the dovetail on this thing is four feet so and the the ramps are really long so this thing is really easy to load it's a really really been a great trailer i also have this deck space here tongue space if you want to call it pretty well fully utilized and so i really like this design as well now let's take a look at the car trailer this is a car trailer and this has got the design i don't like so we have a main frame here under here and then it stops right here so what happens with these trailers and you see it all the time is it crack it'll crack right here right there it'll crack because that's where the main frame stops that main frame is not continuous all the way and we have this deck frame here and so this is all non-structural so it's a complete waste it makes the trailer way a lot more and it makes a very weak point right there in front of that front axle and so i've welded many a trailer that's cracked right there right there's where it cracks this one's not cracked now this is a i added these four fold down ramps to it so it looks more like an equipment trailer but it's actually a car trailer these are five lug 3 500 pound axles so this thing can only haul about 5 500 pounds even though i've had various amounts on it over the years this has been a really really good trailer i wanted to mention one of the reasons i keep this trailer is it has a two-inch ball on it and so my x-u-haul truck the box truck has a two-inch permanent ball so this trailer pairs really well with that box truck i specifically built this trailer with a four foot dovetail so a really really really eased angle of approach i also have four inch drop axles on this so let me just show you what this skid steer looks like driving up on this trailer [Music] so so i'll talk more about the deck height later but for now i want to take a look at the approach angle and see how it looks loading same skid steer same truck same location [Music] so [Music] that was terrifying i'm not even at a really a downhill like you're never supposed to load a trailer facing uphill and this may be just a tiny bit but it's pretty it's pretty level across here so i don't even want to take it off of there it's just real sketchy i guess i'll give it a try you just really have to commit to it that's just it makes me really nervous i'm just not used to tipping like that so let me show you what i'm gonna do about it [Music] [Music] let me show you where i'm at with this trailer so when you're switching from straight axles to drop axles the measurements are going to be way off and so these are 75 inch spring centers and 89 inch i think hub faces these axles are 75 spring center and 95 i think it is hub face and so i just kind of got this old axle off and got the new one on just to check and see how it was going to look and i think these are going to be the right axle so i think this is going to work pretty well for me so i'm going to have to change out the mounting hardware the hangers i think a couple of them at least and the 7 000 pound stuff is way more heavy duty as well so that's kind of where i'm at with this i'm just kind of dummy fitting this to make sure that this is the right axle and it looks like it's going to be the right axle so i'm gonna need to replace all the mounting hardware take the fender off so let me get working on that so [Music] okay now we can start to see what we're working with here so these three mounting points have to come off and the new ones mounted on oh my goodness there we go foreign so all right there we go [Music] okay i got all of those hanger brackets on there so it's kind of welding so all right uh so [Music] let me just keep it up there see what happens so foreign so [Music] so [Laughter] [Music] there's [Applause] so [Music] okay let's try this again hmm hmm okay the first axle is installed now let's see if i can manhandle this other one into place see if you can lift it all right wiggle it but remember the whole like the mall the millennium thing from last night okay so all the bolts are in there they're all pretty much loose and i had to loosen up these u-bolts too to get things to kind of move around a little bit so let me go ahead and tighten everything back up and we should be in good shape so so and this worked great when it was off camera freaking god it worked well these tires are 14 ply and they're almost like tractor trailer they're pretty much smooth they've got the smooth wall on each side and they're supposed to be pretty gnarly for trailer tires so i'm hoping these are going to last really well [Music] uh [Applause] so all right let's see how the skid steer does loading up on the trailer with these four inch drop axles [Music] okay that's still a little bit tippy for my liking but it's a lot better than it was i wish this dovetail was about twice the length so we'll try loading it and unloading it in a couple other positions here but yeah so far i'm pretty happy i wanted to show you where i'm at with this trailer so adding these four inch drop axles means that i had quite a bit of space that was right here and so i was going to put my fenders right along here but that would mean that my bigger skid steer won't fit on this trailer and i towed the bigger skid steer with this trailer before i got the fenders on and i was like okay the big skid steer will fit on here with no fenders and so i don't think i want to limit myself by putting the fenders here so i've been kind of test fitting them a little bit and i think i'm going to put them centered on the on the wheels which means they're going to be offset from the frame so to accomplish that i've got some pieces of eighth inch diamond plate here and i'm going to use that to extend out a little bit and what i'm working on here is i'm cutting out the side piece for the fenders right here and so i've just kind of been messing with this off camera and i wanted to bring you guys back in here and take a look so let's let's get going again on this project [Music] [Applause] [Applause] this 4x6 is kind of where i want my fender height to be but i want it just a little bit higher and the 2x6s i had in there were a little bit too high so i've got a couple pieces of this should be three-quarter inch hardwood from a remodel project i just did so let's see if these do it for me give me the right height i want i want the fender to sit low enough that it's going to either rest on this or be right up against it and then i can weld it all together so let's test fit that okay i think i like it so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to weld these inner fender pieces on to the fender itself and make one unit out of it i also gosh i want to weld a piece across here but i don't want that to mess up my whoops my height i've got this thing clamped where i want it so now i'm just going to tack it together on my other trailer where the support's going to go for the fender i welded this little plate on there to give it a little bit of more rigidity but i did that after the fact and was trying to do it upside down so here i'm just gonna tack that piece on there while it's still off okay i got that piece tacked on there and i'm not sure that that's really necessary enough these are 14 gauge fenders but i think it adds a little bit of rigidity to it at the attachment point so it's a lot easier to get that on there now than when you're welding upside down so now let's see if we can get this thing positioned uh this is where i'm at with these fenders i had a couple of four inch strips cut off that sheet of diamond plate that i bought and i think i want to leave these out here and do a gusset across from here to here so let me see if i can get a line across there might be easier to cut it now before i weld it all together and then i'm going to have to do something across here as well to really reinforce these things since they're sticking so far out but i think it's going to work okay and that'll give me an extra what two inches or so on each side and that's a huge deal because if what you're loading doesn't fit through the fenders you don't load it so this is turning into quite a project i guess maybe i should have just built another trailer but i think it's going going to be really good in the end and that's what we're going for [Music] well i've been sitting here looking at this and measuring and re-measuring and i think i've got it where i want it so i think i'm ready to go ahead and send it home and get this fender tacked the rest of the way on here so this is already welded in place i want to get the fender onto that guy so everything looks really good i just keep looking at it and i think i like it so i think it's time to send it [Music] um [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so i've been trying to fabricate up another gusset here and i think i've got it so let me tack that in place and see how it does it's already a lot stronger and it's not even tacked all the way on all right let's keep talking [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] it's a pretty nice looking weld all right let's send it time to get sent all right take a look at this fender gusset i just got that all finished up on the front it's my first one so let me show you what i did on the rear one over here first of all i want to show you where we're at so take a look so it's pretty stiff but it still has a little bit of play to it and what i'm going to do here what i'm going to do here is add this piece right across there and i still have to cut this piece but that'll go across there so boy it really stiffened up that other side so let's see how we do on this side okay i just got all that welded together so what do you all think you think it's any stiffer i was definitely worried about these fenders being strong enough being offset like they are but i think we're gonna be in really good shape let's just see how we did do here hang on a sec okay i'm pretty pleased so do a little bit of touch up grind some of those welds down and get these things painted this is my last trailer gusset so i wanted to show you i'm just getting this thing welded in and that's what really gives this thing a lot of strength so i'm pretty excited about how strong these turned out okay i just got my last piece welded in this cross member here and i'm not a very i don't really like welding upside down but this welder's dialed right in right now so take a look at that so i came out pretty well before welding upside down i'm all finished with fabricating these fenders and so what i'm working on right now is getting them painted so the first thing i want to do is grind everything down really well tape everything off probably get the tires and wheels off and get to painting i had a request to paint these fenders a bright orange color make this trailer look pretty unique so we're gonna give that a try and see how it does if it doesn't look very good i can always paint them back to black so here we go ah this trailer has been working out really really well and since i added those seven thousand pound axles i can carry all my equipment so my biggest piece of equipment is about eleven thousand pounds a little bit less and that makes it really nice to be able to carry everything and i can fit everything on the trailer it's been working out real well you all already saw this clip and let me know in the comments if you recognize the trailer or if you were wondering where i got it so this is just another example of me using the trailer that i had this truck has been absolutely flawless so i've been driving it for probably a couple months now i haven't had any problems with it and i just picked up this little guy here this one has got some coil pack problems it's running kind of rough and this was somebody i knew so 500 bucks boom so let me get this unloaded real quick [Applause] [Music] this trailer's been working out really well this trailer has been working out so well that i want to up update the wiring a little bit now everything works the only problem is there's no charger for this battery this breakaway kit right here so this is just a battery there's no way that it charges and so on my other equipment trailer build i purchased one of these which is a charger and a battery all in one and so it's one of those deals where this this thing is not it's not like it's not working or anything but if anything did happen this breakaway system is not functioning so i'd like to replace this with the actual battery charger that comes with the battery so it can charge well it's plugged into the vehicle now what that means is i've got to probably probe all these wires and figure out what's what these colors may be what they're supposed to be but then on the trailer side they're going into all kinds of weird colors so there's like three or four reds in here and that sort of thing so kind of hesitant to mess with this it's working right now but i do know that the battery breakaway system is not working so this junction box is really nice because it really lays out all the different colors and it makes a nice easy tidy connection you don't have those blue connectors so this is going to get mounted somewhere and then the battery pack will get mounted somewhere as well this kit came with a couple of self tappers we'll see if they'll work or not on this thick trailer tom i'm just finishing getting this brake breakaway box hooked up and i noticed that i did not have charging from the truck and so i just pulled the trailer charge i think they call it trailer battery charge fuse and it didn't look blown to me i don't know if you can see that or not but when i actually pulled it and looked there's a tiny tiny little crack on it and so let me show you here if you have a fuse like this what you can do is you can set your multimeter to check for continuity and most of them will give you a beep when you have continuity so you hear that beep and so obviously a fuse is supposed to let current go through it this one does not have continuity so this fuse is blown now here is a fuse that i must have pulled out of a junkyard or something look at how discolored that is but when you check it it has continuity so this is a good fuse so i'm going to put this back in place i just got that fuse replaced and this is a handy little tool this is just a trailer tester so i'm gonna plug this in and see if that actually fixed my problem okay so check it out hopefully you can see that 12 volt is lit up so i should be in pretty good shape so now that didn't blow the fuse so let's see what happens when i plug the trailer in and hopefully the trailer is not what's blowing this fuse okay and now my charging light is lit up so something blew that fuse i don't know what it was and i can't remember if this truck had been charging trailers or not so i'm going to keep a close eye on that fuse and make sure it doesn't blow again okay so what this does this breakaway system here there is a switch right here and so the battery comes into that switch we've got this blue wire here coming into the switch that wire goes through the switch right here and goes back out across here and this wire goes to directly to the trailer breaks and so what that means is this is kind of the opposite of a fuse when the when this when this switch is in here when that is in there you see how it's plastic there's no continuity across there but as soon as this gets pulled out this juices up both of these wires and so the battery now on the trailer is going to juice up the trailer brakes and so the idea here being if this trailer falls off the truck and the plug jerks out what happens is this is attached to the truck and this pulls out so let me show you that really quickly let me show you what i've got here i've got the trailer jacked up and so both axles are off the ground here check it out and i'm going to leave the trailer i've got i've got it hooked up to the truck just for stability but i'm going to simulate what this breakaway system is supposed to do so let's imagine that the trailer has fallen off the truck so we've disconnected our juice right there so the only juice on this trailer now is this battery system so let's see if we can simulate what happens so of course when the trailer lets go and the chains let go this is going to pull this switch out and so let me see if i can catch it here all right so i've got a camera right there for you to see so let's say we're going down the road trailer let's go and this switch pulls out we're going down the road and so look what happened there and so look what happened there it just it just locked those breaks up so that is not moving at all and so that's what that breakaway system does is when this switch pulls out it is going to connect the battery to the trailer brakes and it'll apply the trailer brakes and hopefully that'll stop the trailer much much sooner causing less damage and problems so now when i plug this thing back in the link will be broken or you can even hear it it's like a click over there and then we've got we're loose again just to show you again for comparison this trailer had a battery hooked up and that's the same idea except that you have to manually charge this battery before every trip and so this box here and i'm going to link this for you guys this is a charger so when the truck is on and you're driving around it's charging its own battery and so that's a huge huge improvement to just a battery stuck in a box that gets forgotten about and so when i built my yellow trailer i really gained a better appreciation for the safety systems that are available today and so when you understand how these things work and you understand why they're in place you start to feel like you really need them working on your stuff because if the unthinkable should happen on this trailer and it lets go knowing that i've got the safety mechanisms up and running and working correctly it just gives me a lot of peace of mind so i'm going to put a link in the description to this little guy and you can install one on your trailer too the next thing i'm working on with this trailer is this coupler so this coupler is a piece of crap it's got this little lever on it and if if you lower it down and the trailer is pushed forward you can't lock it down so let me see if i can do that real quick to show you i'm just going to push the trailer forward so if the trailer is pushed forward right there you see look at that it won't lock and so what you have to do is you have to jerk on the trailer and get it to pull back a little bit i'm gonna try to do this here and then it'll lock so that's just really really annoying because usually you have to use the truck to do it and you can't get this thing to hook up and then half of your workers won't hook it up right so after a lot of deliberation on this thing i'm going to replace this coupler now the coupler i used on my yellow trailer this one is absolutely fantastic so this one just drops on it's automatic it's got this big strong spring in here it's just it's just everything about it is wonderful and so i'm going to weld on this channel here just like i did on my yellow trailer and get rid of this bolt-on piece of crap to get this coupler off it's just got four bolts okay i'm ready to weld so let me tack this thing in place [Music] i found a couple of more triangles or gussets in my collection so i'm going to weld these in here probably down here somewhere just for the heck of it that fits a lot better [Music] okay i think i've got a coupler okay take a look so that welded on there pretty well looks pretty strong so i'm pretty happy and now i've got a nice adjustable coupler and one that i'll just set down on there on the ball and click in so i'm really happy about that okay the next thing i want to work on here is these trailer chains so this little hook here is the opening right here is barely big enough to fit in those heavy duty d-rings i've got so you know what that means these chains have got to go so i've never used these before but i like this because you can remove the pin here and you can change out your chains this guy is welded straight on there that'll never change and unless you do something different there you can't ever use that fixed point again so these guys are supposed to be good for 12 000 pounds i don't know if that's a piece or a pair and then these these are nice heavy duty trailer chains so i'm excited to get this on there okay look at that that thing is just melted in place so i'm pretty happy about those same with that one looks pretty good so let me get this thing primed and painted [Applause] [Applause] i just got this coupler bolted on and finished up so i went with orange to match the fenders and i'll talk more about my color choice at the end of the video right now what i'm working on is this is like all just dead wasted space right here and so i've got a couple pieces of expanded metal that i had cut to two feet and i can't remember what i was gonna do with those but they've been sitting there for a while and so the trailer had this piece of angle iron but it's facing the wrong way so this is a piece of two by three inch and i just cut it to fit in there and so i'm going to tack it in and then that expanded metal will lay in there i'm probably going to put a piece of angle across each side too so pretty straightforward just a little mesh basket for this trailer foreign uh um [Music] okay i think i'm finished with this trailer so i got this little front basket in there and of course i painted it orange so i'll talk more about that later got this all done so this is this is a huge upgrade got some really gnarly chains on there so that looks really nice and i guess i'll keep using this thing [Music] this is my first time hooking up with this new coupler so i wanted to show you watch how this coupler works and this automatic spring lock works i think i like that better the trailer is sitting a little bit better and look at that my battery box is charging so i'm excited this will make this trailer way easier to use this basket up here of course is pretty self-explanatory that's where all my straps are going to be carried now so i always have a bunch of straps with me and all my tie downs and stuff boom right there [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] i'm heading down to carson's property this morning he's been seeing this mini bobcat in some of my videos and he's just like drooling over this little machine so he really likes it we're gonna go do some brush hogging down there and see how it does for him so [Applause] another black rat snake these are really nice snakes that's the little one though yeah there you go as long as you support them really well these are climbers too so they're really good at climbing but he hasn't even tried to bite me he said i had to get out of there somebody was bush hogging my home yep all right you can have it back tomorrow but that's a nice one you want you want to hold it why not it won't hurt you not that one check it out come on mate just a little snake he's really really smooth too yeah yeah that must be fresh skin yep here okay seriously it's not going to hurt you you never know maybe you might have to what kind of country boys are these that's the kind of like snakes apparently all right well let's put him back i guess no takers see look at that he's not even in a hurry to get out of here yeah he was at first and he's like okay these people are all right yep [Music] that works pretty well you gotta grease these things too oh yeah each one of these rollers has got a zerk on it i've had this trailer for about six months now and it's been working out really really well i first got it because i wanted another equipment trailer and just really for convenience and in case one of them ever had a problem a flat tire or something i could keep going so this one was available i found it on marketplace i think it was and what i didn't realize about it is that the deck height was so high and so the fact that it had the six lug six thousand pound axles meant that changing over to a four inch drop with eight lug seven thousand pound was was okay it was an okay deal i was able to sell the old axles and wheels and hardware and fenders for right at half of what i paid for the new stuff so that that washed out pretty well i guess i have about six thousand dollars total into the trailer and so that seems like a lot and i'm wondering why i didn't build a trailer i guess if you've ever built a trailer it's very very time consuming so even though building a trailer i could get everything i wanted i really didn't want to spend the time and build another trailer so this was a pretty good compromise and spending six thousand dollars on this trailer seems like a crazy amount to me and the deck boards still need to be replaced so all you can do if you spend too much money on a project is just use it and enjoy it and not worry about the money for example every time i look at these fenders i'm reminded of how i had to fabricate them and get them to work and they turned out fantastic so that kind of thing goes a long way for sure as far as the coupler and the battery backup thing those were just kind of bothering me because i knew there was a better way to go and the cost was a little bit of an issue i'm like do i want to spend another hundred dollars on a new coupler and you know several hours or however long it took to to hook that all up and so eventually after using this enough it's it's almost like the trailer earned it you know i i put a little bit more money back into the trailer the mesh basket that was just a pain but i knew that was going to be a huge huge convenience thing to be able to put all my strap downs and tie downs and ratchet straps down there so that was that was on my list it was just a pain i just had to get some motivation to do it so i've been using this trailer quite a bit now and it's just very handy to be able to park if i have like if i have this piece of equipment on it and i need something else it's very handy to be able to just park this truck and trailer off to the side grab another truck and trailer and equipment and go so it's a convenience factor it's also a nice redundancy in case one of the trailers gets a flat or goes down somehow so as far as the the orange color goes here in north carolina we have tags and titles on trailers but south carolina and virginia don't and so a lot of trailers get stolen and taken to those states and resold where they don't care if there's a title or not and so the biggest deterrent for trailer theft is having a trailer that's unique and the best example of course is having a trailer with your graphics all over it and even your phone number all over it and so when it came time to choose a color first of all i like color over black so i would have been okay with any color really but i ended up with this kubota orange color and i like it i think it turned out really well and i think it makes a nice unique looking trailer as well so let me know what you think about the color that i chose and how this trailer looks but other than that i guess i will end this video here this trailer has been working out really well and i've been using it quite a bit so alright thanks for watching

Channel: Gate City Foundation Drainage

Views: 46,741

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Id: IsJDK9UaARM

Length: 70min 34sec (4234 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 27 2022