trailer project

[sikfish]

As soon as it rains and the fire danger is down, i want to start my trailer project. I bought this I beam trailer off of CL, it was a heavy duty military boat trailer. I had a 20' tilt all steel trailer i sold because of the bridge going to my property, i always had a couple treads off because it was so wide, this one is perfect. My question is what distance do i need in between supports for the 1/8" steel diamond plate i have to put on the deck? Its 65 inches frame to frame and i plan on widening out to the edge of the tires and lengthening is a bit, along with cutting down the huge 6' tongue. I think it will be a nice very heavy duty trailer once i am done.
thanks

http://imgur.com/dy9jtVJ
http://i.imgur.com/dy9jtVJ.jpg

 

[Mike W.]

I use finite element analysis software, I can give you a pretty good ball park if you tell me the amount of weight you want to put on it, the distance between the 3 beams and the size of the beams

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

[gearhead1]

How much weight do you plan to put on it? Cars or gravel/dirt/junk?

I'd say every two feet given those I beams. My car trailer has two 5" channels as each side rail, and 3" channel every 2 feet or so. I haul cars, trucks, 41hp tractor, dirt, gravel, etc with diamond plate that is definitely not 1/8" thick without any issues.

 

[sikfish]

thanks guys, since the size is 65 inches, there should be 32.5 inches to the center of the center beam. It may have a car, tractor, gravel, and many other things thrown on it over its life. So, i gather along the length of the trailer a cross beam every 24", kind of what i was thinking too. I have some 12" i beams laying in my pasture which is what i will cut up with the plasma to make my outrigger for the wider deck and boxing off the back. I'll have to dig up some decent size angle for the supports between the I beams. This thing has dual electric brakes, which i havent seen much of where i live. Even my 20 footer only had single axle brakes.

 

[sikfish]

Hey all, questions. So i finished this project over the winter, now I'm bored, lol
I want to widen this trailer to the outside of the wheels, whats the preferred method and what material to buy to do so?
thanks for any help.

 

[koditten]

I guess I would use some rectangular tubing. 1.5" x 3" would be my first choice. Run some band steel on the outside of the tubes to give it a finished look.

 

[sikfish]

I was kinda kicking around finding some 6" I beam to keep it the same.

 

[koditten]

If you can get it at scrap prices, go for it. If not, more tubes, closer together will be a lot cheaper. It won't be visible anyways.

 

[sikfish]

If you can get it at scrap prices, go for it. If not, more tubes, closer together will be a lot cheaper. It won't be visible anyways.

True, but it will be a lot easier to weld onto existing steel that has the same dimensions.