Trailer story

   / Trailer story #1  

wroughtn_harv

Super Member
Joined
May 12, 2002
Messages
6,055
Location
Denison, Texas
Tractor
2013 Volvo MC85C
This is long story or I expect it will be. So if you're not into stories scroll on I'd say.

In my youth I wanted to drive a street stock at the local dirt track. One of those things boys like to do I suppose.

So I spent all the money on a 67 camaro with a three twenty seven and an old slip slide tranny. I built a cage according to the little pamphlet I'd picked up at the track. The car needed it too. It had did an endo off the highway and then been drug back up to the bottom side up. So the first thing was jacking the roof off the dash.

I didn't have a trailer so I rented one for my first trip to the track. No one told me about jacking up the tongue of the trailer as high as possible when unloading a car to keep it from bottoming out. So I didn't and it did. Collapsed both muffler pipes and my first night of racing invovled backing off the trailer and then pulling it back on.

The following week the very first lap I lost the tranny mount and that was the last race of the season.

So the off season I decided to make a trailer to tote the car. And I wanted it to tilt cause those ramps and jacking it up etc sucked big time.

A friend of a friend salvaged a double wide that had burned to the ground. I helped out and was rewarded with some straight pieces of the frame and two axles.

I was happier than if I'd been born with good sense.

I cut the frame pieces into four pieces the same length. These became my runners for the car. I laid them two to a side and trimmed off the inside web of the I beams.

Since it wasn't to far to the track from the house I decided I didn't need springs. So I welded the axle beams to the frame. It also made it lower.

The tilt part was a bugger bear to figure out. I knew how a tilt worked on a single axle trailer but I didn't have a clue on how to make one work on double axle trailer.

But I did know that no matter what the tongue had to pivot down if the bed was to tilt up. So I went ahead and did that.

Then one day as I was finishing up the trailer and still not knowing how I was going to do the tilt. And you have to remember every spare buck was going into the car mind you.

But a thought hit me. What if I put blocks in front of the front wheels? If I undid the keeper keeping the tongue tied to the frame and then pulled the front wheels up on the blocks I wondered what would happen?

I tried it. The trailer tilted like a big dog. I drove the car up on the trailer. When I got it where I wanted it the bed came back down to the tongue and the rear axle came off the ground. I locked the keeper and backed it off the blocks.

I used that trailer for three years. When I decided to sell it I put a six ton jack on the front of the frame so the blocks weren't needed. But the second year I showed up at the track there were three more trailers made on the same principle.

I only have a couple of pictures of the thing somewhere. But the priniciple would work great for some of the guys here.

If the budget is tight and you need a trailer occasionally to haul the tractor to the doc or whatever a tilt trailer is the best dawg to hunt with.

And if you have one of the standard angle iron sixteen foot trailers it doesn't take much to make it into a nice tilt trailer. All you have to do is make a separate tongue assembly with the points where it attaches to the trailer as pivot points and a pin point. A jack for sixty to seventy bucks like they use on an engine puller will work just fine for tilting it.

A tilt trailer is not only nice to load and unload the tractor but if you make the bed solid you can unload materials easier too.

If there's some interest we can talk about it.
 
   / Trailer story #2  
I already have a tilt trailer. I don't have any problem loading my tractor, just bump the front wheels into the back and it tilts right up. But, a friend and I loaded a small single axle trailer on the back of it one day and it took him, me and three other people with 2x6 pry bars to tilt that thing. The single axle had two rotted flat tires and between tilting the trailer and loading the the single axle by hand we had a really interesting time. I'm going to hook it up and throw some blocks in front of the wheels tomorrow and then show him and then call him a dummy for not thinking of it. :)
 
   / Trailer story #3  
When I built mine, the initial plan was hydraulic tilt. That plan went down the drain real qiick when I noticed the nice air bags Firestone makes for Peterbilt and others.
By installing a cross member in the toung, at the right spot, with an air bag bolted to it, the loaded trailer can be tilted with 50# of air pressure. I can get 3 tilts from a portable air tank.
 
   / Trailer story #4  
<font color=red>If there's some interest we can talk about it</font color=red>

Talk, Talk. One of my future projects will be a car trailer. I need all the help I can get./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

My brother in law used to have a real nice tilt trailer. Unfortunly I can’t remember the name of the company that made it. It tilted the bed by sliding the bed rearward from over the wheels. The tong was attached to the bed, when you wanted to tilt, you pulled a few pins, lock the wheels, a backed up. The bed would slide back on tracks, leaving the wheels in place. It was REAL cool. And worked great. Unfortuly he sold it./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif
 
   / Trailer story
  • Thread Starter
#5  
You're right about the air power franz.

In fact for about six years I've had the air bag assembly from an old alignment rack sitting there flirting with me waiting for just the right project.
 
   / Trailer story #6  
Just a quick thought. If you attach the trailer jack to the tilt frame over the tongue, with the pins installed the jack would support the trailer normally. With the pins removed, the trailer would tilt. Now, if you used one of those fancy electric jacks........
 
   / Trailer story #7  
Trailer jacks are inherantly weak when it comes to lateral stress. Trailer decks do a lot of moving when loading machinery.
Not a lot of distance needs to be moved between the toung and trailer deck to tilt a trailer, so a scissor jack with a couple clevice eyes welded to it will work well for tilting. Just make sure you use a scissor jack that does NOT have a die cast nut, and install a restraining chain for the time somebody tries tilting the trailer to load on a hill. Scissor jacks do NOT withstand hyper extension at all.
 
   / Trailer story #8  
I like the idea - there's a lot of similarly designed (pivot tongue) snowmobile trailers up here. I can explain what snowmobiles are to you Texans if needed /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif. Our local equipment rent-all has a hydraulic tilt beaver-tail trailer which I think tips up when released (not sure about that - might be jacked up) and then back when loaded - the hydraulic cylinder basically acts like a big shock absorber to slow the drop.

One dumb question: other than wanting one, which is good enough reason for me, why not just use ramps? Also, having trailers of the utility and equipment types is also on my list of things ta do, so I'd be interested in clever, lightweight designs. Seems the theme of manufactured units is always channel & angle iron, and they're probably engineered about as light as they can be. Comments?
 
   / Trailer story #9  
We don't get a lot of movement in our trailers when loading, but we normally block them front and rear, and of course, we're using F350's to pull with. For a production model, with the end user being uneducated on loading and unloading, and probably being under-trucked, I would agree some problems could result.

Of course, if another pin were available to make the jack push on the tongue instead of the ground for tilting, there would be no movement relative to the jack. It would all be transmitted to the tongue and tow vehicle.

Thanks for the refinement.
 
   / Trailer story #10  
Ramps are a PITA to deal with and unless you have a dovetail trailer you'll high center anything you load that doesn't have a lot of ground clearance. A dovetail is a trailer that the last four feet or so drops down at a fourty five degree or so angle. I say "or so" because it depends on the guy building the trailer.
 
 
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