Trailer Designs and my latest whacky design

I would personally skip the whole idea of front-loading.  Loading a trailer with a car when it is not attached to the tow vehicle is a recipe for death and dismemberment.  So many easier ways to skin that cat.

The drop deck is pretty easy to engineer.  Torsion axle mounted on bearings or just a pocket that lets it rotate, and a bellcrank on it with a hydraulic piston.  Or save the weight and have the bellcrank be operated by the existing winch you already have.

The one thing I don't like about the Aussie trailer in your original post is that they have the axle pretty far forward to get the needed drop.

You could also do a sliding axle like one of those container trailers.  They use a 5hp briggs engine to make the axle slide forward which drops the tail of the flatbed to the ground.  You could use a screw drive, or repurpose an RV slide mechanism.  Yours wouldn't need to be this elaborate, and your pivot point would be the hitch ball.

If you really want to lower the back end of the trailer to load a car, make the tongue pivot. Run the tongue back almost all the way to the axle(s) and put in a big bolt it can pivot on. Up at the front of the trailer, put in a method to pin it so it stays flat. Get to where you are going, pull the pin, and lift the front of the trailer to lower the rear. You could probably even repurpose an old scissor jack for it

There are a bunch of information and even some plans you can buy for tilt trailers. Most use a simple hand pump hydraulic cylinder (like on an engine hoist) which are about $100 or less. If you built it with drop axles or torsen axles it could be low enough to not have too steep of an angle. It only takes a few more feet of steel to connect the hitch near the axle.

Here is a picture of one of these designs.

https://images.app.goo.gl/aKJXhc7CXGLG167f8

I have used a tilt trailer where the bed moved backwards to make a better angle to load, 

It was also aluminum , very nice trailer but too big for my notmal use and still pretty heavy , 

I still like the Aussie one , if anyone plans to build one like that , keep me in the loop :)

My only problem with a passive tongue-tilt trailer (like some boat trailers) is that the design means that the trailer itself has to be tail heavy.  That puts the axles pretty far forward.  That is also why I DO like tilt deck trailers.  Just the rear 2/3 or so of the deck pivots down.  You drive the car back onto the tilting part,  pull a pin, then as you continue to inch back it tilts down.  To load, as you drive on the ramp and begin to put the weight in front of the pivot, the deck snaps back down.  Then you continue to drive forward onto the fixed part of the deck.

Like this picture below, if the tongue were at the front of the tilted deck, there wouldn't be enough tongue weight.  With the rear portion of the deck being the only part that tilts, you have another 5 or so feet to keep going forward.

Not suggesting one this big, but something like this is the bee's knees.  Should be pretty easy to engineer as it is completely passive.  It just basically has a shock absorber so it doesn't slam.

mad_machine said:

If you really want to lower the back end of the trailer to load a car, make the tongue pivot. Run the tongue back almost all the way to the axle(s) and put in a big bolt it can pivot on. Up at the front of the trailer, put in a method to pin it so it stays flat. Get to where you are going, pull the pin, and lift the front of the trailer to lower the rear.

I have a little 4x8 utility trailer built this way  The pivot point is right at the axle, which is right at the center of gravity of the trailer bed so it tips up and down easily.  It works great for loading motorcycles, although I don't know how well the concept would scale up for carrying cars.

I really like that Aussie trailer too and even reached out to see if they sell in the US.

If not, I might have to build my own. 

A tilt trailer adds a lot of extra weight, almost double the weight of the front half of the trailer.   It is no problem if you don't care about weight, and certainly big trailers don't care,

but for something trying to be light, it is not a good design.     It also doesn't solve the problem of doors that can't be opened.  Let me add this is a big issue 

with a low racecar which has a rollcage, as you really need to open the door to get over the side bars.

While I have no seen it done this way, the rotating torsion axle can solve this by rotating UP also, so the deck is cleared in the UP position.

In this case, I would not have to put the wheels under the deck.     A worm-gear drive would be perfect to rotate the axle, since it could go both up and down,

and would not need any pins, or as you see with the Oz trailer, you must raise it a little to remove the load on the pins before removing them.  I can see these pins as a problem.

The beauty of the whacky front loading trailer design is it just a regular simple no-moving-parts trailer that has NO added weight or mechanisms.

With the V shape in front, I can put hinged ramps on the angled part, and them will swing down to load/unload, and then swing up once loaded,

as this area of the trailer is always clear (which is where people put tool boxes, etc)

Now I hooked up my trailer today, and reminds me how painful it is using a regular hitch and ball when on a non-smooth surface, so with that style hookup, forget it. 

I will have to try the pintle setup, but in any case, having a wireless electric scissor jack to at least make it easy to raise and lower the front would be great.

And new trailer lights, I lost one AGAIN today, and (so go ahead, call me careless).  I think I have the solution.

I'm going to use side-view mirrors from a part explorer, as they can swing front and back to get out of the way, but hold there normal position well,

just replace the glass with the lights.

While looking for a better trailer coupling (not so easy), I ran into this one, looks pretty good as they go, and very simple and cheap mechanism.

But one still needs to line up pretty close.  I recall seeing in the past there was a system that allowed the trailer part to move around so one could be offline quite and bit, but have not found it .

If you can't be careful with your lights the easiest answer is to keep a pair of the rubber housings for 4" sealed beam tractor lights and instead install the 4" sealed truck taillights.

Why not go with oval grommet mount lights instead of trying to adapt something?

Mounted in the rear beam they should be protected from damage. Markers can be done the same way with round lights  

Tutorial for cutting holes

No Time said:

Why not go with oval grommet mount lights instead of trying to adapt something?

 

Excellent suggestion.  Problem is my trailer rails are 3 inch, those lights are bigger than that,but primarily my ramps attach to the back that has an L channel, so not possible to put lights on the back of the trailer,

which also sits pretty low, so they would not be very visible.    And because it is fairly narrow, the lights need to stick out a bit, otherwise I just smash them when loading a car that isn't fully centered.

Yeah my trailer lights are always trouble.

nimblemotorsports said:

A tilt trailer adds a lot of extra weight, almost double the weight of the front half of the trailer.   It is no problem if you don't care about weight, and certainly big trailers don't care,

but for something trying to be light, it is not a good design.     It also doesn't solve the problem of doors that can't be opened.  Let me add this is a big issue 

Makes sense.  I was thinking you could possibly alter your current trailer by cutting the existing ramps and extending the front back to tie into the axle.  It wouldn't add much weight, but you're right... still doesn't solve the door issue.

As I was looking at the Aussie trailer, it occurred to me that you could do a screw drive or a winch-driven bellcrank that over-centers and sits in a pocket.  That would eliminate the issue of having to use pins.  I wish I were gooder at making animations (have no idea how), but the Aussie trailer is basically a lever (bellcrank) attached to the torsion axle  The hydraulics pull or push the lever until it lines up with pin holes.  So, let's say  it takes the torsion part of the axle and swings it up to lower the trailer.  What if you were to just make it go farther.  I'll try to illustrate.

I think this might show what I'm thinking   Put a outside-tooth gear on the axle and a worm drive to the motor and planetary set from a winch (easy way to get remote control)  Push a button and rotate the axle so that the arms point forward and it drops the deck to the ground.  Drive on (or winch on), reverse the motor and point the arms straight down for door access.  Keep going and put it in the rearward-pointing direction for travel.  I would weld a couple stops on the axle and trailer so they take the weight instead of the worm gear.

If you need to get in the car, just pop up the axle a bit.  This also solves the main drawback I saw to the Aussie trailer.... in order for the deck to drop low enough, the axle has to be too far forward for proper weight distribution.  Probably fine on a nose-heavy car, but one of the things most performance vehicles try to achieve is 50/50 weight.  Getting the axle to swing all the way forward would get the deck to the ground, swinging it all the way back would get more weight on the tongue, and the transition between gets the tires out of the way for door opening.

nimblemotorsports said:

 

No Time said:

Why not go with oval grommet mount lights instead of trying to adapt something?

 

Excellent suggestion.  Problem is my trailer rails are 3 inch, those lights are bigger than that,but primarily my ramps attach to the back that has an L channel, so not possible to put lights on the back of the trailer,

which also sits pretty low, so they would not be very visible.    And because it is fairly narrow, the lights need to stick out a bit, otherwise I just smash them when loading a car that isn't fully centered.

Yeah my trailer lights are always trouble.

I usually do not bother with permanent lights. The Magnet lights from Harbor Frieght work every well, I just make sure to secure them with a couple of cable ties incase they do come loose. The other good part is, you can move them depending on if the trailer is loaded or empty

I use the magnetic lights when I use the trailer dolly and when my normal trailer lights are broken.  I have had two or maybe even three of them fall off, so I don't trust them too much.

So I just got a backup camera to make hookup to the trailer a lot faster, no more backup, get out and check how far, rinse repeat.  btw I did try those ball things and they help, but somewhat a pain themselves.    Can't believe I did not do a backup camera before, they are like $30 now, way too cheap to not use them!

And yes swinging the axle up fixes the door opening problem, although also just using those tiny 18 tires would fix that too I think,

but just one pair is not enough, it would have to be a dual axle setup, and now you need to swing two axles, twice the expense.

I am wondering if I can just use two tires on a single axle??   I think the tow trucks do this for those dolly type things they put under cars when the wheels won't turn, dunno.

GrabCAD holds design challenges, and a few years ago there was one for lightweight trailer designs.  Might be worth a look for inspiration sake.  Obviously none of them have been built in the real world, so many of them likely wouldn't work well if actually constructed.

https://grabcad.com/challenges/lightweight-portable-trailer-challenge/entries 

In reply to nimblemotorsports :

I suspect you’ll find that most of your ideas bring with them issues of their own.  For example small tires with a trailer bed above it raises the center of gravity enough so some stability is lost in addition to difficulty with tire life and changing tires.   Plus trailer bed higher means loading/ unloading gets harder.  No ramps means trailer needs to be longer to get loaded in the event of a bad tire, broken suspension etc.  longer trailer means heavier and more expensive.  

You’ll need to decide for yourself what trade offs you are willing to accept to achieve the gains you really need.  

My second trailer I needed to be able to store it up near the ceiling of a 1 car garage.  ( only place I had space for it. That meant no fenders and remove the wheels before hoisting it up. 

In short for every good idea I had I had to solve or live with several other issues.  

some interesting ideas, but for sure, you can draw all kinds of things that won't work.  This looks good, but a trailing arm with one point of attachment?

One design I have been wanting to try myself is to build basically the same trailer I did a couple of years ago with two 18-24" wide rails 12-16' long but instead of the 7k# torsion axle and 16" tires build two custom 2-3' long axles, one for each rail, aligned to act as one. All the benefits of a single axle but with 4 tires on the ground.  Essentially two 14-16x2' trailers tied together like chariot horses, each holding half the car.

Use 2000# springs for compliance so the short axles could twist a bit over bumps and either 2500# axles with 7" brakes and 10" tires or 3500# axle parts with the 10" brakes and 12" tires depending on how heavy the car was going to be. 

Four 16' rails out of 4" channel iron plus a v tongue and some bracing is @550#(add another 75-100# for 5") plus another 100# for 2x3 angles every 16" to tie them together and 100# for 6 or 8 16' long 5/4x6 pressure treated decking boards. Springs, axles, wheels, tires, coupler, lights, and fenders are going to add 200-350# but you're still looking at a sub 1200# trailer.   

Get fancy with a couple of Honda Civic aftermarket aluminum trailing arms and a single air bag per short axle, using a long sway bar link as a panhard rod and you could probably shave a few pounds and get the ability to drop the back for a few $ more.

here is one with the small wheels and tilt , it sits nice and low

I just got a repossessed Texas roll back trailer.  It is nearly finished and seems to be pretty cool.  It is similar to the Kwik load

nimblemotorsports said:

some interesting ideas, but for sure, you can draw all kinds of things that won't work.  This looks good, but a trailing arm with one point of attachment?

 

That's how all torsion trailer axles work. (of course, not with a long piece of tubular steel like that CAD)  I'm just suggesting that instead of permanently mounting the axle like in this picture, it goes on a bearing that lets it rotate.

So I spent  half the day working on my brake lights since I needed to haul this truck body to the recycler on it.

 I used the rubber grommet ones, made a holder for them that is flexible,

so if I back into something, they will give and not break. Taped them just for good measure. 

And sure enough today I loaded up an explorer body in two parts to the recycler, and they used a forklift 

to remove it and basically tilted it over and spilled parts on top of the light and busted it.  But not actually busted it, just broke the flex mount, and I just taped it back on,

so basically good enough again.     The side-view mirror idea has merit, but was too much work for now.   It might have been broken today since vertically it is stiff.

Here is the good side,

And the taped up side fix.  Yep my trailer lights always trouble.