Thread: Repairing a rusted out section on Hartley tilt trailer

I'll give a probably non useful answer and say if I was towing your trailer at 100 klicks an hour would you be happy sitting up my #### in your car? If the main structure supporting the springs and drawbar are that badly corroded it may not be safe at towing speed. Really need some pics to judge. We've all seen trailers on the road with see through rust and bent drawbars and really wonder what the owners are thinking. Do you think it safe on the road?
Cheers.

Andrew, for me, anything's fixable. But I don't patch, I cut out and replace. Would you patch a rusty section of your car's chassis with timber and epoxy?

This is the only significant rust on the trailer...

... that you can see.

Buildspacetrain, actually the rusted bit doesn't look that scary in terms of driving on a freeway, however the springs which I am about to replace are scary. A nicely made point though.

Yonnee, thanks for that. The epoxy bit was tongue in cheek. My primary interest is wooden boats, and I recall a saying that anything in a wooden boat can be fixed with epoxy. I wondered whether it extended to other things in life! (but I suppose that body filler is basically like an epoxy, so, if you had a rusted out dent in a car, you would probably de-rust it, bog it, and sand it, rather than weld in a new piece.......other than on a chassis.

So, does one cut out just the rusted section from the C channel, and weld in a patch, or do I get a section of C channel cut out, and a newey welded in?

And yes, I'm sure that there is other rust. I'll try to find my camera, with the photos on it - hoping it's lurking in wife's handbag.

Hi,,,when cutting out rust YOU replace it with steel..
I would replace hole rail or rails.
do it right get someone to check it out.
I am in to boats seen a lot of bad trailers......
Yes wood can be strong for boats,
Hydros doing 150 MPH are made of wood and epoxy.
But not trailers .
Tony
PS need some pics.

Remember if this trailer falls to bits on the road and takes someone out, some smartar## lawyer will take you to task. Its really not worth cutting corners.Besides if people continue to run seriously crappy trailers on the roads the govt hobknobs will simply make it harder for a backyarder to build/repair one, even if they do the right thing. I'm talking engineers reports, over the pits inspections etc... we dont want this.Jatt