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Thank you Marcus, thoughI'm going to hit a pay wall. I've pretty much used up my allocated funds for this project for the summer already. Which is fine - I have a long way to go, and lots of parts on hand. The trailer will take some attention and chip away at my "fun" budget slightly, but on the other hand I can make a few bucks with it. I always have friends that need stalled projects moved. I figure I can get the trailer on the road for another $100. decked out with new brakes and all in around $800 is my goal for it at least.

Wife wants me to revamp our deck, and I want to terrorize my weed infested back yard with a giant roto tiller or something similar.

As usual, too many projects, not enough time.

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Tucker

One thing to keep in mind with motorcycle shocks is they typically have rather short travel. Most are in the 2-3" range unless they are dirt bike shocks. Also, the spring might be a bit different than what you're thinking - they are usually specified as either lb/in on american made items, or kg/mm, kg/cm, N/mm on metric items. I've never seem kg/in. If yours is 110 kg/cm, that equates to 620 lb/in. That's actually in the ball park for a heavier bike as they often have some mechanical advantage in the rear. For reference, they hayabusa shocks I'm using have 13.1 kg/mm springs, which is about 740 lb/in, but they only have about 2.5" of travel so they need to be used with some mechanical advantage. A 2:1 motion ratio on mine will yield about 5" of wheel travel with a 185 lb/in wheel rate. You'd have to figure out what motion ratio to use to make them work.

3" of travel is no different than what my old Miata coilovers had, but you're right in saying I had mechanical advantage there. I had not thought of the kg/CM rating though. You're right, they would be fairly stiff. Though that may not be the worst thing.. to the best of my speculation; This s10 axle weighs in with wheels and tires around 180-190lbs. so assume 95 lbs of unsprung weight per corner, with the assumption that it pulls a 450lb rear corner weight. If I run a 1:1 motion ratio, I'd get 3.1" of total travel and would need a ~240lb/spring inch.

I guess I should have used a spring rate calculator prior to posting.

Since I'll have a motion ratio of 1:1 mounting the struts directly over the rear axle, the 3" of travel probably won't be enough and I need as much space as possible back there. Running a cantilever set up probably wouldn't work either.

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Tucker

So, I was away for a week. Got back end of last week and haven't had time to tinker in the garage - aside from making a flower for TWWTFM for mothers day.

Wife started a new job (actually somewhere she used to work - then left and is now going back) With a rotating weekend schedule.. Sat/sun, sat sun off, sat off sun, off off type deal. Good news is the weather is getting nicer and the days longer - so i'll have more time after work to tinker. Also potentially a new transfer/promotion me which would yield more time as well.

My first order of business getting back this week was to find some 2x3 steel for the trailer deck... my local steel yard has gone up a MASSIVE amount for the cost of a 24' 2x3x.125 stick.. $140+ tax and $10 to cut it in half :O.

Last time I bought one was nearly three years ago - but it was only $65!!

so now I'm searching for some off cuts or another material I can use to make the outer rails and to frame the section where I plan on using boards.

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Tucker

Got to your local scrap metal place. They take it in at about 36¢ a pound and sell it back to you at around 60¢ a pound. Mine has racks of standard tubing, angle iron, etc.

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mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.

Our local scrap metal places won't sell back to the public. Up until recently we had a law banning the public from accessing "scrap yards" which included junk yards, dismantlers and scrap recyclers. The law has been lifted - but a lot of places haven't either A. Changed their insurance policies, or B. Realized they can still continue to sell higher.

they'll purchase scrap from the curbside, but won't let you pick and choose what you can buy back.

Unless someone else from CT knows of somewhere I don't that will.

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Tucker

Tonight was finish the transmission tunnel night.. also it was strip the rear axle of all the garbage brake stuff and finish some tubing in the rear end night.

step 1. lift rear axle unassisted and wrestle the godamn thing into place. make lots of measurements and realize how little room you actually have and again how you should have made a 442. put wheel on and make vroom vroom noises. step back to see how it looks.



step 2. best friend who is living with you but isnt a car guy at all comes outside to drink iced coffee and make fun of me talking to myself. take pictures of minimal clearance between wheel/tire and frame. note that you're going to need larger spacers, or much lower offset wheels in order to run a 4 bar out to where the book calls for.



kind of a deceiving picture as the glare makes the end of the main compartment frame rail hard to distinguish between the end of the table and the frame.



just about 1.25" between the inside of the tire and the frame, thats enough for me.



step 3. finish transmission tunnel and move a tube up to clear the pinion of the s10 rear end.





the various angles of the of tubes make it look really.. not straight in some places. I double and triple checked that they are all level.



step 4. install rear down bars that will be used to gusset the shock mounting plates in the rear. Scratch head as to what you did with the extra 12' of 1x1 tube you ordered with your cut list, and what you possibly used it for.



seriously - I have probably 6 pieces left ranging in length from 8 - 26". I have plenty of 3/4" left.. like.. alot of 3/4".. and looking at the book design I can't figure out how I got there, or what I used 1" in place of 3/4".. and I wonder how much rigidity I'd lose by going to 3/4" for all my triangulation. I know I have stuff like the scuttle / dash hoop to make.. but nowhere near anything that would use 12 60" sticks of 3/4

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Tucker

Just went through the updated/ corrected plans on sevenesque.. I only see two pieces that I used 1" instead of the 3/4" that it called for, and theyre the two verticals I just added tonight at the end of the transmission tunnel.. I mean.. oh well? As far as I can see, the only structural pieces i'm missing at this point are the two vertical bars up by the nose where the control arm pickups are located and the floor bars that line the inside of the passenger footwell area around the transmission.

Guess I need to order some more steel.

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Tucker

So I took a whole day off of work yesterday. My plan was to scoot the little one off to daycare, hit up the DMV in the morning, register the trailer, stop by the steel yard and pick up the steel to finish the trailer, finish the trailer then spend whatever time I had left stripping the front suspension off of the s10.

It did not go according to plan. 4 hours later, I was finally leaving the DMV. what a nightmare that place is.. its ALWAYS like that too. They rolled out a new computer system to speed things up 6 months ago or so and things have doubled in wait time. By the time I got the steel and home it was damn near 3pm. So.. I got about 2 hours in on the trailer, and not nearly as much done as I would have wished.

I am however, incredibly impressed with this little Hobart. I figured it would work like most of the other 110V welders on heavier stuff and I'd have to go super slow.. never did I think it would blow through 1/8"! So I turned it down a little bit and boy it was like butter.





Its a shame that flux core is so ugly, but its perfect for outside and the application. I'll probably go through this roll of it, then make the full transition over to GMAW.

I went through a total redesign of what I was originally going to do with the trailer after really laying things out and looking at it. So, I scribbled out a newer, stronger, plan and started to cutting. I'm basically going to run four vertical rails the length of the trailer, with cross bars every 18" where the load is primarily carried and stringers across the middle every 20" to tie everything together. the large center beams are 3x4x3/16" and happen to run at 44" on center, perfect for a locost. I'll dovetail the last 24" of the trailer, and use 4 2x12x12 pressure treated boards for a deck. this will allow for racetrack/ roadside inspections of the car by providing a clear path to the underbelly of the car and will also help keep some of the weight down.

The unloaded weight of the trailer with the boat crap was 1260lbs, By removing the cradles and rollers I've knocked 250lbs off of it. So far, my steel weight is 184lbs. add in the boards and I should be right around the 250lb mark. this gives me 4k of weight capacity to play with before I exceed the 5200 GVW of the trailer.



I also started cutting some of the U Bolts and welding the joints that are normally bolted together on a trailer like this. It's slow progress to ensure that the joints are completely clean of the galvanized crap, and to get in to some of the areas with my grinder is a pain, so I used a dremel with a grinding bit for some of them. It's slower, but allows me to make sure the area is really clean.

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Tucker

I ms painted a picture demonstrating what I was describing, minus the boards.

The red are the cross bars, and the yellow is the dovetail sections.

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Tucker

I think it's fine to use 3/4" tube for your frame diagonals, if that helps...

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
Car9 Roadster information - models, drawings, resources etc.

Good! its settled then!

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Tucker

i should probably look back at what others have said but do some research on boat trailers. Usually they put a LOT more tongue weight than you want when you tow a normal item. boats have a lot of their mass and CG further back for stability when on the water (and to get on plane quicker) and the trailers are designed as such. (wheels are usually a couple of feet further back.)

usually when someone converts a boat trailer they move the axles a few feet forward to correct this.

Four, I've thought of this already. this particular trailer is Built different than most boat trailers, its older (originally a 1986) and proportioned well. The deck will be 12' long, and will have 5' from the axle centerline back, and 7 feet forward. That's as close to even as I could want, if it was anything more than that, I would move the axles.

As far the boat weight distribution bit.. I plan on loading cars with the engine towards the rear. this should help Put the weight square over the axles.

It will primarily be used for hauling the locost and my wifes 74' super beetle. Neither of which are heavy cars, and are both short enough to not really be of issue. My ram has a 500lb max tongue weight on its class 3 hitch.. that should exceed any forces I face on it with vehicles as small as those.

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Tucker

Got a bunch done on the trailer yesterday before I ran out of wire at 430 on a Sunday >:( I had another roll on the shelf.. but it was .035 and I didn't feel like switch the whole machine over just to use it. So I'll pick up another roll of .030 sometime this week and button It up. I have three welds left to do, and then deck and weld the anchors on. I went with a 10° 30" beavertail, and it looks way more aggressive than I would have imagined. 10° is apparently the norm for racecar haulers. The good news is, is that I wont need much ramp to get cars loaded. The top of the deck to ground height will be 11.5" at the lowest most portion of the beavertail. I may have some issues with my driveway, but that's yet to be determined.

Cross bars in


unfortunately when I squared off the side rails To the existing parts they mated to, I forgot to take into account that the main deck rails are 1" Taller. This doesn't effect much, the deck won't be perfectly flat, in retrospect it should help keep water from collecting on it, which should help extend the life of the wood.


Flux core is so filthy, but it was glorious to get nice, consistent, beads with a 10mph breeze


As far as I could get with the wire on hand. I have 2x10 pressure treated boards for the deck. it should give a nice 23" gap between the two deck sections, I may not be able to load a lawn mower on to it, but it will fit just about every small car (aside from the Cushman) perfectly.


Beavertail! missing the lower supports and ramp hooks.


It was hot in the sun yesterday! tried to keep the little guy cool when really putting it to work

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Tucker