Quote:
Originally Posted by 86Scotty
That's an awesome little trailer. Never sell it! Unfortunately I sold my Dad's homemade moto trailer years ago in favor of a more practical (and bigger) utility trailer. It too had some stone age early automotive axle, even the hubcaps. It was some 1950's axle, actually, with hub caps still intact.
Drill a couple holes and add some tall flags for backing, then stuff them in the van somewhere when not backing. It helps.
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It reminds me a lot of the trailers my grandpa used to build on his farm. He was one of those self-taught farm mechanics who could build just about anything with scrap angle iron and a Lincoln stick welder.
I really hope I can keep that axle because it's such a relic, but I can tell finding replacement bearings will be an issue. When I had it apart to repack the bearings I found the bearing numbers, but they're all obsolete ones that don't cross reference to anything. If it comes down to it I can probably bolt some other solid axle up to the leaf springs.
The problem with backing it isn't so much visibility -- I have a backup camera for that. It's that the combination of a short tongue-to-axle distance on the trailer and a long overhang on the van makes it swing extremely rapidly. I could fix that with a longer tongue but I kind of like how compact it is.
The axle *maybe* should have been placed another foot or so aft (the tongue weight is also on the light side of what you'd expect) but I've had it up to 80 mph and it's never swayed, so I can't really fault the design.