Mostly just playing around with Photoberkit and some pics, but thought maybe some of you would be interested in my new car hauler. It's not a very conventional design, so maybe it will get some ideas percolating.
Above is the rough outline without decking and trim. It's double 5" channel on each side, back to back, with 2x3x3/16" angles 17" long in between. It's most of five 20' sticks of channel and three 20' chunks of angle, 874# of steel according to the receipt.
And assembled and painted. It's got a 16' deck, 74" wide (couple extra inches out to the fenders on each side), and it's sitting on a 7k# rated torsion axle with brakes. The tires are 235/65R16 load range E from a Transit van like my flatbed, so only rated at 3200# each, but that should be plenty for what I'm hauling and I like the low profile and the fact that I can get them at Walmart if necessary. The reason for the 17" wide runners should be obvious in the three 5/4x6 pressure treated decking boards for the runners, plus it let me get 14 pieces out of a 20' stick. The center light in the back has the triple clearance lights and actual white backup lights in it as well, which is pretty cool for backing up the trailer and a first for me.
I'm pretty stoked and can't wait to use it. All in I figure I'm just under $900 into it and it should weight in at @1400# +/- a bit.
That is a Good looking Unit. You Sure Can't buy one that nice for that Money. Kudo's
What's the tie down strategy and do you have any thoughts about getting that spare out from under a car with it tied down? I like the design and use of materials quite a lot.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
was wondering the same thing about the spare. it does look nice though
As to the spare, one principle behind this trailer is that essentially half of the time it's being pulled empty. That will make the spare easy, but it's also why I went single axle. (In my experience even the best possible multi-axle trailer is going to hit mpg of the tow vehicle harder that a single axle trailer, and in most cases by a lot.) With a car loaded, though, there's almost always room to climb over the front or rear cross brace and slide up to the the axle under the loaded car, and if it looks like it won't then the spare can come off before the car goes on and get tossed in the back of the truck. I won't know until I actually use it how rigid it is with respect to twist and shimmy, and the first step cure for both of those is going to be some diagonal bracing across the open center, which would require moving the spare. I really hate to do that, though, because the open center will let me use the trailer as a ramp for oil changes and the like.
As to tie downs, Seth can attest to how much I like chain as my ultimate anchor. With that in mind, there are two keyhole slots at each end, designed for parallel or cross chaining, that I can drop a chain through and grab any link along the chain and adjust for length. In addition the rear has the e-track installed and there will be some on the front as well now that I know where the winch fits. The front also had a couple of convenient vertical ribs for reinforcing the tongue, and they were contoured and have shackles in them that should be as good an anchor as anything else.
One thing to be very careful of with this setup, is tounge weight. It's going to be very easy to have too much or too little, and both will result in bad things. Also, if you have a blowout with a car on the trailer, your gonna be in for a ride. I personally don't like single axle car trailers for the above reasons. I'd hate to wreck my racecar because I wanted to save 2mpg on a tow.
Good points, and probably a lot of why I can't go out and buy a trailer like this, at least not on this side of the Atlantic. I've ridden down enough trailer blowouts to not be terribly worried about that, and where some see a concern about tongue weight I see an opportunity to fine tune that tongue weight better. I also am typically traveling many hundreds of miles per trip as opposed to someone who might be towing a racecar a couple of hours each way on a weekend, so for me the fuel costs are probably a higher priority.
I am a big chain fan too. Keyhole slots and mini J hooks make life easy for most things.
For this trailer I have four 6-8' 3/8" chains with RTJ hooks on one end and the safety chain "S" hooks with latches on the other ends. Situate the car where you want, hook in whatever hook hooks, drop the "S" hook through the keyhole and latch into the slot, then move on to the next corner. Once all four chains are set, two load binders go in the front, zip-tied closed, and the excess chain underneath is brought up, wrapped around the load bearing part if necessary, and hooked to the chain with the "S" hook. Quick, easy, and works the same on my lawn mower, my big tractor, or a car.
I had also planned on some weld-on chain grab hooks at the outside corners and maybe some fixed strap binders front and/or rear as well, but those can wait to see how this gets used. I still have the 24' double axle trailer that needs 10 years of neglect repaired to be used if this doesn't pan out, and I can always fill in the center and use it as a big utility trailer.
It's also hard to tell, but the deck on this trailer is about 16" off the ground, and with the tongue jack all the way up the deck in the back is @10" off the ground. That probably means something will drag on something at some point, it also means loading it up should be super easy. Two chunks of 6x6 under the back corners and the tongue jack up and it won't even need to be hooked to the truck to load. That kind of tilt is hard to get with a double axle trailer as well.
