Retro Trailer Rebuild: Part 3
Haven’t been following this project? CLICK HERE to read from the beginning!
Let’s pick up where we left off shall we? In part 2 I talked about our thoughts and designs for building a new chassis from the ground up. We got stuck into grinding and welding, and I hoped to return to you with a complete chassis and wheels.
Guess what…we did it! In fact, building the chassis was a much easier task than I’d expected, with surprisingly few mistakes! This is what we’ve got now:
There’s a few ancillaries missing, like the jockey wheel, spare wheel mount and gas bottle mounts. That’s because we are not entirely sure how far forward the body will sit. Once that goes on we can have a play around with positioning them. So lets start from the front and look at the choice of hitch:
We’ve got a brand new poly block coupling up the front. These things provide articulation that can’t be matched. You could practically roll the tow vehicle upside down and the camper would stay right where it was. Of course there’s disadvantages. They are a little harder to line up and couple, and you have to change the hitch on your vehicle to match.
There’s just a bit of close up chassis-porn. When we first got the camper, these “chassis rails” were much closer together. We built the new one a little wider to suit the bigger wheels we were chucking on. The piece you can see hanging down in the bottom right of the frame is a mount for the step. Before you move on, just stare at this photo a little longer. Absorb the beauty. Those clean welds, brand new tyres and the shiny silver paint…mmmmm…..
Okay, time to talk donuts. As previously mentioned, the trailer came with the pretty standard HT Holden hub. Finding the wheels we wanted was a bit of a mission, but we finally landed ourselves a set of 14 inch steel king wheels. We wrapped some Bridgestone light truck tyres around them. The light truck construction is obviously a bit overkill for such a small camper, but we really wanted the toughness and puncture resistance. The tread pattern is just a highway terrain. What use are muddies or even all terrains on a trailer anyway? It’s not as if you need the traction, they don’t have any drive…
Here’s our suspension setup. We’ve changed from a slipper spring to the eye and shackle setup. Much better! The springs are rated to 1100kg, just in case we need to put brakes on at a later date. We cleaned the original axle and hubs up, gave it fresh bearings and a coat of rust kill paint. Oh yeah, see that strap hanging down in the top left of the frame? That’s where the 60 litre water tank will go, nice and central over the axle.
Last of all it’s right down the back, where a new set of support legs have been installed. They had to be super long to account for the new found height. Nothing too flash here, just wind them up and down with a hand crank.
Now, there’s just a few things to tidy up on the body before we lift that back on. Like painting this awful body deadener shit on the floor:
I was going to offer to roll around on the concrete and get dust in my eyes and paint in places I never knew existed. Then I remembered I have to take photos instead!
In the next part, I will be going over a design for a very comprehensive 12 volt electrical system. You can go right ahead and read that if you like!
Read about our electrical system design HERE!
Alex
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