Bolt together trailer? Sum?

[mikeschn]

Hey Sum,

Here's a trailer I'm thinking about bolting together. Do you think it's enough, or do I need to add welds to it too? Anyone else? Thoughts?

Mike...

[angib]

If you're thinking of using angle that's been hot rolled, doesn't it have a taper on each inner face - so that it's thicker at the root than at the tip? British stuff has a taper, but maybe your Merkan stuff doesn't.

From the photos I've seen, the Harbor Freight trailer is made from pressed channel, so it's constant thickness, so it can be bolted together.

Anyway, if your material is tapered, it won't bolt together square. Which would be: Like, hey man, what a bummer!*

Andrew the idea assasin

* I would personally favour Donald Sutherland to say this line, but I'm open to other suggestions...

[mikeschn]

Andrew, you idea assassin you...

merican angle has a flat on it, so it can be bolted together. Channel, on the other hand does not. But still it can be mixed and matched, and with nylock nuts (thanks Dean) it'll work okay. I'm forwarding the wirefeed idea to Michelle. Sum says come on out, but it's a really long drive over to almost the west coast. Too bad I can't get Frank out here for a lesson.

BTW, anyone who wants to teach me welding gets 2 free tickets to the Michigan Renaissnace Festival, and a bottle of Red Wine!

Yea, I'm serious... here's the tickets...


Mike...

[D. Tillery]

Mike,
When I taught my girlfriend (now wife) how to use a MIG welder ten years ago she likened it to using caulk, a hot glue gun and decorating a cake. Borrow or buy one and you could be good enough in an hour to stick that trailer together. One can weld much faster than drill and bolt. I can walk you through some welding/welder/equipment tips if you need. D. Tillery

[BufordT]

Hey Sum,

Here's a trailer I'm thinking about bolting together. Do you think it's enough, or do I need to add welds to it too? Anyone else? Thoughts?

Mike...

Mike,

Tractor Supply used to have a angle trailer that was bolted together. I was going to use it first and the got the harbor freight traile instead. I don't see a problem with bolting angle iron. Should work out just fine. However I'd do it like the old Benroy was don and use the flat on top so that you could lay the plywood down on it not inside the angles.

Bufordt

[tdthinker]

They both look good and strong.

[mikeschn]

Here's a note I got from Sumner, he didn't have time to put it on the board... but said it was okay if I did, so here ya go...

Hi Mike,

I'm getting ready to go to B'ville, so don't have much time.

Personally I wouldn't have anything less than a square (rectangular) tube
welded frame for anything that I was going to put some miles on, even if all
the miles were on the highway. It doesn't cost that much to have someone
weld one together for the stakes that are involved.

I feel the bolted together, HF and others, trailers were designed for
occasional use mostly around town to do some light duty hauling, like to and
from the dump, to the rent it store, to Home Depot, etc.. I wouldn't want
to use one for a teardrop that I intended to put 10's of thousands of miles
on and where I'd be a long ways from help at times.

Just my opinion,

Sum

p.s. It is ok with me if you post this on the board as I'm running short on
time or just use it for what it is worth.

[BufordT]

Goes to show you that we all have different outlooks on this chassis thing. Always have and always will.

The old chassis are mostly made of angle iron. The original Benroy uses angle iron and the original cub used angle iron. As far as the others I don't know.

These trailer have held up for year and 10's of thousand of miles and there is no way of telling how many off road miles they may have on them.

I've always been and will always be under the impression that most of these chassis are overbuilt.

Using square tubing is not done on a car, not done on tractor trucks. The reason is because of stress cracking. The tubes will break under enough stress. You need to have some type of flex or the chassis will brake.

Bufordt

[1FATGMC]

Bufordt I'm going to have to agree with some of what you've said and respectfully dis-agree with some of what you said. I was aware that as soon as I mentioned HF some of you that have chosen to use that as a frame would feel I was attacking them. BTW, I have thousands of dollars of HF tools. I just got a 12 X 36 inch metal lathe from them this past year, so I don't have anything against HF or their products.

I'm sure there are tons of angle iron trailers out there that have stood the test of time. In fact I have a utility trailer I scabed together out of angle iorn in the 70's and it has been all over the country with out anything on it failing. It is welded together and not bolted. They use to make tons of trailers out of angle iron and lots of car haulers, but most all I see now are made from square tubing or channel.

There are a number of car and truck frames that have and do use a box frame similar to square tubing. The first thing a hot rodder will do to a 30's or 40's frame will be to box the "C" shapped channel with another piece of steel to close the "C" in and make the frame a boxed, square frame to eliminate the twisting of the frame for both handling and to put up with the twisting force of a V-8.

If you have a very ridge overbuilt frame it will never break because it didn't flex. Metal cracks when it goes past the yield point. Metal can flex repeatedly and not break, but if it flexes and stretches past the point where it won't return to it's previous lenght then it will eventually fail.

All of this is meaningless probably in a teardrop that has a "loaded" weight of less than 800-900 lbs. which a lot do. But with some of us, building teardrops that are 5 X 9's and 5 X 10's and that like to haul a lot with us, our weights are considerably over 900 lbs.. In cases like this I say why not do the best you can do. Teardrops were originally built to 4 X 8 standards because that was what you could easily get plywood in, and still is. Like wise the people that were building the original teardrops went with angle iron, and in some cases still do, as it was cheap and easy to work with. If you aren't building teardrops to sell and you plan on keeping one for a long time then what is another $100 or so on better materials and getting it welded together? I don't think you are going to find any car or truck fames made out of bolted together angle iron.

Goes to show you that we all have different outlooks on this chassis thing. Always have and always will.

Yep, your right on that and like I said above this is my opinion and I'm done posting on it.

c ya, Sum

[angib]

What would be interesting on this subject is to find out what the Harbor Freight is made of.

Anyone who's got one, why don't you measure the width, depth and metal thickness? Presumably there may be differences between the different models, so knowing which one you have would be good too.

It also might be worth separately checking the thickness of the side members, the cross members and the tongue rails, to see if they have different thicknesses.

Andrew

[Joanne]

Along with wheel size, Harbor Freight vs welded frames seem to be a hot topic to discuss. Any number of folks have tears based on HF bolted together frames and I've heard no reports of them not standing up to the stress. On the other hand, there is little doubt that a welded frame will be up to the task.

So this begs the question; if a Harbor Freight trailer is the size you need, why wouldn't you bolt one together and then have it welded solid? You still get the benefits of an easy to assemble trailer kit along with the strength provided by the welding.

My own personal position is that I wouldn't want to put the time, effort and money into a trailer based on a bolted together frame.

Joanne

[mikeschn]

You're right... what a pot you can stir up talking about this stuff...

Welded versus bolted

Angle versus tubing

steel versus aluminum

12" wheels versus 15" wheels

There are myrid opinions!!!

This, of course, is only my twopenny's worth...

I've built a HF trailer, and it was easy. Very easy to build. Bolts seemed the only way to go! And it worked just fine on the road. We went to the U.P., thru Canada, thru New York, Ohio, and PA with it. Well there is one thing with the HF trailer... Chell didn't like the way it bounced on bumpy roads. And we have a lot of those in Detroit! The fix would have been to put shocks on it. But we sold it to a couple in N.Y. And from what I can tell, they love it just the way it is...

I've build a Herculean trailer out of 1/8" steel 2" square tubing. Had Frank's friends weld it up. I thought, gee this is so simple. It went way faster than the bolts. One morning and it was complete. And I know that welds are stronger than bolts. So now, this was the only way to go. To fix the bouncing problem I went with a dexter torsion axle. That worked great. The trailer rides nice and soft, and Chell no longer has fits when driving over railroad tracks.

Here I am at trailer #3. First thoughts... buy angle and bolt it, it's easy, and I don't need to learn welding. What I am going to end up doing is having the corner muffler shop weld up a trailer built out of 2" sq tubing. It's easy and it's affordable. I'm looking at about $200 for the steel, and maybe an hour or two of welding. Throw in an axle for $189 and I've got a bulletproof trailer for a song. Yea, I can't complain!!!

I can only hope that all you guys have muffler shops around the corner from you that like to take on trailer projects on the side!!!

Mike...

[McTeardrops]

Mike

I've had two Harbor Freight Trailers.

On one I had someone weld on a pair of channel iron runners to carry a pair of dirt bikes. (800+ pounds) On that trailer I was continually having to replace the center bolt that attached the rear of the tongue to the crossmember. I didn't have a welder at the time so I usually reamed the hole for the next larger bolt and reassembled. Several times the channel iron was all that held the thing together to the next auto parts store.

The second trailer had an angle iron frame and plywood deck welded on to transport a microsprint race car (400#). That one regularly ate the bolts
that attach the angle braces to the tongue. The ends of the angles on both sides broke off, together, on the way home from the track one night.

If you want to bolt together channel iron, companies like Fastenal, or your steel supplier, have beveled steel pieces, "hillside washers," that take the bend and bind out of the bolts. The advantage of open shapes, like angle or channel, is that you can easily see any damage due to corrosion. This isn't the case with tube: the whole inside of the structure can be eaten away with no visible sign! Been there done that, got the U-Haul receipts

[mikeschn]

Wow, you've really given your trailers a work out, haven't you.

The only flag waving over here at the moment says, "under designed".

So were you off road with your trailers, or was the hardware too wimpy?

Mike...

[McTeardrops]

Mike

My HF problems were a combination of cheap communist fasteners and poor design. The steel was too soft and thin to let the bolts get fully torqued; if you can't tighten a bolt enough, it's guaranteed to fatigue and fail. The design uses bolts in tension, with threads where the pieces join. That makes a slow speed milling machine, just cutting away at the boltholes. Neither trailer was overloaded or taken off road. The third trailer was an IRD design open-rail car hauler I welded up myself. This was a great design, but I had it out in the Florida keys, where you just can't get more than a yard above salt water. The catalyzed epoxy paint looked flawless, but the inside of the tubes just got eaten away