Esteban wrote:Links to 4ft. x 8ft. and 5ft. x 8ft. trailers sold by
Harbor Freight and
Northern Tool with current 09/30/2018 prices ...
Thanks for the links to both sites, Esteban!
I had dropped off the site for the past year due to family and professional obligations, but I'm back now, and have resumed active planning and building of my ridiculous Corto/Mod-u-Foam modular teardrop design that I hope will be possible to expand from a 4 x 4 x 8 foot HxWxL configuration to upwards of 4 x 8 x 16 feet, via fabrication of expansion panels and extending the frame over time.
It's amazingly serendipitous that I happened to even just look at the TNTTT site Monday, and be further surprised that HF trailers have returned from Tierrrrrra del Muerte, aka The Land of the Dead ... and just in time for Halloween. Being in central Montana, I'm 731 miles from the "closest" NT, but only 1.5 hours, 2.5 hours, 3.5 hours, and 4.5 hours from the four nearest HF locations (and we're supposed to get a HF within 30 minutes of home sometime in the next year, or so).
I've had very good luck with several HF trailers over the years, and the proximity of the stores (and hence avoiding very expensive shipping, or free shipping of very expensive trailers) means that I'll be trying to acquire a new HF trailer kit for this build. I had returned the new kit I bought in the middle of the Summer of 2017 because of the aforementioned family/job obligations, not knowing at the time when I'd be able to resume building. More importantly, I wasn't aware that there had been serious issues with the more recent HF tires, so the delay was apparently all for the best.
The stores here will hold a trailer for a day, or so, and since I'm going to be buying the heavier-duty 1,720 lb model, it should be more readily available due to lower demand, given its higher price tag. It's never been possible to order a HF trailer for pickup at the stores here, so, timing will depend on when there's one in stock in the direction of a HF store I need to be going anyway. I had a similar happy circumstance as the reappearance of the HF trailers when I had a hitch put on my van - it turned out that the leaf springs had to be unbolted from the unibody, but the local place (within the company that does more hitch installations each year than anyone else in the country) only had a ramp and no lift or jackstands. So, they couldn't drop the rear axle to take the weight off the springs while also keeping the vehicle off the ground.
I had sat around for over an hour-and-a-half waiting (but, was able to work on-line) while they did the hitch electrical work, and started figuring out how the hitch was actually supposed to be attached to the vehicle. They apologized profusely and sent me on my way for only the cost of the hitch, with no charge for the wiring and time spent realizing they couldn't complete the hitch installation. I took the hitch and vehicle to the local real ironworks place that does a lot of custom suspension, trailer, and hitch fabrication and installation work. It only cost $80 to have them pop the vehicle up on jackstands, drop the axle and leaf springs, position the hitch attachment points between where the bolts passed through the springs and unibody hard points, and reassemble everything, all in less than 30 minutes. The entire evolution for wiring, hardware, and installation cost me about $100 less than just the price for the exact same hitch at the Irish-descent national chain auto parts store! Let's just say that I'm a very happy camper ... and I don't even have a trailer in which to camp ... yet!
I wanted to get that hitch installed and wired before the weather turned cold, and sure enough, it snowed a trace around the house this weekend. I'll be doing my modular panel fabrication and trailer assembly inside over the next few months, and I'll get to take the assembled trailer kit out for a shakedown cruise in a few weeks. I'll be picking up the rest of the blue insulating foam sheets, PLAS-TEX PolyWall panels, corner reinforcements, and bolts/nuts/washers I'll need for the initial modular configurations of the Corto/Mod-u-Foam build. Then, I'll be hauling them home wrapped in tarps and strapped to the new trailer, along with some things from our Winter-holiday/Summer cabin that we won't need there over the Winter.
It's nice to be back in the saddle, or at least thinking about how the saddle is going to be fabricated and assembled, again. I could barely sleep Sunday night until I drifted off with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head ... where sugar plums were actually Mod-u-Foam configurations, of course. I also need to see what the rest of you have been up to during the past year, especially the Foamers among us.
All the Best,
Jim
by JuneBug » Thu Sep 27, 2018 6:23 am 
