Project Trailer Trash is nearing completion and has been a load of fun so far. Here's the basic story: I found this bike trailer looking like a bag of hammered crap in the garbage but thought the basic frame looked good enough to salvage. Here's how it looked when I adopted it:
As you can see... pretty rough shape. Those side hoop parts that would normally form the roof support for the trailer are NOT supposed to fold down flat like that. It's almost as if some lunatic Ikea worker went on a coke-fueled bender and decided to convert this thing to flat-pack.
All of the nylon/canvassy stuff was weather-rotted and/or ripped so I cut that off and started work on the bare steel frame. There was a fair bit of stomping, pulling, and hammering to make the frame mostly straight in most directions but it came around. After getting it shaped up I did some repair welds in a few places and also shortened the centre crossbar because of how I was going to mount it... My welds must be getting better because I cut 3 inches out of the middle of that bar, welded it back together, and it would take my weight right on top of the weld.
Axle mounting was a major re-engineering job. The crushed original wheels had stupid proprietary axles so all of that original stuff had to go. In it's place I've fitted a couple of chunks of angle iron (bed frame rails from the garbage), a 26" steel mountainbike fork that has been split in half (from a garbage bike), and a couple of 20" alloy replacement wheels off of some other garbage bikes. This part is detailed in the video much better than I could do with text.
Once the frame was sorted out I turned to the hitch. I had seen other DIY builders online use lots of combos of the hardware I used for a hitch so I used several different ideas to employ whatever I had laying around for my hitch. The end result is here:
A swivel caster, an air-hose connector, and the end off of an air hose (from the garbage). It's almost self-explanatory but to get a real feel for how it works check it out in the video I'll post here somewhere.
I slapped together a plywood load floor out of some scrap wood and am now deciding how to mount it to the frame. Engineering has stopped at this point for some paint work to pretty the trailer up. I'll hopefully have another update soon showing the trailer completed and in action.
Happy building and biking!
VIDEO:
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