Fixing a Trailer

Last night Dad and I were trying to remember when exactly he bought his trailer. We’re thinking it was in late 2001, but we’re not 100% sure. Dad bought the trailer to haul a car back from up Indiana, but the first thing I used the trailer for was (surprise) moving some arcade games. In July of 2002 I bought three machines (Bucky O’Hare, Shinobi, and a dart machine) from a local auction. That’s the first time I remember using the trailer, and the oldest pictures I can find of it.

We’ve definitely got some use out of the trailer. I hauled jukeboxes back from Hutchison, Kansas on it, and have taken it down to the arcade SuperAuction events in Mesquite, Texas multiple times. It has hauled three or four cars, a couple of motorcycles, two golf carts, and every Thanksgiving, no matter how cold, Papa gives everybody a ride around the neighborhood on it.

Unfortunately over the past few years, the wooden floor rotted. Two years ago in an attempt to squeeze a few more years out of the trailer, Mason and I laid down a layer of particle wood on top of the original wood. The second layer served its purpose and bought us a couple more years, but now that wood is rotten too. With the impending move, a trailer is invaluable. Over the weekend, Andy, Jeff and I fixed the trailer.

The first step of the process was to remove the old wood. We had several plans in place, many of them involving saws, and at least one of which involving a can of gasoline and some matches.

Surprisingly what we discovered was, because the wood was so rotten, we were able to pull up about 75% of it with our bare bands. Here you can see Andy (on the left) “persuading” the other 25% to come loose with some sort of medieval weapon. That’s one cool thing about firefighters. They always have some neat tool of destruction within arm’s reach.

At some point during this process, Jeff ripped his knee open on a piece of metal. This was actually a good thing, since we have long determined that a project isn’t officially underway until someone makes a blood sacrifice, so this injury let us know we were on the right track.

As the wood was coming off I remembered seeing a golf ball out in the field. We quickly determined that the remaining screws in the trailer made for pretty good make-shift golf tees. If you ever want to know why our 2-hour projects tend to take two to three times that long, now you know.

I’ve only been golfing with Andy twice. This was the other time.

With all the wood removed, Jeff and I made a trip over to Lowe’s. Jeff helped me pick out and load all the wood and hardware we needed. Ironically, we used the now wood-less trailer to haul the wood back to where we were working on the trailer in order to put the wood on the trailer. We went with 2x12x16 planks of wood; we bought 7, one of which had to be cut down to fit. To get them into the deck, Andy used a grinder to remove the metal lip that holds the planks in place.

I took like five pictures of this. Any photograph that includes sparks is instantly awesome.

With the wood temporarily in place, the next step was to drill new holes for the carriage bolts. This was the longest part of the process, as some of drill bits weren’t long enough to go through both the metal and the wood, some of them dulled over time, and some of them broke. We only had to make two trips to Lowe’s, which is pretty good for one of our projects.

By the end, this is pretty much what it looked like. Once the holes were drilled, Jeff and I took turns lying on our backs on the concrete, tightening nuts. We tried a pneumatic wrench for a while, then moved to a ratchet, and eventually a good ol’ box wrench. Sometimes the simplest solution works the best.

Thanks to Andy and Jeff’s hard work (and a little bit from me), the trailer is as good as new and ready to take on the challenge of moving all my worldly possessions. I was starting to wonder how I was going to move everything from the old place to the new, and having the trailer repaired really takes a weight off of me. Thanks again, guys!