wroughtn_harv
Super Member
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.
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.
