It has been a while since my last post however I have been very busy, until now I haven’t completed any projects. I try to keep my blog for things I finish so that I do finish them. This is the first post of three showing one of the big projects I’ve/We’ve (Wife, Dad, Mum, Odd Tradesman) have been working on over the past 3 months, the other two projects being; having my house re-clad and working hard to finish off the refurbishment of the spare room.
I bought an easy trailer folding trailer from carlex based in Melbourne, I’m pretty sure if your in the US these are the same trailers you can buy through Harbour Freight. I settled on this trailer for a few reasons:
- Firstly it’s light about 100kg (220lbs) assembled as a tabletop trailer, I have a small car so I wanted to minimize the dead weight I tow.
- Secondly the gross tare for the trailer exactly matches the max tow capacity for my car (Toyota Yaris)
- Thirdly I can fold it up and more easily push it around and store it without it taking up a huge amount of space.
I wont do a big blow by blow assembly post there are quiet a few nice U-tube videos showing assembly and folding. Overall the assembly was reasonably easy although it did take two of us about 6 hours to go from 3 box’s of parts to a finished trailer with working lights. I didn’t order a floor from carlex as I couldn’t see the point in shipping ply halfway across Australia.
Image borrowed from carlex catalog
Once the trailer was assembled and the floor was on I rolled it down to my local blue slip inspection station. I wont say it was an easy process to get the trailer blue slipped but it definitely was not as tough as getting a Custom built job engineered and then blue slipped. Small tip replace the nuts that come on your light fittings with nylocks one of mine rattled a little loose on the way to the inspection station and then they wouldn’t pass it, which meant my trailer then got trapped unregistered on the other side of my wall cladding material for 4 weeks. I suspect most people wont have the issue of having there new external wall cladding blocking the rear garden gate so it was really a non-issue :).
Once the trailer was registered I built up a wooden cage that provides approximately 95cm (just over 3 feet high) of height to make garbage hauling etc much easier, this gives me approximately 2 square meters of garbage/stuff hauling capacity. The cage itself took about 10-12 hours to build and paint. I pretty much followed the instructions available on the carlex website (available on this page) however I did make some minor changes:
- I used Aussie hardwood fence slates for the rails should be tougher and stronger, the uprights are standard structural pine.
- Added a double swing gate to the rear that meets in the middle for easier loading and unloading.
Someone else might like to add rear gates so I’ve included a few close up pictures below of how I mounted my gate. The ocy strap is just in case, but I have been unable to rattle the drop bolts apart when driving and I’ve tried hard. My gates wont fold back 270 degrees but they do go back a little more than 180. You could mount the hinges on the side and use normal square hinges for a full fold back. I decided to stick with the below configuration as the T hinges provide added support to each of the gates.
I plan on eventually having 4 configurations for my trailer:
- As a tabletop trailer for hauling plasterboard, doors and other large flat building supplies (done).
- A friend is going to use it to move his motorbike around on the odd occasion so it will also be fitted with a removable front wheel channel (to be mounted).
- As a 6×4 cage trailer for hauling rubbish or moving odd bits of furniture quickly (done).
- As a standard 6×4 with small sides (need to build or buy these)
All in all I’m very happy with my folding trailer all up costs for the kit, rego and crate are about $1000, for a 6×4 trailer which weights with crate about 135-145kg. Not the cheapest 6×4 you can buy but probably one of the more versatile and easy to store.
Sirrob01 
Looks great, very useful.
Hi,
I am looking at buying one of these trailers. Was it worth your money and time in the end – two/three years down the line?
How sturdy is it – would I be able to carry a fridge or two in a similar cage if I followed your plans (if you don’t mind)?
What exactly were your rego problems (when initially going for a blue slip)?
Thanks for the blog!
Cheers,
Johann
It’s 3 years old now, and no issues so far Johann. The initial rego problems was they wanted some wishers udner the bolts which held the hitch on. Shouldn’t have been required and might have just been my rego inspector being overly cautious. Shouldn’t have an issue with a few fridges I’ve helped a number of friends move now and done several dozen loads of rubbish to the local dump.
Hi, if anyone owns a fold-up trailer & still on this thread. Lack of recent online reviews under Australian conditions. Reviewing American online reviews, any issues with 1. the hubs being light weight design and not heavy duty. Has any owners replaced theirs with commercial grade typically used on box trailers? 2. Mudguards are light ‘flimsey’ metal, attached to the body using a poor design leading to resulting shaking, vibrating metal fatigue of guards at high speeds? Has anyone added extra L brackets to body? Cheers
Hi Trotter, sorry I dont review my comments much anymore due to time constraints. The trailer is still going strong but I do mostly light weight work, garbage runs, furniture moving, bunnings trips for ply/platerboard/lumber etc. The most weight I’ve had in it would be 700kg roughly of gravel for about 5kms. Mine also gets stored just about 100% of the time when not in use folded up in the garage so rarly exposed to the weather. My hubs/bearings are still solid I’m on the orginal set but as I mentioned I do light weight work. Well can’t comment much on the gaurds but mine are still as flimsy as day1 and holding on as solid as ever, I don’t absue them by standing on them or loading items onto them. You could add extra brackets to the body its all C-Section steel I’d probably go with corner plates bolted on the underside. Biggest Issues I’ve had – Number plate I relocated it I got tired of snagging it when backing up so its now bolted to the main rear strut. When tippering I added some rubber stops to prevent the back hitting the ground, I bought a cheap rubber mallet cut it in half and bolted those on to the rear. Last odd one the Vin plate is very light weight even being careful mine has suffered some folding and damage, I’ve just had to replace it with a new remade 3mm version – cost $80AUD so not significant. Everything else on my trailer is orginal, for light weight DIY around house work with the odd long distance trip the trailer is great but if your hobby is saying loading 3/4 ton of sand every weekend and driving it 500km’s I’d get something a little more robust, the strenght on this trailer is the ability to fold it and store it away safely when you dont need it in the dry and out of the way of prying eye’s.