well welcome back to Steve Ron reviews today we're doing something a little bit different something I
haven't done before and I'm just going to show you something that I built many years ago it's
a utility trailer and hopefully you guys can get some some good ideas off it you can incorporate
in your own trailer these are all my ideas that I've either seen on somebody else's trailer over
the years or some I just made up myself and making your own trailer is not so easy it takes a lot of
tools takes a little bit of talent on welding and I'm going to show you this trailer that I built
and some of the features and just kind of let me know what you think about it and maybe you can get
some good ideas when you want to make a trailer too okay so the first thing that I thought when I
was making a trailer was I'm loading my my Kubota tractor that I have up in my camp on the back haul
it and this and I thought you know what you got to have some stability on the back so I incorporated
these these are just made up myself just out of angle iron and you can see how this go you turn
it upside down you put that through you put your pins in well of course you would do the top one in
the bottom one and now you can lower the jack on the front and bring it down so it's level on the
ground or if you have to put a board or anything else underneath there when you're going up on your
ramp you're not pushing down on the back of your trailer and wrecking your your ball connection
up at the top so I think I think this is a good modification to do and this was just made out
of angle iron and it's served me well there's one on this side one on the other side another thing
I'm going to show you about is you notice that there's square holes here all over the place no
take you to the front of the trailer I'll show you what that's all about okay so as you could
see there you can get a good shot of what I've done and all I did was weld in some square tubing
and then angle iron around it and made a pocket and that goes around all four corners and I'll
show you exactly how that works okay so as you can see here I've got my ratchet strap in here
like this and you can use it like that attached to one of these pins like this or it goes inside and
it goes just like that or if you want and look on the top side too but I always put it on the bottom
and that that is about as rock-solid as you're going to get I'm going to explain to you a little
bit about ratchet straps and what I've been told side of the road by the Ministry of Transport and
how you can do some things and you can't do some others okay so here's just a regular rack strap
nothing fancy about it there's no markings on here anywhere and it's a good solid ratchet strap
and it was supposed to be good for 5,000 pounds and it's not work nothing why is that well I got
stopped with my tractor on the back from Transport Department and occasionally you know they'll pull
over trailers and they'll inspect how everything is done well he inspected everything he said you
know what you've done everything right except one thing it took the tags off your ratchet strap we
don't know what the holding strength of that ratchet strap is so he said what you got to do
is you have to have an identifier on your ratchet strap that shows how much weight it actually holds
and he says when you buy one it's going to have a tag here - if it's not labeled on the outside of
the ratchet strap so yeah you got to be careful doing that he never give me a ticket he gave me
a warning and he said you know everything was done right here that thing's not moving nowhere
but yeah you have to have an identifier on your ratchet strap not too sure if this applies to
everywhere in the world but it doesn't Ontario so let's go on to the next tip that that I use and a
little bit of a modification I've ever seen on any other trailer and I like it doing this okay what
you're looking at right there is on the tongue of the trailer and I made my own angle piece to go up
and you can see it comes out of the electrical connector goes through a holder and just comes
down to the end of the hitch and goes down to your cable and the reason why I wanted to do that is I
wanted to be able to take it apart so this comes off very simply like this you just undo this now
you can take your your cable away and it's not in the weather or anything else now I'm going
to show you something else that the Ministry of Transport booklet had mentioned before I started
building the trailer and I incorporated it into this and something a lot of people don't think
about and I see it all the time on trailers so let's take a look at this okay if you take a
look right there you can see that's where I have my hooks so I got a little bit of a holder that
holds the hooks on and holds it off and make sure that they don't come out and of course you always
cross your gear chains before you hook the box one thing that was quoted in the book was they
don't allow up here a safety chain welded to the frame of the trailer by the only means it has to
have a mechanical holding power as well so what I did is I just tacked it on right here and you can
see it slips over top of this bar and it will not go over these this bolt that I got on the end here
so it's not going nowhere and it wraps all the way around the trailer because I have seen a lot
of trailers where they just weld it onto the side of the trailer and up here that's not a good thing
to do and they will pull your trailer off the road for doing that okay so I'll just give you the walk
around the trailer and point out some things that a lot of people don't think about right
there you see that cover that's just a piece of aluminum flashing and it covers that marker light
and if you don't put that on there you'll learn the hard way like me how you could see how this
is all been pitted from stones coming up from a gravel road you just smash these out real quick
if you don't put them in there and I like to put a reflector on my Fender so that at nighttime when
I'm driving I can actually see the side of the trailer at the back just so I know everything
is okay now this here is just an old tarp that I've kind of wrapped is strapped on there just
to keep the sunlight off it because the sunlight will deteriorate your tires immensely so I do have
a lot of these little hooks here all over the trailer I'll give you a little walk around and
yeah make sure you and I've I've switched all to LED lighting now so I've got a lot of these
hooks you know where you can actually tie a tarp down and that kind of stuff and you notice I got
one gray fender the top was rotting out here so I put a piece of steel in there and all led at
the back too and this is the only good use for a butt connector right there just to hold this
chain on now I incorporated this chain in here as another safety feature and it serves two purposes
I actually have a gate I'll show you the gate the gate is made to go on here and when I need a gate
I can put the gate on is very easy and the MT old guy really liked that chain idea going across from
one side to the other and of course you have to have lots of lots of reflectors going along
there and you can see that little light there is for the license plate lamp and what do we got in
there look at them celebrities right there so yeah so my gate bolts on in this pot here and
this spot rate here and then it swings up and it attaches to the two pins here of course you got to
take the chain off so that's pretty mile it there and as you can see it's the same on this side now
I did have a level down here at one time I don't know why I bought that and it's just all busted
out since that but yeah I got the you can see here I got it all I got lots of hooks on there so if I
want to tie something down and of course in this side of the trailer you got to have a protector to
or you'll just bust out lamp so you want to take a quick look underneath here and I'll show you how I
built this now this trailer is all built out of 2 by 3 and 2 by 2 1/8 wall and the corners here are
1 by 4 I believe or 5 by 1/8 wall and of course these here are all 1 by 2 and you could see how
they're just all welded in there you know nothing fancy so and I do recommend getting these type of
wheel nuts here the captured ones that don't show the threads on the outside so they don't all rust
up that's a good idea cuz this is mostly left up north at the camp and the weather ok so let's take
a look at the trailer gate and I'll see what that looks like okay so here's the trailer gate here
just pulling the side of my fence in the backyard here and of course I put all the fasteners inside
of a waterproof container before and I need it and you could see right here this is where I
put the trailer on and put them two pins through right there and it holds it on and it's very easy
all I've got is a hinge down the bottom welded to here of course you got to have more of these
hooks everywhere and it only takes five minutes to put it on put the bolts in and away you go okay so
for the inside of the trailer I'm just using one inch which are called five quarter board
all the way around and I just bolted them down and we'll go underneath and I'll show you how I
have them all fastened down underneath and see if you like this idea okay so we're underneath
the trailer here and what I did was I decided I don't want to drill any holes through any of my
cross members so this is what I done I just used them them connector so I got carriage bolts on
top and just them plates underneath and I didn't want to drill holes like I see a lot of trailers
they drill holes right through your career being across so as you can see I have this
three by three square tubing going all the way along here and she's welded to the three cross
members and that's pretty well it guys it's very easy to build a trailer you know if you have the
tools and just a little bit of knowledge and this is a 3,500 pound axle and that's just a little bit
of a view of what it looks like there and you can see my wiring is all encased and enclosed
all the way around and yeah I think that's the best thing to do is to not drill holes through
your beams because I do think that it rots them out well I hope you like this a little bit of
a bit I'm just showing my trailer and maybe you can get some good ideas from the stuff that I've
incorporated into here and you know when you're hauling stuff in your trailer you have to really
strap everything down because these things bounce like you wouldn't believe and of course most
people do not server Sur trailer I've seen so many trailers on the side of the highway tire smoke
and raid off because they've never serviced their bearings and their axles and it's something that I
do every two years even if you know I hardly even use it I just like for peace of mind for me it's
not worth to break down you know not servicing your trailer and that's the best thing to do as
far as I know keep your tire pressures up properly the way they're supposed to be and check out your
tires after so many years whatever you know place you come from in the world where they recommend to
get rid of your tires don't keep driving trailer tires for 20 years because you're going to be
stuck on the side of the road so thanks for joining me here today and if you haven't seen
this channel before you're welcome to subscribe and you guys take care come back again Cheers