Long over due update. This thing sat idle for a couple of months while I was busy working out of town and tending to some other projects. I also had a hard time swallowing the fact that this thing is going to end up costing me 2k in refurbishment costs and will still be a dented up old trailer. Anyway I bit the bullet and got it all blasted to the tune of $400.
At this point I decided it would be easier to weld up pin holes and pitting with the box up on its side. Flattened copper pipe as a backer and lots of spot welds and grinding. Again it was Swiss cheese.
Not pretty at all but this trailer never was in my ownership. In all honesty it was too far gone to repair but sentimentality took over and I decided to give it a second lease on life.
The lip is stitch welded on the bottom side after it's slightly hammered out to match the outer skin and better fit on the frame.
Important thing to note is there are two places that sell replacement floors for these. They are both manufactured by the same business and do not have the vertical lip seen here. They are simply flat on the edges. They are designed for the old floor to be cut out leaving a lip and then to be lap welded in. I really did not like this approach and wanted ALL of the old floor out. I got into an argument with the place that sells the replacement floors because the gut tried to tell me the original floors don't have a lip and both of my trailers here are anomalies. I heard crickets when I emailed him photos to prove otherwise. Anyway that's why I opted to build my floor from scratch.
I sprung for factory style drains, brackets, and plugs to the tune of $150. Heck nothing about this refurb makes financial sense so why not right?
You can see in this photo how the top section of the frame is notched out to clear the drain. Sooo punching that hole on the wrong side doesn't work out so well.
Yeah so silly me here marked the inside of the floor for the drains and then loaded it up on my utility trailer (upside down) and drove to my buddies place to use his dimple die on the holes...well I get over there and the underside of the floor was marked by yours truly for the drains previously so with out a second thought I cut a hole and dimple died it. Then I realized it was on the wrong side. I had made these markings before my floor was "sided" and welded to the rest of the tub. At this point i figured hell I'll just notch the frame on the other side and cut and dimpled the second hole. Well the more I thought about it overnight the less I liked that idea so I spent a few hours the next day welding up my two mistakes. It's tricky building up weld to look like ribbing.
Of course I forgot to snap a photo from the inside but I'll have one shortly.
Yesterday I cut 12 u bolts to size (This trailer and my other 416)
$150 worth of u bolts
I spent an hour or so standing over a blast cabinet cleaning up the tiny bits I was too scared would get lost at the big blasting place that did the tub. Of course no photo of those.
Couple hundred dollars worth of 3116 stainless hardware. Enough to do this one and my other 416. There were two 3/4" diameter bolts I couldn't get in stainless so i opted for steel and they are getting galvanized with the trailer.
These trailers use SAE fine thread hardware everywhere but the ten bolts that hold the fenders on. Those are course thread 3/8 bolts. I fought with the idea of using much more common course thread stainless or just using some japanese hardware throughout this thing since I have hordes of it still in the bags. Anyway it was an impulse buy but It will be nice to know that between the galvanizing and the stainless hardware this thing shouldn't go anywhere any time soon.
Another little fun fact: This morning I decided to spin some axle spindle bearing nuts over the threads of the axle to keep the galvanizing off of them. Well I needed about 4 of those nuts per side to cover the entire thread portion. The trailer only has two per side just like our land cruisers. Long story short...land cruiser nuts are identical.. I spun some 40 series spindle nuts on the axle to cover the threads. Im actually willing to bet my 40 or 60 series hubs and bearings will fit this axle. Would be an easy way to convert to 6 lug but Im not quiet sure Id be willing to give up the parking brake on this thing. Unless i could find some drums that would work.
Here is all the bolts I ordered for my two trailers with the exception of the 8# 7/16 fine thread lock nuts I forgot to put on the list. Also of course the u bolts aren't on this list
