Harbor Freight(diverted) crash emergency!!

Crash is up from California for his daughter’s band camp. He asked me this morning if he could come by the shop to maybe borrow some tools or get my opinion on a little issue he’s having with his harbor freight trailer. I said sure since I was just cutting metal today. OHH BOY WAS HE WRONG! far from little and slightly more then an issue!! His tongue was bending to the point it was going to have a critical failure. He heads back to Cali tomorrow so I spent the day picking up a few sticks of steel and started in on it. Update tomorrow after it’s done. But here’s the issue photo.

Yikes!   

Good thing you have time to get him lined back up before it makes a mess on the highway. 

Its been quite a week for you and messed up trailers!

Bailing wire, a paper clip, and bubble gum and she’s good as new.

Bailing wire, a paper clip, and bubble gum and she’s good as new.

No no no. Get me an avocado, an ice pick and my snorkel. Trust me, Bro, I've made trailers with less!

Bailing wire, a paper clip, and bubble gum and she’s good as new.

No no no. Get me an avocado, an ice pick and my snorkel. Trust me, Bro, I've made trailers with less!

Give MoJo enough time, and he'll be fixing trailers with some beef jerky, a used condom, and a 2 for 1 coupon to Ski Bowl.

Sent crash off at 1700 or so. Yesterday we couldn’t  get a long enough piece of receiver tubing on short notice so we grabbed the remnants of the piece they cut for J.K.B.’s build, like 23 inches And grabbed another longer piece of 2X2 tube for a new tongue. Ground off all the spots we needed to weld , paint and spray on bed liner. Put his old tongue piece under the deck sticking out about 13 or so inches and firmly melted it to the cross beams, slip jointed that to the new tongue, and melted it all in place after checking 10 times to be sure it was centered. Threw the old top plate that failed in the scrap pile and cut a new one out of some old plate I had. Burned the new plate on top and welded the bottom plate that was just bolted on for good measure. Cut a fairly thick piece of flat bar and made two shim pieces since the receiver tube was a tad higher then the original rails. Stuck that all in place and proceeded to welded his 1-7/8  tongue piece back on and then welded the safety chains since they were only bolted in the center of the tube with the hitch bolts. He’s going to wire wheel it all and paint and spray bed liner on when he gets back home. Pics coming 2 at a time from my iPhone.

definitely MO sturdy!

definitely MOJO sturdy!

My wife is a Mad Quilter and I often tell her what quilting is to fabric, welding is to steel.  Welding really is a nice skill set to have in your arsenal. 

Nicely done helping a friend. 

This was very helpful as I am going to do the same exact mod to my trailer (also a HF build). Thank you for the pictures!

This was very helpful as I am going to do the same exact mod to my trailer (also a HF build). Thank you for the pictures!

The front of the trailer is basically bombproof now thanks to Shannon. The rest of it could use some joints welded instead of bolted. I do recommend some kind of coating although I’m not sure I’d use bed liner if I had it to do over again. I love the aluminum diamond plate decking. You could use expanded aluminum but that doesn’t protect cargo from road grit and grime. If you think you’ll be loading heavy that might be the way to go.

At Shannon’s suggestion I’ll also be adding a set of goalposts instead of rely on the 1x4 cross supports. Those were always intended to be temporary anyway.

This was very helpful as I am going to do the same exact mod to my trailer (also a HF build). Thank you for the pictures!

If I’d have had time or the supplies I’d have done it a little different. If you want any additional info or pointers let me know.

Now that I got a day to clean up some of the aftermath of a build and repair, I thought I’d show you the China part failure, this should have been twice as thick minimum.

Great job Mojo!