What did you do today?

[Charlie Horse]

Yesterday I finally finished making my old Circle J horse trailer functional again. Its aluminum skinned on steel frame, and I bought it from my neighbor for 1,000 bucks about 5 years ago. I havent used it since because it fell apart. What happened is the neighbor needed to borrow it. I said OK, but I wasn't sure about its condition (it had sat for a couple years) and I felt like the tires sucked. Well, the trip was a disaster for them and my trailer. First the horses fought for 4 hours against going in to it. This resulted in one of the back doors being more or less broken off. When it got back, the ramp was holding on by one hinge (Circle J deceded to wrap a piece of plywood with sheet steel. Water could get in but not out and of course it rusted away). They had had a flat and driven for 5 miles with it flapping around shredding the fiberglass fender. Then apparently it got dropped off the jack and dented the front left brake drum. Due to the fact that a 6 pin round plug has no standardization, I once dragged it for 2 miles before figuring out that headlights lock up the brakes when hooked to the Suburban. The brakes got hot enough to cause the axle grease to separate. All the wiring was questionable and wired wrong for a more modern 7 flat-pin round plug and all the marker lights were toast. Some of the structural beams had filled with water and exploded due to some fundamentally silly design choices by Circle J. Soooooo

Its been a couple months of afternoons spent but I've redone the important stuff. Next year I'll work on repainting the roof and replacing some rusty non-critical stuff in the front. As it sits now its a fully functional trailer thats better than factory.



You can see the fenders have been repaired and repainted. The bearings replaced and greased, new high quality tires, new drum on the bad one, and the brake wires replaced.



All of this is new. The main ramp is square tubing with angle iron welded to hold the plywood. Sheetmetal is welded to the frame and bolts are welded to the sheet metal. Its all epoxy primed and urethane painted with expensive automotive seam sealer covering all welds and gaps. The counter-sunk bolts are even sealed in and the wood is heavily painted. A new stall mat is screwed on and sealed around the edges. The hinges are heavy-duty weld-on bullet type, allowing the ramp to be removed if you take off the springs and slide it to the side. The butt-doors are similar, and the top door has a removable wood panel for waterproofing and winter/summer reasons. One spring loaded latch opens both. Note how each door has an overlapping piece of angle iron that retains the lower doors for safety and waterproofing.



You can see part of the middle post in this shot. The old one was bad so I put in a new one with the change that the new one can be removed with 3 bolts. If a horse goes down in there or in an accident or if I want to haul something that is wider than a horse, I can quickly pull the center post now. Also notice the expanded steel to keep goats from jumping out if the wood panel is removed. Also I've added neoprene foam thats meant for garage door gaskets to the top lip to make a rain drip that is soft and wont hurt a horse that hits it with his head. I'm adding more of that soon.



In truth I hate side-by-side horse trailers. Horses hate to load in these even if its shiny new paint and upholstery. I did all this work because its what I had. I've probably got another 1500 into it on top of the 1000 to buy it now, but at least its a functional asset and with new tires it'll last many more years.



The neighbor put a crazed pit bull in the trailer once (she was a dog catcher for a while) and it ate all the upholstery including the wood, and even ate the edges of the floor mats. That took me 100 bucks and 3 afternoons to replace. That divider is on the list of things to freshen up when I work on the front half next year. There is rust on the manger floor, one of the posts has filled with water and exploded, and the roof needs repainting (the bolts holding it down had broken the fiberglass around them and let water in stuff-- Now fixed). I also need to repaint the hitch and add some access steps to the front of the fenders.

As a side note, Harbor Freight marker lights have a 30% chance of not surviving the rigors of installation. I'm replacing them-- They're total crap.

With this done my move down to the redrock area of central Utah is about to happen. Big adventure ahead!