Building a Trailer for my Cruiser

[Cabreco]

Well I went & did it. I picked up the HF mini trailer yesterday. With coupons & sales it came to $143.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon putting it together & cursing Chinese manufacturing.
In general the components are good. Some of the Bolts & nuts are not machined properly. I had to use my tap & die set waaayy too much today. Getting it squared was fun as well. Once everything was true I retightened eveything with my impact gun. (I will be stick welding it as well.)

For the most part it will be a tag along for me to pull behind my Yamaha Venture

Monday I had fenders & lighting done as well as adding the 18cu ft rooftop cargo carrier. I aslo have the swivel hitch to mount on the VR.

Did more work today on the HF Mini. I welded in a 1x1 box steel under the front of the cooler rack for stability & I also welded the back of the rail to the trailer. The 800 watt generator fit real nice in the cooler rack box.

I made a side carrier to be able to haul a 1 gallon gas can just in front of the driver side tire.

To hold the box in & add extra rigidity, I used 2 lengths of 2x6 pressure treated wood. The biggest pain was I needed to replace the carriage bolts that mount the box to the trailer as they were 1" too short. I go to Home Depot but they don't have metric carriage bolts. What I did was buy 1/4" x 3 1/2 stainless carriage bolts & I use my tap & die set to re thread the original metric hold down knobs to 1/4" 20 course. Now I can attach my cargo net to them without having to add extra eyebolts.
I also put in an edge trim on the carrier top as well as a new weather seal on the box. The old one was crumbling.

My swivel hitch arrives tomorrow so I'll be able to take her for a test drive probably Thursday to see how she tracks. Then I'll weld the trailer up if it passes snuff. I did pull the extra springs off since I decided to just use this behind the bike.

I'll take pix of today's add ons tomorrow since it got dark on me here & my hands are KILLING ME!
It sucks getting old!

Here's where I stood Sunday.

[Cabreco]

Some additional pix of the build.




Still need to do the wiring. Looking to do extra LED lights to make it more visible. Also, I think I will add a 3rd brake light and a pair of amber turn signals.
Eventually I will paint the Bike & trailer to match.

[shinyribs]

You are a quick mover! Good idea with the extra brake and signal lights. Looks good man. Can't wait to see it all painted up pretty

[Piute]

   Have seen plenty done that way,Was at a show/rally once N guy was teaching the reason why use of swivle hitch,but was doing all with standard type,point was not needed,My only problem ever was pulling emptie,So always kept ice chest on and filled with something if need be,water works but needs to be in jugs to keep from swishing around,These are great to have Judose loves his. Paint makes BIGG difference in hwy apperance,.



                                            Before paint few yards(300)at H.F.

[Cabreco]

Ribs, paint will be a while since (hopefully) we will be moving next year & I don't want to risk getteing it or the bike scratched in the haul.

Piute, the swivel hitch is pretty sweet & not too bad on the wallet (set me back $50 bucks) I tested the trailer with both the standard & swivel and really felt no issue. Where I did feel it is on leans (it was much smoother) & of course the risk of binding is greatly reduced.

I have a HF 800watt generator in the black cargo box. It weighs 38lbs. This gives me an unloaded trailer tongue weight of 42lbs. (to avoid wheel wobble you need to maintain 35-60lbs tongue weight) At 55lbs the front end does start getting light. And of course I try to keep my overall trailer load under 225Lbs

In any case the cost of this build was $230 complete.