Constant Troubles, but it’s OK! :)
This is a learning experience, right? Let’s share what I’ve learned… I know nothing! 🙂 I am looking forward to this metal work stuff being over soon. It really has been fun though, I just want to start building soon!
So here is whats been going on since I’ve been MIA.
My amazing brother was teaching me to weld, mine are the crappy ones… his are the good ones… actually, I think I did ok by the third or fourth try… the top right one is mine (win!) Needless to say I haven’t done any ‘actual’ welds on the trailer (boo). I figure the welds are a pretty important part to, you know, hold the thing up, it is better left to someone who really knows what they’re doing… dad has once again come to the rescue! We even were able to pick up an awesome deal ona new welder that worked great! (I use too many ‘!’s’)
To get to the welding I went through all the places that needed it with a grinder to expose the metal to get good contact.
Kind of tough to see but this is a weld that has been sprayed with primer to protect it from rusting.
The guy I bought the trailer from did an excellent job of going through and making sure all the welds were solid, that he could see. The places that needed to be reworked were under the boards on the deck, particularly where he had the axles attached. This was a pretty big weld, the metal was pulling way away from each other.
This is where the welding starts. Come to find out… you shouldn’t weld the posts to the trailer until you have all the axles assembled, then you can get the placement just right. We were a little off, ultimately it will work, we were somethign like 1/8” off is all and it should be fine, we just got really lucky though that it wasn’t more, we could have had a mega disaster to fix.
It gets bright :). Don’t look right at it, this is just a picture taken over my shoulder, my eyes are safe.
The finished assembly… minus the axles… which should have been on first!
This is the impact wrench we used to tighten the bolts, saves a TON of labor 🙂 (I am grateful to be so spoiled!)
when we tightened the bolts we went all the way, it also turns out the shouldn’t be ‘all-the-way’ tight, they need to move some, easy fix.
Here are the original two axles back on the trailer, only waiting on the third…
The current problem now comes with the third axle… its two feet longer than it should be! UGGG! it actually made me laugh… I didn’t realize it until I was putting the tires on… it totally didn’t fit! hahaha! So, now tomorrow I am going to call up the axle store and see if I could do a bit of a trade with them… wish me luck on that. I really can’t believe I never noticed that before… that is pretty much the story with the trailer for now… I know I am behind schedule, I thought I’d be further, at least building by now but this stuff is pretty interesting still and I don’t think its too bad for working full time AND studying for my architectural registration exams AND planning a murder mystery party for 30 people last week :).
As mentioned before, this is the supports I am using. You can see this one is already cracked. To start this block was bowed so it isn’t a surprise that it cracked at all, it still seems structurally sound because I used the smaller cinder blocks to support it but I will be keeping my eyes on it.
