Busy Saturday
Mar. 11th, 2023 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickThere are a surprising number of folks up this weekend. It's a kind of raw, gray, March weekend that isn't the start of Spring Gobbler (End of April) or a holiday weekend like Easter (April 9 this year) so I don't know what is up with that. Oh well.
This morning, Trys and I went over to pick up the 3 horse slant gooseneck trailer that I bought on Monday after work. Because I am poor and it was affordable ($4600, it's a 2002 same as my truck), said horse trailer has...
FUNCTIONAL DOORS, LATCHES, AND HINGES
ROOF THAT DOES NOT APPEAR TO LEAK
A SOLID FLOOR
GOOD METAL SUPPORTING SAID FLOOR
BRAKES ON BOTH AXLES
A GOOD PA TITLE
A VALID LICENSE PLATE
and also...
two rusted out running boards that will need to be repaired
some body rust, nothing structural, urgent, or critical
plywood interior wall casings where I would prefer non-wood
no functional lights
no brake functionality
uncertain breakaway functionality
one somewhat rusted divider (two dividers total, other one OK)
So, obviously, I did not want to drive this trailer home over the Turnpike in the dark on a weeknight. Like, that's just ASKING for the notice of the police. Also, in the dark you can 100% tell that the lights don't work in just a casual glance at the trailer and it's a VERY BIG safety issue anyway. Probably don't drive your "no lights, no brakes" horse trailer on the turnpike IN THE DARK, dumbass.
Now, you CAN tow a 3 horse gooseneck slant with no brakes down the turnpike with a suitably beefy tow vehicle. Like, don't be an asshole about your driving and take your deccelerations gently and stuff, but you are not RISKING DYING doing this. It's pretty OK if you drive gently which you should be doing anyway and have a suitably beefy tow vehicle for the size of the trailer. I have an F250 diesel automatic rated for 12,500 of towing. The horse trailer weighs (empty) 3750 lbs according to the plate on it. This is not a situation where the trailer is going to wag the dog with the tow vehicle.
Also, we towed a had-no-brakes gooseneck stock trailer loaded with five or six smallish horses over the local countryside in the 90's and 2000's. These days we have trailers with WORKING BRAKES but, y'know, having done the "no trailer brakes" thing for a span of twenty years, I know whereof I speak on the "you can tow a gooseneck horse trailer, especially an unloaded one, without brakes and not kill anyone" front.
You can also tow a 3 horse slant without functional lights down the turnpike. It's not... legal, but it's possible to get away with IF you drive gently and don't cut people off and be very sure to check behind you so that people don't get surprised by you doing things without taillights. I mean, yeah, the police will ticket the shit out of you if they catch you, but they first have to catch you. If you're tooling along AT THE SPEED LIMIT in the slow lane, letting other people pass you, and you have NO REASON to be displaying brake lights or turn signals... how are they GOING TO KNOW that you don't have them? Hrm? Anyway, in the event that you're pursuing any of this idiotic behavior, best do this sort of thing on a relatively uninspiring Saturday morning WHEN IT IS LIGHT OUT and WITH a valid tag and insurance and WHILE obeying the speed limit like it's a religion.
Trailer tows beautifully, btw, rolls down the road at 70 mph straight as an arrow with zero sway. Aces. Means I don't have to buy any axles. :)
I dropped it off with Ted (Trys's dad) so that he and Matt (Trys's husband) and Adam (Matt's best friend, welds for a living) can get the trailer some lights and some fixed running boards and do a first pass on the brakes situation. Whatever they can't fix this go-round will get looked at up at Bowser's (the official trailer place) who can also inspect it for me, check out the breakaway, etc, so that it's for-real legal.
I'm not *done* spending money, but I'm mostly-done spending money and after I get lights and brakes and running boards, the rest of it can be done as add-a-bead projects when I have the ready money to do them. So we shall see. :)
This morning, Trys and I went over to pick up the 3 horse slant gooseneck trailer that I bought on Monday after work. Because I am poor and it was affordable ($4600, it's a 2002 same as my truck), said horse trailer has...
FUNCTIONAL DOORS, LATCHES, AND HINGES
ROOF THAT DOES NOT APPEAR TO LEAK
A SOLID FLOOR
GOOD METAL SUPPORTING SAID FLOOR
BRAKES ON BOTH AXLES
A GOOD PA TITLE
A VALID LICENSE PLATE
and also...
two rusted out running boards that will need to be repaired
some body rust, nothing structural, urgent, or critical
plywood interior wall casings where I would prefer non-wood
no functional lights
no brake functionality
uncertain breakaway functionality
one somewhat rusted divider (two dividers total, other one OK)
So, obviously, I did not want to drive this trailer home over the Turnpike in the dark on a weeknight. Like, that's just ASKING for the notice of the police. Also, in the dark you can 100% tell that the lights don't work in just a casual glance at the trailer and it's a VERY BIG safety issue anyway. Probably don't drive your "no lights, no brakes" horse trailer on the turnpike IN THE DARK, dumbass.
Now, you CAN tow a 3 horse gooseneck slant with no brakes down the turnpike with a suitably beefy tow vehicle. Like, don't be an asshole about your driving and take your deccelerations gently and stuff, but you are not RISKING DYING doing this. It's pretty OK if you drive gently which you should be doing anyway and have a suitably beefy tow vehicle for the size of the trailer. I have an F250 diesel automatic rated for 12,500 of towing. The horse trailer weighs (empty) 3750 lbs according to the plate on it. This is not a situation where the trailer is going to wag the dog with the tow vehicle.
Also, we towed a had-no-brakes gooseneck stock trailer loaded with five or six smallish horses over the local countryside in the 90's and 2000's. These days we have trailers with WORKING BRAKES but, y'know, having done the "no trailer brakes" thing for a span of twenty years, I know whereof I speak on the "you can tow a gooseneck horse trailer, especially an unloaded one, without brakes and not kill anyone" front.
You can also tow a 3 horse slant without functional lights down the turnpike. It's not... legal, but it's possible to get away with IF you drive gently and don't cut people off and be very sure to check behind you so that people don't get surprised by you doing things without taillights. I mean, yeah, the police will ticket the shit out of you if they catch you, but they first have to catch you. If you're tooling along AT THE SPEED LIMIT in the slow lane, letting other people pass you, and you have NO REASON to be displaying brake lights or turn signals... how are they GOING TO KNOW that you don't have them? Hrm? Anyway, in the event that you're pursuing any of this idiotic behavior, best do this sort of thing on a relatively uninspiring Saturday morning WHEN IT IS LIGHT OUT and WITH a valid tag and insurance and WHILE obeying the speed limit like it's a religion.
Trailer tows beautifully, btw, rolls down the road at 70 mph straight as an arrow with zero sway. Aces. Means I don't have to buy any axles. :)
I dropped it off with Ted (Trys's dad) so that he and Matt (Trys's husband) and Adam (Matt's best friend, welds for a living) can get the trailer some lights and some fixed running boards and do a first pass on the brakes situation. Whatever they can't fix this go-round will get looked at up at Bowser's (the official trailer place) who can also inspect it for me, check out the breakaway, etc, so that it's for-real legal.
I'm not *done* spending money, but I'm mostly-done spending money and after I get lights and brakes and running boards, the rest of it can be done as add-a-bead projects when I have the ready money to do them. So we shall see. :)
no subject
Date: 2023-03-12 11:32 am (UTC)I picked up a brand new trailer for a friend the other day and the guys at the trailer place hooked it up and I double checked everything before I left. But I went to unhook it, I realized somehow they had looped the e brake wire through the truck part where you put the chains, through it's own loop and hooked it into the box. I think the pin had been pulled while it was stored, so they just put the pin back in, but looped through. So it was stuck on the truck! Thankfully I had wire cutters but now I need to get a new e brake wire for the brand new trailer of my friend's that I'm storing at my house for now. Silly stuff.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-12 12:17 pm (UTC)Did I need a three horse slant? Well, no. At most I personally have two horses. But gooseneck trailers back a lot better than bumper pulls. They ride better down the road, smoother and less... bouncy? I have a gooseneck hitch on my tow vehicle anyway, so that was not something I had to buy. And anything in the "good bones" aisle would cost me about 5K and still need stuff like lights and brakes, so might as well get what I want.
The longer term stuff (some cosmetic, some nonstructural welding projects) will be portioned out over time during the next few years, until I get it up to snuff all the way 'round. Also on the slate for add-a-bead projects is a corner kit for my tow vehicle cab. (The bottom rear corners of the cab rust out on F-250s. It's common enough that they make a kit to repair this issue.) That's a bigger priority than cosmetic stuff on the horse trailer.
The e-brake wires cables are, happily, not super-expensive. I think they get... accidentally deployed or accidentally destroyed along life's highway far more frequently than they get used in the event of an actual emergency, but still, they're a good thing to have.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-12 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-14 09:16 am (UTC)