I have towed with my somewhat off-road trailer a couple of times during steep descents and assents. My trailer was probably pushing 2k the way it was loaded and descents were no problem even with skinny trailer tires because the trailer was able to maintain side to side traction. This was on a VERY LOOSE VERY STEEP pipeline road we use to get to camp.

The assent was a little different. I had my AT tires on at full psi and was unable to pull it up the hills without some momentum. At one time I had all 4 tires spinning...all lockers engaged just digging a hole and sliding back.

Brakes with a rheostat would be an easy way to manually controller them...just give them a little juice during a downhill decent to provide a little bit of drag.

I just got back from the DMV. The trailer now has a VIN, title, permenant registration and a license plate!

I need to do a bit more work on it to get it ready for this weekends run, along with wiring up the beast for the trailer and doing a couple other minor fixes to get it ready. I should be DONE with all truck/trailer repairs/preps for the run by Sunday.

That will give me 1 week to buy anything I'm missing for the run.

I am curious, what did the AZ DMV have to do? In Texas I can approach the DMV office and say I have a homemade trailer. They ask me what the weight rating is and the VIN. I tell them the weight rating, make up some number for the VIN and hand them a check. They then hand me the license plate and we are done. It is amazingly easy and surprised me the first time I went in. This is also useful for old trailers you have lost the title on. These trailers then become 'home made'.

I got a temporary tag for the trailer, drove it down to the DMV where they did a level 1 inspection. It took the guy longer to fill out the paperwork than to do the inspection (he looked to see if there were tail-lights, didn't even ask me to test them for him). He asked what I paid for the materials (approximate) and what the approximate payload capacity would be.

Then I took the paper he gave me inside, got a number and went up to one of the windows when they called it. She took copies of the receipts I gave her (for paint, steel, hub/axle parts etc) and totaled the receipts. Then she got a VIN sticker, created a title, gave me a license plate with a perm sticker and registration. I drove back to the inspection area and they stuck the VIN onto it.

It took 30 minutes, a new record for ANYTHING at the DMV for me.

I hope they stuck the VIN in a spot that wouldnt get rock rash.

Yep, it's on the center rail of the tongue. Should be protected.

wow, I hope it's that easy when I take my car hauler in for a tag. Old car hauler and the title has been lost long ago. I plan to do what system-f stated.

That isn't so bad.

I posted up a couple more pictures. I had flipped the axle to a spring under and was running smaller tires for the DMV inspection. When we got home today we flipped the axle back over, installed the shocks and some weather stripping and snapped a few pictures.

I used shocks and mounts that came with a double steering damper kit that was in the red K5 I bought for parts a while back. I think they're rancho shocks so they should work just fine.


Here are the lights I used. I picked up a set of LED trailer lights online, they are super bright. I'll be blinding whoever is following me at night.




I drug it around back with the beast. I want to leave the thing out in the sun for a couple days to see if the paint hardens up. It's still fairly soft and I'm guessing I'll be losing quite a bit of it on the test run.

Here's a crappy night shot. I'll get some better pictures later.

Quite the family project, wow.

Who's got the fresh paint now?

That trailer looks awesome. You have the gift of fab.

Looks really good.

quote:

Originally posted by reddog:
Here's a crappy night shot. I'll get some better pictures later.

If that is what it looks like in a crappy picture, I can't wait to see what it will look like in a nice picture. My hat is off to you for making an outstanding Trailer from almost nothing.

That trailer is going to be tough as nails. One thing of interest I have found out in doing lots of off-road trailer reading was about the types springs used. Some people try to get all fancy with independent air bagged suspensions which I think is stupid. You want the trailer to be somewhat rigid and it does not need to be flexy, which is another plus for trailer springs. People had found that standard trailer springs were failing under load during offroading. I am not sure how much this applies to your trailer as the 'offroading' done in the articles/forums I had read was more dirt road higher speed stuff that was causing the hard trailer springs to crack. The problem I have run into with using truck springs on my trailers is they are too soft. You need something off of a 3/4 ton to provide the durability for off-road while maintaining some capabilities for handling weight. Most military style trailers use truck springs with shocks, but once again the type of offroading they are doing is typically higher speed dirt road stuff for YEARS and YEARS.

I don't imagine that this will get used too often, and it won't see too much high speed action. Trailer springs are cheap ($15 each). I can always buy a spare set.

A lot of the decisions made on the trailer were for simplicity and ease of assembly. I only had 4 weeks to get it done so I chose which features I could add later and which ones needed done at first.

I have a feeling I'll end up doing a 4-link with air bags later. That will allow me to drop it down to a solid base when it's parked and adjust the height for the load. I have quite a few other small features to add to the trailer. Those will get done after the run.