A buddy of mine is thinking of building a small trailer over the winter to pull behind his 31 coupe. He just wants to use it when they go on longer trips too haul some extra luggage,cooler and a spare tire. I was thinking a small one designed for motorcycles painted up nice with some chrome wheels shouldn't look too bad?
For a DIY project 14 or 15" tires will work the best. They are kinder to the bearings and plus because of the larger diameter they absorb the heat better. So also less tire failure.
If your friend is into making stuff, a solid rear axle out of a front wheel drive car is a great starting point with much better bearings than most cheapie trailers sold at hardware stroes. Many of them are dropped for lower floorpans. Good luck
I agree ,15" does trailer better . I have 15 ' on my trailer and never a problem . You can get the white painted ones or the cheaper un painted one . You can repaint to match you ride or get chrome ones . Those are perfect tag a logs ! Also remember to buy a $40 spare !!
He already has a set of Torflex axles and 15" rims and tires so I think they should work good. You can clock them to get the right ride height.
You don't clock a Torflex axle. You have to have them built in the proper degree up or down that you want. You can get them in 45, 22.5, 10 degrees down, 0 degrees. Or even 10 and 22.5 degrees up trailing which will lower the trailer the most.
I was actually looking to build a trailer to tow my '29 HD behind my '29 A coupe. I was thinking of using a complete A front end (wishbone, axle, and the stock 21" wheels to match the coupe{yes, the coupes an old stocker}). The bones would point forward to the hitch and a single rail would run down the center for the bike. My planning hit a dead end when I couldnt really find a great way to put a hitch on the coupe. Do you know how your friend is setting that up?
Always thought it would be cool to make one out of two wheel barrows, one on top and bottom, a flat flange welded around it to seal and a piano hinge on the back.
He just built a removable hitch that bolts too the frame. He set it up for a 1 1/4" slip in style hitch.I will get some pics.
i've been kicking the idea of a baby tear drop trailer..with slide up and down sheets of plastic incorporated into the sides to enable it to be a pop top..take up less space then canvas would..do it the same width and height as my topolino...i'm 5'6"..so it could be long enough to sleep in....i want to hit some long distance cruises with the Lil Beast...and i love camping so...hopefully this summer????????? hopefully........
The Hercules trailers from about 20 years ago work really well behind a Model A. I haven't towed mine in a few years, but it is big enough to hold a bunch of stuff, looks good, and tows well. It might be hard finding someone willing to let theirs go.
You can. It's just not real practical in most cases unless you are willing to modify the mounting brackets. I will agree that getting the right axle to start with is better. I bought a teardrop a few years ago. It had a torsion axle, but it bounced a lot on the way home. When I crawled under it at home I found the builder had mounted it so the swing arm was pointed straight up...no wonder it bounced... Charlie
The Model A frame rear is a tough SOB to something like that with. Up the ante? How do you build a strong enough hitch on the rear of the frame and make into a disappearing receiver for when your not dragging the trailer, and also to keep away from the Hem look at the rear of a hiboy 29 tudor with a stock frame? Tmac, you have the start of a good idea! With a Model A, it's gonna take more thinking for the car end than the trailer end. jcs64 has injected some good ideas too. If coilovers can be part of it, motorcycle stuff could be part of the deal. I've had this in mind for a while, but I don't have an answer for car modifications that won't look wrong.
Is the scale of this trailer such that a 20s/30s pickup box could be shortened/widened/whatever to use as the cargo container?
Plymouth had a neat little trailer designed to be towed behind the Prowler. I actually liked it better than the car itself because it didn't have the ****-ugly bumpers.
I have seen enough bumper mounted hitches on Model As to know that there were aftermarket bumper hitches made for them.I have a friend here who has been dealing in Model As and parts for more than 50 years and he's had several of the exact same hitch show up on As to sell them at swap meets as "aftermarket A hitches "These are 2 plates that clamp around the A bumper.each plate is a z sort of, There is a small lip on top that fits over the bumper the lower lip about 2 inches wide faces away from the bumper one to the front of the car and one to the rear. The tongue of the hitch bolts to 1 lower lip with a U bolt around it and is welded to the second lip.The tongue is right up against the bumper bottom so the whole hitch locks around the bumper the 2 halves bolt together with bolts going between the bumper leaves.I have no experience with these at all just seen a few on some old As.I have also seen ones that bolt under the spring as a lower spring plate as well as ones that bolted between A split rear bumpers
When I had my t-bucket, I built this "cool" luggage trailer to pull behind it. I gutted an old 50's era round-top refrigerator and stuck it on a home-built frame. It worked great and got lots of looks.
I built a teardrop trailer 2 yrs ago for a guy that pulled it behind his 39 chevy. It may be too big for what you want but he camped in it when he went to shows. I built it on a 4X8 trailer with 15 in wheels. Easy to do if you can work with wood.
i am building a matching trailer to pull behind my model a rpu out of a extra model a box i have , a 40 ford rear end with the torque tube for the hitch with rear bones still on , with early wire wheels and white walls ! trying to figure out how to make it fold open into a pop up camper ?
Thats usually what happens when you do welding on this type of axle. With the amount of heat generated by welding on the tubes you melt the rubber thats inside which is the "torsioning" for the axle.
My point was that the guy redid the brackets and mounted the arms pointing straight up. The rubber seems to be fine in them but they were just stubs - not connected to each other - so I didn't attempt to use them over. Not trying entertain an argument over whether they can be welded on or not. Charlie
No not trying to start anything either. Just wanting to point out to others that you DO NOT want to weld in these axle because of how they are designed.
I've always found the Mullins Red Cap Trailer to be the best size for most any excursion. We've towed our Mullins, an old VWT reproduction, behind the T Roadster, the Track Car, and the family Saturn to campgrounds, fairgrounds, swapmeets, rodruns. It holds a world of stuff, is easy pulling, easy to manuever by hand(especially after adding a little front wheel), watertight and stylish as any old car trailer can be since they were designed in the mid-30s. I've also got an old 1947 Kit Trailer, aluminum teardrop, waiting to be redone. It's much larger(4X8) and heavier than the Mullins but can be slept in and cooked in too!
Take a look at www.inline trailers. Designed for a motorcycle and not a lot of capacity, but really different.
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