Off Road Trailer, Designing one that's usable

Looking good Mr.mod. Should be a beefy trailer for Haspin!

Thanks guys. I agree about the long pin hitting stuff. My plan was to put the pin in from the bottom and have it held in with a J clip. That way it would be short and also the pin wouldn't get knocked out. A normal trailer type hitch would be cool, but only my tractor could pull it then. This way any tractor could pull it.

Today I finally finished the trailer except for paint


Nerf bars so you don't snag a tree. The ammo box ended up a little sideways but that's how a lot of my builds are lol.


Water tight tool box to hold ratchet straps and tools. Place for tie down hooks mid way down the trailer. Or you can also loop around the frame anywhere.


Storage space is 2' 2" long by 1' 6.5" wide. Sounds like a small space, but if you pack the stuff in you can hold quite a bit
Here with a simulated load. Obviously, a smaller saw would be good if you wanted to haul much wood on the return trip.


And here loaded for an extremely long cross country trip. 7 extra gallons of fuel and supplies lol.




Vice on the back in case you need to make some serious repairs. Anyway, all I have to do now is paint it. This week as soon
as i get a good day that's not raining I'll do it. After paint the tool box has to be bolted on. Holes are drilled. Just have to paint the box separate.

Very nice!  I like what you got going on there.  What are your plans for those triangulated pieces off the front in front of the tires?  Fenders?

Super cool mr.mod! I really dig the nerf bars at the front, makes sense that you wouldn't want your wheels getting caught on stuff and what not.

Thanks a lot. The triangle structure is just to guide the trailer around trees or other obstacles so they don't snap a spindle off or do any other damage...hopefully. On this trailer I won't be putting on any fenders, at least not now. But if and when I build the enclosed box trailer, I have cup cadet rear fenders that I'll use. They're squared off somewhat and I think they would look pretty cool. Guess we'll see how the small wheels work off road.

Good Idea!

dose the trailer have more ground clearence then the sears?

Nice! Seems to hold a good amount of stuff. With the vice thing, some WW2 army lorries had a vice bolted to the front bumper in case you needed to do some emergency repairs.

Have you thought about building some kind of chain saw scabbard on the side that would hold the saw by the bar leaving the trailer more open for wood?

Looks like a good amount of stuff! I'd bring a jump box, too.

I had to check ground clearance, looks like the skid plate under the transaxle on the simplicity is about 8" and the trailer axle is about the same.

A thing to hold a chainsaw off to the side is a good idea, might do something like that when I get time after haspin.

As for the vice, I always thought it was cool having a vice bolted onto the back of a truck. Some power company trucks around here do that too. Bit heavy but looks cool.

I'll probably bring some light jumper cables with me. Just in case someone else has problems. The simplicity is pull start only so it wouldn't help me too much lol.

Trailer with a rough spray job. Started to rain so there's still some places I need to touch up.
It'll be getting banged around anyway so not a big deal as long as it's covered.

I saw a teaser of that paint job in your simplicity video. Looks like it's all ready for Haspin.

Hope the old dry tires hold together lol. They're not horrible so they should be ok. I'll try to get some video of the trailer in action when I'm out there.

Just be careful not to jackknife rolling backward down a hill!

@MightyRaze wrote:

Just be careful not to jackknife rolling backward down a hill!

If I had a nickel for every time I've done that....

Off road trailer testing at Haspin went well, the trailer held up great!
I made sure not to baby it and I tried to be as tough on it as possible to
give it a good test and find any issues that I could.


Got to Haspin on tuesday night, wednesday morning I went with Doug for a firewood run.
Hauled back a decent amount of wood.


Made a couple wood runs with it and also took it out on a few of our normal rides with everyone just to test it
out and see how much it would affect the simplicity in various off road situations. Here one slight issue is
going through ditches. In extreme cases the hitch will be at the limit of travel and bind up. In fact both the trailer and simplicity
hitch bent very slightly from one tough spot, but almost not enough to notice. In this pic it is close to or at the limit.
Craftsmanquad suggested making a type of U-joint setup built into the hitch which would allow more travel but also
still have the normal style tractor hitch so any tractor could pull it without having special modifications.


Another issue was forgetting to get the ratchet strap out of the tool box before piling wood over the lid...
So here you see the strap hooked across the trailer to prevent that from happening again. The trailer's small
size means the load is usually hanging over the ends, but I believe it's a serious advantage off road.


Being so short and tucked in behind the simplicity, I didn't have issues with snagging trees or hitting objects like I
thought I would. I don't think the nerf bars even got a scratch.


A couple rides it was nice to have it along just for the tool box. The simplicity needs it's own box attached but the
extra space was nice. The trailer didn't seem to slow me down off road that much, at least not empty. I banged through
stream beds and jumped over some logs with it too. I didn't notice anything getting bent at all. You can pretty much just
hook it up and forget that it's there. Even at high speed over rough ground, I looked back and it doesn't hop all over like
you would expect. I think that's also due to it being so short and close to the simplicity. It doesn't have much tendency
to wag back and forth. A recent check of the simplicity on the road indicates a top speed of around 20 mph, so we can
assume I was going from 18-20 with the trailer on the dirt road in high gear on a down hill.


The real durability test was when CraftsmanQuad's machine got a rear flat tire. Various options for getting it back were discussed
before we decided to get the trailer and see if we could tow it back that way.  


We set the back end of the tractor over the trailer with the rear wheels resting on the trailer's nerf bars. Then a ratchet strap
held it firmly in place for the ride back. He rode on the seat to hold the steering wheel straight, so it had a decent load on it.


It was a slow trip back uphill with the simplicity's low horsepower and also experiencing a slight throttle cable issue which
limited power even more, but it made it. I would say the testing was successful and building a more high tech version would
be worth while. Now to think about things like lighting, brakes, suspension, or having a possible passenger from a broken
down machine. Also, weight will be more important to pay attention to if I'm building an enclosed box rather than an open
skeleton trailer.

Cool, looks like it stood up well. I like the orange Simplicity helmet

Looks like a solid little unit.  The tow test was probably the ultimate test for it.

I was very surprised with how useful such a small trailer was. I’m sorry I was out on a ride when you guys left or I woulda said bye lol. It was really cool to meet you and your dad and be able to bounce some ideas around in person

Thanks. The orange simplicity helmet turned out decent, I had to trace and hand paint the S which was a bit of a pain but worked out.

No problem about being out on a run, we kinda decided all of a sudden to head out that night to get packed up before any rain came in. Drove part way back and stopped at a motel, then went the rest of the way. Broke it up a bit.

I ended up leaving the trailer with Doug, so at some point I'll have to get it back from his house.

Looks like the build design worked well. I might copy the idea of using a stock axle as the trailer axle.

This trailer proved more than useful.  The open design keeps large amounts of mud from building up on it.  Seeing it used to tow another tractor is pretty cool.  It's kinda like a towable car dolly.

Yeah worked out decent enough. For my enclosed off road trailer, I worry about the simplicity having enough brakes for it on steep hills. I think the trailer needs it's own brakes. This wood trailer was light enough empty to not be an issue, but I think with a loaded trailer it might be tough.

I could have surge brakes where the trailer pushing against the hitch activates them somewhat as needed, or somehow connect brakes to the brake handle on the simplicity when you hitch it up. That would require a quick disconnect, maybe just some sort of clip or hook and have it cable operated. Maybe have a spring adjustment or something?

Then comes the question of what kind of brakes. I was thinking I could do a solid axle and have keyed hubs, then just run a single brake. Either a band or disk. I could have better ground clearance if I had separate brakes without the axle running across between the wheels.

I'd go with a live axle with a band brake because you already do a good job of many those for cheap.  Although I like the disc better because it could cut through the mud and the caliper could be mounted on top of the axle to prevent it from getting damaged by rocks or stumps.  Semi tractors have a trailer brake handle on the steering column.  Maybe you could rig up something that's held on with wing bolts so you could easily take it on and off.  It might be awkward to use though especially in an emergency situation.

Engine braking isn’t enough?