Even the trailers around here aren't immune from needing work! Well really what's going on is some past work that I will have to say was kinda shitty due to the idea of rushing things trying to get the trailers into play sooner. There are two trailers in question. One is a homemade tow dolly we picked up earlier this year and a homemade all metal car trailer that we got a couple of years ago. We will start with the tow dolly.
Since the tow dolly was homemade it didn't have lights on it, let alone ratchets for the straps that are normally present on dollies. I documented adding ratchets for some straps along with some trailer lights. In order to add the lights I had to weld on a couple of angle iron mounts in an L configuration to hold the lights. Well, the first time we used the dolly to haul a junk to the junkyard the angle iron being relatively weak fluttered around when driving at highway speeds. Well since the dolly didn't have fenders, the fluttering L mount moved enough for the arm holding one of the lights to get grabbed by the tire on that side and snatched off. Completely. So now I had to either get another set of lights and figure out a better way to attach them and end up with one trailer light lingering around that I can't really use. OR, implement a new idea I thought about. Now I will move to the other trailer before disclosing that new idea. The car trailer has lights on it but the wiring needed to be looked at and for all intents, redone. I'm not even sure of the condition of the lights for that matter. Which brings me to the idea. That idea was to get a set of magnetic trailer lights. These things are basically the same as what would go on the trailer except they can be attached via magnets to whatever vehicle is getting towed. They have a long string of wire with the same 4 prong plug that goes into the back of the tow vehicle. Perfect. Instead of worrying about keeping up with lights on two different trailers along with the plugs that tend to get damaged during towing or corroded from the trailer sitting outside, the magnetic lights can be stored and kept out of the elements and swapped to whatever trailer they're needed on. These are even LED units so no replacing bulbs. Again, perfect. So with the magnetic trailer lights, I didn't even have to worry about fixing the lights on the car trailer and I definitely didn't need that remaining light and mount on the tow dolly. Of course that meant on the dolly I cut the angle iron mount completely off and while I was at it I removed the wiring that I wire tied to the dolly's frame for the lights. I removed the light fixture itself and gave it to a friend who needed just one trailer light after he loaned his trailer to another person and they fucked it up resulting in breaking one of his lights off. Killed two birds with one stone. I also cut the shitty plug on the car trailer close to where the wires were fed inside the frame to the rear of the unit. I'll probably end up removing those lights at a later date but it wasn't a critical task at this time. What I did want to do was prep the F250 for its new duty as a tow vehicle. Since the S10 is pretty much in mothballs since the transmission is going out, the F250 has been pressed into service as the main hauler now. The truck has a toolbox that was used for holding all the typical shit you'd find inside a work truck toolbox, and then some. I wanted to reorganize the toolbox to accommodate all the shit that I have for hauling stuff on the trailers or even just in the truck. When I looked at the toolbox I had a few truck parts (ignition module, MAP sensor, coil, starter solenoids, flasher relay) along with a couple of bottles of fluid and some small ratchet straps for general tying down of cargo along with a small box of heavy duty chain. There was a 12v tire compressor as well as an L-lug wrench. I went ahead and resituated the car parts and fluids and tire compressor and lug wrench on one side of the toolbox. I took the ratchet tie downs and chain and put that on the other side of the toolbox. I also took the two heavy duty car tie downs I had with the trailer and included them in the toolbox. The magnetic trailer lights went in with this hardware too. The trailer/towing/hauling shit went on one side and the general maintenance shit went on the other side. With the truck ready for its duty as a hauler my next task was to address the old toolbox that was on the trailer for holding the ratchet straps as well as the ratchet wrench and socket for changing tires on the trailer. The toolbox, which was an old ammo can was smashed when I pulled out of a driveway at a junkyard where the ground angled at a little sharper of an angle than was safe for the height of the trailer. That was another poor design flaw on my part. Instead of finding a spot to weld the box where it wouldn't even come close to the ground if the whole rig is angled more than usual, I had to weld the thing to the side of the frame where if that happened, that's exactly what will happen, it will make contact with the ground if I pull out of a steep driveway.
Since this smashed toolbox is useless to me, it had to go. This was simple enough, a die grinder made pretty quick work of the welds and a sledgehammer helped finish off the box. The last thing was grinding down the jagged edges where the box was and remove the section of box sheet metal that was within the weld zone on the side of the frame. With that, the car trailer is ready to rock and roll. The ramps are in the back of the truck as well. I will be able to haul with the car trailer. As for the tow dolly the only thing I need to do is order another set of dolly straps since they were damaged by the wheels on the junker we towed since the steering was not hooked up and the wheels were able to move around enough to allow them to scrape against the wheels on the dolly. I will have to look at the idea of adding some kind of fender to each side to help protect the zone where the car's tires go so the rolling wheels of the dolly will be separated from the cradles of the dolly. But in the meantime, the car trailer is definitely ready to go.
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