The trailer project, Pt 1

If you live 2+ hours away from the nearest track, chances are you're going to need a trailer. The local Trackday Junkies I know use their trucks to haul their bikes and didn't have room for mine. So I was in the market for a trailer. One of my neighbors was selling a folding utility trailer (like the Harbor Freight ones, but different brand). I checked it out and lowballed him due to the grumbly bearings and old tires.

He accepted and I had a trailer. One side had lost its grease while driving (you could see streaks of grease on the wheel, negotiating point). The other seemed fairly intact. The good side came apart with a few whacks from a mallet, save for a bearing getting stuck on the spindle. On the other side things where stuck and fused and horrible. At first I tried with the mallet and a screwdriver to free the hub assembly from the spindle. I ruined the screwdriver and broke one of the bearings inside the hub (thus making it more difficult to remove).

Then I bought a hammer and chisel, that got it part way off (and got the stuck stuff off the good side). Then I got a bigger hammer, a smaller chisel, a hacksaw, and rented a slide hammer puller from Autozone. With the bigger hammer I succeeded in breaking the bearings inside the hub and getting the hub off. The bad part was, the races stayed in the hub and on the spindle. One race I got out with a punch and some hammering, the other was stuck in the hub because I'd marred the metal on the outside of the hub with a chisel (d'oh!).

Some time with a dremel tool fixed that, and I was able to pull that race with the slide hammer. The last
hurdle was a race stuck on the spindle. Boy was it stuck. I tried to chisel it off and only succeeded in breaking parts of it. Out came the hacksaw and carbide blade. I cut into the edge of the bearing (and part of the spindle), then beat the big chisel with the big hammer into it until their was a gap between the race and the spindle, to fit the punch into. From there it was a few whacks with a hammer and punch and it was off. 

Total dis-assembly time, including running to home depot, autozone, and napa, somewhere around 4 hours. Why didn't I just get new spindles? The old ones were welded in. Also I'm a cheapass, and the whole point was that I got this trailer for cheap. It'd defeat the purpose of a project trailer if I spent more on it, than I would have on a new fancy trailer. Tools purchased for this: 12oz hammer 4lbs hammer big chisel small chisel punch hacksaw, carbide blade slide hammer (rented) How I SHOULD have freed up the stuck bits was heat up the whole shebang with a blowtorch, then beat it off with a big hammer and block of wood.

Unfortunately I didn't as the right questions, and broke things, and did things the hard/wrong way. Thats half the point of a project anyways, to learn something, right? Next up, pack the bearings, assemble the hubs, and hope I didn't damage the spindles too much! Maybe it'll be ready for my trackday in three days and a wakeup, but probably not.