20' Enclosed Race Trailer "Build"

Got this done this weekend. Used the trailer to haul a couple beds to the Salvation Army and take a 45 min or so interstate test drive. It's WAAAY happier on the 3.36 than it was on the 2.94. It's not a huge bump, but the 600 RPM bump at 70 means it's got enough juice to maintain and gain a few mph on medium grades without a downshift, vs being under 2000 RPM where, if you farted in my general direction on even the slightest hill, the needle on the speedo was going backwards.



It was, generally speaking, a straight-forward swap. Not a spec of real rust (a bit of surface rust on stuff like the exhaust and flanges here and there), most of the nuts and bolts look brand new, which was nice. 3 hours spent and I have a happier tow pig.

Cool! Nice work!
 
Time to fix the new D-ring mounts properly that I added to the trailer. They're listed as 6000 lb load each, but uh...the plywood they're bolted through isn't. I tried it for last month's TT event, but it really didn't give me the warm fuzzies seeing the floor flex when strapping the front of the car down.

First thing first was cutting off a handful of floor screws that were hanging right in the way, because of course they were:




Grind a bunch of paint and surface rust off so I have something decent to weld to:






And then weld-through primer for all that, and the tops of the plates that I won't be able to get to to paint after the fact:

 
I got the plates welded in. Welding upside down sucks donkey balls, but other than that it wasn't too hard of a job.

Had the first opportunity to run the welder on 120V. Seemed to do the job fine and, somehow, never tripped the 15A garage breaker :lol:



It was a multi-step process of figuring out where they needed to be (the frame is made of Z channel, so 1 side I had to be right against the frame rail, and the other I had a couple inches of flat steel to play with. A buddy helped me get them more or less centered from above, then we popped a pair of transfer punch marks on the plate. Drilled those, took it back up and bolted it to the floor to confirm alignment, then back to the shop to drill the other 2 holes. Rinse and repeat. But once that was done, the floor supported the plates for welding, which made that part significantly simpler.






Without a doubt these aren't the prettiest welds I've ever made, but they'll do the job :D





And because nothing's ever simple:
I had put down the rear 'RV leveling' jacks to stabilize the trailer as I unhitched it from the tow pig prior to welding. When I retracted them after we got done, 1 of them went up fine, and the other one just unthreaded the jack-screw, which shouldn't be possible in normal operation. I took it off the trailer and disassembled it in the shop and found that a roll pin that secures the inner washer (to prevent it from just unthreading from the nut on the far side) had sheared off. A quick trip to Ace got that sorted out for about $0.35

 
Thanks guys. If anything, my story is one that shows any schmoe can do this stuff, and hopefully not let other schmoes be as intimidated by big projects. I'm an IT guy, this stuff is way outside my wheelhouse, but there's a TON of info out there for folks to learn from
<3
 
20' Enclosed Race Trailer &quot;Build&quot;

Thanks guys. If anything, my story is one that shows any schmoe can do this stuff, and hopefully not let other schmoes be as intimidated by big projects. I'm an IT guy, this stuff is way outside my wheelhouse, but there's a TON of info out there for folks to learn from
Not sure what happened to my response
 
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I can't speak for everyone, obviously, but I'd say 6/10 of my racing friends are IT or engineering professionals. Probably 2/10 are in the medical fields.
 
Senior moment?? Sounds like Mark. hehe

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Great thread. I love seeing one off stuff like this.
 
Enclosed trailers are cheap. Toy haulers aren't.

So I bought the enclosed trailer (rlaugh)
 
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