Offroad Trailer

preacherman · Jul 9, 2011

Well, for the past two years my nephews have been living with me. Long story short I have two dogs that go everywhere with us, and I am a TJ fanatic. Add all of this up and you wind up with a very tight squeeze to get a weekends worth of camping/hunting gear into the jeep.

Solution build a trail trailer. I will probably pintle hitch it at some point but a two inch ball will work for now.

I am running a toolbox out of a toy pickup, and will probably add a tounge box in the future. I also will be adding hooks and such to handle gear.

I actually think that I might run some of the more mild trails with this little trailer.:hi:

k2blazen · Jul 9, 2011

cool little trailer and running jeep 5 lug so u should always have a spair for either or ,that is the first thing I noticed:awesomework:

TreeClimber · Jul 9, 2011

I had one that was almost a twin. You'll like it. The pintle hitch is a must, if you go on twisty trails, as the ball will likely get 'bound' up and pop off. Once that happens, it'll tend to pop off quite easily from that point onwards. Mine had a pintle. The downside to the pintle hitch is the constant 'clank'ity clank clank' noise. But the upside is that it'll always stay on. Don't run any trails that are EXTREMELY tight. You can fit thru them easily, but when you have to back up to make a 3 point turn, the trailer will jackknife badly, then won't follow the rig thru the corner, instead impaling it's fender into a tree. Might want to add metal fender protection to help 'slide' around stuff. I also had a fold down trailer tongue support. Came in handy. Another thing I had done, was to mount the spare tire of the jeep onto the trailer so that it was easier to get into the CJ's tailgate.

BUILTnotBOT · Jul 9, 2011

this is cool. talked about this the other day with a buddy and im liking how yours turned out:awesomework:. I know ive seen people doing this with the old military style trailers made me always interested. Itll be nice to have a trailer loaded with camping gear, tools/spares and everything else you can think of rather than it all hanging out in your wheeler the entire time

preacherman · Jul 9, 2011

Yes, Jeep 5 lug, and matching tire size. The Military trailers are quite a bit longer than this one. As for the pintle I am still working on that I need the ring and need to figure out the best way to get in on the tongue. I dont have much experience with the pintle style.

skinny_pedal · Jul 9, 2011

That thing is pretty sweet. How does it tow behind the jeep? Did you get it licensed yet?

Jacob · Jul 10, 2011

Yeah, I had one mostly done when we were in Missouri. I used a CJ 7 tub and cut the rear portion off of a YJ tub and welded that onto the front of the CJ tub where I cut it just in front of the wheel wells. It had a tailgate on both ends. I was going to make a top with roll down canvases so I could sleep in it on camping trips. I had an integrated rear bumper that matched the one on my TJ. All I lacked was axle, springs, wheels, shocks and setting up the tow pintle. My wife got orders to come here, we had two weeks to pack and get on the road. We were already overweight with the movers and packed to the gills with other **** (boat and ATVs) I had to sacrifice my trailer to a buddy in Missouri as a gift. I didn't have time to even sell it. I am going to start another one soon, just have to come up with another two donor tubs which is the hard and expensive part. I was going to use one of those portal rear axles from under a pontiac front wheel drive car or dodge caravan rotated to give the solid axle more clearance on the trail.

Nice build though, I have thought about just making something simpler like yours so I will get it done in a reasonable amount of time and be able to use it.

What springs did you use?

preacherman · Jul 10, 2011

It is running a set of cherokee leafs

zukkev · Jul 10, 2011

Sweet lil trailer Bo!:awesomework:

preacherman · Jul 10, 2011

It is my first tangle with fabbing anything on leafs, I have alway been a link suspension guy, I have owned others but never really altered them too much. So I had a bit of a learning curve getting the shackles not to invert. Yesterday I did a little final tweeking and me and a buddy got into the trailer and had jumped up and down. It must have been a sight my wife was rolling laughing, the tires were bouncing up and down off of the ground, 450 lbs of a suspension workout no inverted shackles.

Kev thanks that means alot coming from you! once I get the pintle thing figured out we'll have to give a trail shakedown at Walker.

I got my rear D44 converted to rotors too this weekend.

zukkev · Jul 10, 2011

I agree with the earlier post that ya may want to build some sort of 'slider' going from the front corner of the trailer to the outer leading edge of the fender, same for the trailing edge of the fender to the back corner of trailer....would also double as a step!:redneck: