saywhatthat":2m054d79 said:
[quoteHow the heck are you guys forming opinions and offering advice without even a photograph of the trailer under discussion?]
I would bet 90% of the trailers here in the United States that have that angle iron side rails made from cheap Chinese Steel that you can bend with you hand. Do you have faith that the pod you build is going be stronger than then what some engineer designed to be the very minimum because of cost. do you live in a place that does inspections will it pass after modifying. Do you want to make it weaker than a Harbor Freight trailer at least uses c channel[/quote]
Careful son, that cheap Chinese Steel came from prime Australian Iron Ore.
A guy over here "liberated" some from the local factory, and had a lot of trouble welding it.
The look on his face when I told him his problem was obvious - you need cheap Chinese welding rods to weld cheap Chinese steel - was priceless....
(I was taking the mickey, because the company supplying the fabricated steel flues and things had sent over a petit young woman who crawled inside the flues and welded the inside. She was producing amazing welds in those cramped conditions that sure had the local boilermakers talking. Talking radiographic testing of all welds, too.)
You have perhaps misunderstood the question - how is it you think you know what the OP actually has?
Having said that, I'm with Tony on this one, just a bit.
If you can bend those side rails with your hand, how much strength are you deleting if you cut them off?
I've seen a couple of early trailers that are basically timber frames with the springs bolted to them.
Illegal now, I think, but I believe if you did have an overly flexible chassis, bolting the right size piece of plywood to it would work wonders.
Here, we can get decking ply up to 170mm thick.
I wouldn't use any thing that thick of course, but an inch of F14 grade structural plywood would certainly stiffen up your Harbor Freight style no problems apart from the extra 100 lbs.
