Pickup Substitute (1 Viewer)

[96FZJ80]

I have a short daily commute but every couple weeks I do a 350ish mile trip. With only my 80 to drive I wanted something to share dd duties as well as be able to haul 8-10' lumber, pallets, etc... I really wanted a 1st gen Tundra but couldn't find one I'd want to buy for my budget. After a few weeks I got discouraged and decided to get an LS400 for sharing the dd duties (and much more comfort on the long trips) and a trailer to pull with the 80. I'm currently renting a "standard" house in the middle of the block so parking a trailer on the driveway with 2 cars in the garage is going to be a PITA moving it depending on which vehicle I feel like driving each day. Enter the Harbor Freight 1920 lb capacity folding trailer. So I did a lot of Googling and YouTubing and decided this thing would suit my needs and I could fold it up, roll it into the garage and out the back garage door onto the back patio for storage - secure, out of the way, cheap. Perfect. After watching for a few weeks HF put out a coupon for 15% off so I pulled the trigger.

This is more of an "assembly" than a build, but you never know... I've seen some pretty adventurous builds on these HF trailers. I plan to put it together "stock" for now, with some stakes for hauling lumber, etc... but would like to hear some recommendations if anyone has any for upgrades to make it more useful. I want to make some simple side and end boards that can somehow hang on or attach to the unit when it's folded up and stored so that it's all together in one place. Should be simple enough - just have to think on it a bit. Maybe put some screw hooks in the under side of the plywood deck that the side boards could hang on when folded up but would be under the trailer when it's open. Hmmmm

One thing I noticed almost every review said was that it didn't take long to turn pink. So I decided to paint it to match the 80. Picked up a few (I think 7?) cans of Duplicolor paint in a Ford Emerald Green color that matches the 6M1 of the 80 pretty well and have set out to paint everything before I assemble.

 

[96FZJ80]

Another thing I've read / heard is to be sure to clean and then repack the wheel bearings with good wheel bearing grease. The hubs have zerks on them for maintenance I guess but I think I'll pack them real good before putting it together. I know nothing about doing this, but did pick this grease up at O'Reilly's. Does this look sufficient to use to pack the bearings?

 

[KYNate]

That grease ought to do it! I'm interested to see the finished product!

 

[96FZJ80]

That grease ought to do it! I'm interested to see the finished product!

Thanks.

From the factory the bearings are packed in a cool blue grease. Never done this before so I can't say if it's good or bad grease. So I jumped in and started cleaning it out. One whole can of Brakleen and a whole can of Gunk Engine Degreaser to clean out one hub and the bearings. But, I did fill an old salsa jar about half full with the Gunk product for soaking the bearings in so that will suffice for both wheels.

The outer bearings looked to be packed pretty well but the cavity of the hub itself (between the races) is not packed full. By the location of the grease zerk it appears to me that the cavity is meant to be full. Until it is, you can just keep pumping grease in there and none is going to reach the bearings until it is full. Am I missing something or is that how it works?

The inner seal is rubber. Its ribbed on the outside so a bit of a bear to get it out without tearing it up. I think I can still reuse them, but once I got the first one out I saw it had a small circular spring around inside lip. I guess that is to keep it tight around the spindle to prevent intrusion of water/dirt. I mangled the first one trying to pry the seal out with a screwdriver but did better on the second one once I knew it was there.

 

[96FZJ80]

The inner bearing was not packed nearly as well as the outer bearing. I'm glad I decided to do this..

 

[80t0ylc]

Another thing I've read / heard is to be sure to clean and then repack the wheel bearings with good wheel bearing grease. The hubs have zerks on them for maintenance I guess but I think I'll pack them real good before putting it together. I know nothing about doing this, but did pick this grease up at O'Reilly's. Does this look sufficient to use to pack the bearings?......

Yeah, good choice to clean & repack with your choice of synthetic wheel bearing grease. For me, I rest easier knowing the bearings are well greased, instead of assuming they are and having a failure on the road. Valvoline has an excellent & reliable reputation. As far as the zerks, I've got them on my axle, but my research uncovered not to neglect a periodic tear down & repack of your wheel bearings. The zerks allow you to add grease easily, but they don't prevent moisture and debris intrusion. If your towing and are experiencing a lot of river crossings or extreme heat, they'll allow you to add grease on the road or in camp to keep you mobile without having to tear them down on a trip. Your zerks appear to be more difficult to reach than mine. The zerks on my axle are under the grease cap, on the outside end of the spindle. Caps have a plastic plug you remove to add grease. A couple images downloaded to illustrate:

 

[Prairie Swamp]

Not too much input except that you're doing the right things. HF trailers are better than they used to be like most HF stuff. My little camper is built on a '05 vintage 1195 lb axle. Hard to find bearings and seals as they are metric but it's advised to replace the HF stuff with higher quality properly packed. IMHO the grease zerks on the hubs are useless. And as a side note on my 2005 vintage trailer one zerk had inch threads (1/4-20?) and one has M6 threads. WTF. My camper has about 15,000 miles and just shredded one of the original tires last month during a multi-100 mile 80 mph run. Yeah the tires are rated at 55 mph.

On topic I bought another 1195 trailer in 2011 to use as you intend. My little regular cab Tacoma has done more work that most full size fashion accessory trucks. Hauled a stupid amount of old barn wood from Ohio to Madison, WI a couple years ago, brought home a bed for the 82 truck. Yes the paint fades to pink in one year in the sun. If you want Bearing Buddies (I do because all my stamped bearing caps fell off somewhere on the road) extensive searching on Amazon shows a size that fits the oddball HF hubs. Have yet to install them as I have replace the blown tire and utility trailer is out in the weeds currently.

 

[Prairie Swamp]

For those that say the tires are junk I got 15,000 miles and 14 years out of the first set. Tires were not worn but one grenaded as I mentioned above. I always feel the hubs at every stop for heat. They should be just warm to the touch. If one is getting warmer than the other then you need to look into things.

 

[96FZJ80]

I started assembling today at I think just before noon. Finished about 8:30 but stopped a couple times in there to help a guy get a dead branch out of a tree about 50 feet up and to scarf down a bacon cheese burger. But otherwise pretty steady work so I'd say about 6.5 to 7 hours. If you've watched any You Tube videos on these things complaints about the instructions are common. I always thought "pffft if you can't follow instructions then blame the instructions". Well, I found out a couple times the hard way that the instructions are lacking. It's what they don't say that's the issue. There are a lot of bolts on this thing and a lot of repetitive work bolting it together in various places. More than once, when installing a bracket, etc... later I found a bolt already in the hole I was supposed to use. Looking back at the instructions they don't tell you DO NOT INSTALL THIS BOLT. Instead they refer to a figure that shows the position of the 20 bolts you are supposed to put in and if you look real close they do not show installing one of them on this step. So I had to remove several previously installed bolts in various positions to add another piece and then put the bolt back in. Just annoying and time consuming. So you really have to look at the pictures for each bolt to avoid rework.

You're supposed to put the front half together with the tongue, then flip it over to bolt the channel together on both sides (top and bottom). Then flip it back over the right way. Then repeat that on the back half. Then bolt the two sections together, then flip it over to install the spring channels, fenders, springs, axle and wheels.

So now, once you have the whole thing assembled pretty much it's upside down. If you try to just "roll" it over you'll end up with all weight on one of the cheesy little fenders and bend it. I stacked some wood under one side high enough that the fender wouldn't contact the ground and proceeded to "roll" it over. It was a little bit sketchy trying to do it without help but I made sure I had my phone in my pocket so I could call 911 if I ended up trapped underneath my trailer.

I scuffed up the red paint with a coarse green pad enough to get the shine off it before painting. I had never used Duplicolor paint before but I'm pretty disappointed in it. Especially at about $11 per 8 oz (or whatever it is, it's smaller than your average rattle can). Spent a lot of time touching up paint today. Mostly around bolt heads - anywhere a socket touched the paint it came right off. Maybe I should have done better prep but I see having to repaint an assembled trailer in my not too distant future if the green is going to flake off every time it gets touched.

Tomorrow, lights and wiring. Oh joy.

 

[Prairie Swamp]

Since you mentioned wiring...you might want to upgrade the wiring especially the grounds. Unless HF has made them better in recent years. On my utility trailer the lights were constantly needing attention I rewired the while thing with soldered connections. Also I don't recall if they expect the frame to ground through the hinge and other bolted connections but I ran dedicated ground wires for each light in the end.

 

[96FZJ80]

Since you mentioned wiring...you might want to upgrade the wiring especially the grounds. Unless HF has made them better in recent years. On my utility trailer the lights were constantly needing attention I rewired the while thing with soldered connections. Also I don't recall if they expect the frame to ground through the hinge and other bolted connections but I ran dedicated ground wires for each light in the end.

Can you explain more about running the dedicated ground wire to each light? Have seen that mentioned a few times but haven't seen any step by step instructions on exactly how to do it. Starting with what size wire and where I might get it. Is it literally a piece of wire that starts at each (of the 4) lights and terminates... Where?

 

[Prairie Swamp]

The intent the way my trailers came out of the box is that each light "fixture" is grounded through its mounting point where it attached to the frame. If you look at the fixtures you see where the metal that holds the bulb is connected to where the fixture bolts/screws to the frame. The real failure is that they rely on the bolted together frame and the pivot points for the hinges and folding tongue to stay clean and conduct electricity forever. Bad bad in road salt land.

Wire size - 18 gage is certainly enough. The standard in the US for a trailer is color white for ground. As to where to get it I would have said Radio Shack in the past. Now I would just get a spool of 50' of stranded white single conductor wire on Amazon I guess.

Run a white wire to each of the 4 fixtures. Put on a ring terminal at each fixture end. When you bolt/screw each fixture to the trailer trap the ring terminal with the white wire between fixture and frame making sure the paint is scraped away. Run each of these wires to the ball hitch and join all 4 together with the white wire on the 4-flat connector.

I recommend soldering each connection and covering with the shrink tube that squishes out the sealant when you heat it. Put all the wires in wire loom (cheap at harbor freight).

It's more work now but I don't want to be that guy with non operating trailer lights and cause an accident or get pulled over.

 

[96FZJ80]

No idea if I did it correctly but it sorta worked. Each of the 4 lights (2 marker lights and 2 tail lights) had it's own white (ground) wire. So I attached those at their respective mounting bolts. The tail lights had ring connectors on them that fit over the mounting bolts so I assumed this is how it is meant to be. I put ring connectors on the marker light ground wires and attached them at the mounting bolt as well. At the tongue I drilled a hole in the side of the tongue, put a ring connector on the white wire coming off the plug and screwed it into the newly drilled hole. Temporarily connected everything with wire nuts and plugged it into the vehicle. Marker lights work (both sides), right rear turning signal, brake light and running light works. Left rear... nothing. Tried tightening down the ground. Still nothing, broke the ring connector. Had to go the store to get more ring connectors as it is 18 gauge wire but it goes over a good sized bolt. None of the ring connectors I had would fit over the bolt. So, new ring connector and still nothing. Got my tester to test the plug on the vehicle - found no voltage at left turn signal hole (yellow wire). Traced that up into the quarter panel and found a connector about 3 inches from some black box that says TOYOTA on it. Voltage above the connector but not below it. So I cut off the connector and put in some butt connectors to see if I could get this working. After testing found voltage all the way down to the plug but not if I put my tester in hole of the plug. So cut off the plug and used butt connectors to put the plug on that came with the trailer. Plugged everything in. No left rear turn signal or brake/running lights. Left side marker still works. Decided to put it away for another day. While cleaning up it hit me that it would probably have been a good idea to swap the right and left rear lights just to make sure the left rear light wasn't bad out of the box. If that turns out to be it I'll be half relieved and half pissed.

On the marker lights the wires exit the back of the housing on one side - however the hole in the trailer is in the middle between the mounting holes. So I removed the lens, pulled the assembly out, drilled a new hole in the housing that aligns with the hole in the trailer and put it back together with the wires exiting in the center and through the hole in the trailer. Here's a before and after. Worked fine.

Attached ring connectors and attached to one of the mounting bolts.

The rear lights already had ring connectors on the ground wire so I attached those to one of their mounting bolts as well.

Got fed up trying to figure out why the left rear is not working at all so I folded it up and pushed it out the back door of the garage onto the patio till I have time to get back at it.

 

[ntsqd]

In my experience the number one fault in trailer lighting is the grounds. I now connect them all together and do not use the trailer frame for a ground at all.

 

[96FZJ80]

I keep seeing comments about the grounds but have not found an explanation simple enough for me to understand. Should I connect wire to the ground wire on the left rear taillight, run that up and connect it to the ground on the left marker light and then run it up and connect it to the ground wire on the plug? Repeat the same one the right side? Not connected to the frame anywhere?

 

[ntsqd]

Yes, connect them all together and don't bother with connecting them to the trailer frame at all. Whatever trailer lights connector you're using between the tow rig and the trailer should have a ground terminal to connect the lights grounding wire to.

 

[96FZJ80]

Thanks. I'll give it a shot.

 

[96FZJ80]

So finally had a few hours yesterday and today to get back at it. The ground was the problem with the left side lights not working. For whatever reason the right side was grounding ok but the left side apparently was not. Ran a 16 ga wire from the taillight up to the plug splicing the marker light in at the appropriate place. Repeated that on the other side. Everything works. Took all the wiring back apart and made everything neat and clean with butt connectors and heat shrink and then tucked it all into 3/8" wire loom running along the frame on both sides of the trailer.

Now just waiting for some adhesive backed clips to come in the mail so I can secure the loom along the frame for a nice and tidy installation. When that's done I can take it to get registered/license plates. When that's done I can take it to the store to pick up a sheet of 3/4" treated plywood to deck it.