My trailer is a fairweather friend

I think I over did using my trailer by one day this year.

I have a smallish 5X10 flat bed trailer that I use to to move things around with. It's a road trailer, single axle and it's rated for 3800 plus 800 on the tongue. It's not big enough to move my tractor with. But it can haul about 5 yards of horse manure, maybe seven yards of wood chips. It can hold as much as I want to haul with my two wheel drive 92 GMC van.

I have been making regular runs to a horse farm about ten miles away, building up a serious pile of poo. I figured I was about done with manure for the year, but I wanted to do one more run. I wanted to cover up the goat manure I got a week ago and I wanted to make one more dent in the horse farm's pile. It's good for them, saves renting a truck or paying for hauling to get rid of it. And it's good for us, we need a lot of organic material to incorporate into our silt and sand soil.

I have been pretty spoiled with the weather. Fifties into December. Over the weekend, we just had our first snow that really stuck. I intentionally waited a couple of days to be sure the roads would be clear. When I spoke to the horse farm this morning he threw in an aside, be carfully of the downhills, there might be some ice... But it was just an aside. I figured he meant some drainage water had frozen over night.

When I got there, the farm driveway looked fine, wet gravel. It winds in, mostly down hill, until the end, where there is a little rise. But as soon as we got onto the north side of the hill, it was all solid snow packed into ice. And somehow I didn't have enough momentum at the end and I started spining short of the top. And with the trailer, there was no faking it by hitting the gas and hoping you dig in. The problem got trickier, not only could I not get up the hill, I couldn't hold where I was, I started sliding backwards. Behind me, there was a pond on the north side and a ravine on the south. The road was basically a dam that formed the pond. And I had a choice of brakes or stearing. Pretty soon, I had the trailer jacknifed and was headed for the ravine. A distinctly unpleasant prospect. In retrospect, the trailer saved me, as the ravine only got steeper. The trailer draging like that is what brought me to a stop. And even if I had manged to make it into the farm without event, I never would have made it out. The hill is twice as long and high going out.

I bent the step bumper and tweeked the bumper hitch pretty good. Other than that, I think my pride is the only thing that really suffered. Getting pulled out of the ditch is embarassing. But I stilled managed to get two loads of manure home, about 10 yards. And my pile is now full. No more manure runs till dry weather in the spring.

Sung to the tune of Grandmas Feather bed

"Oh, It was 8 feet wide and fifteen long

Sleek as a big ol' brick

Made from the steel of four dump trucks

Took a whole pitt crew to make her tick

We didn't get very far

But we had a lot of fun

In the back of CJs chevy van"

I have to apologize to Bruce King. I recently dismissed his vehicle troubles saying I had never had a starter go completely bad on me. It wasn't fair, as it's not like I have never had one fail to operate and I have replaced enough so I have a small cache of them in the barn. Instead, it is more accurate that I have been foolish enough to run them longer than I should by keeping a hammer handy but still managed to always replaced them before I got completely stranded without tools.

In retribution for my flippant remarks, I had to replace one I could not revive. And to be sure I learned my lesson, I had to replace this one twice as I foolishly replaced it with one from the barn first. I should know better than to try to reuse a starter. Of any component, starters suffer more than most from inactivity and degrade quickly on a vehicle or not.

Bruce, my apologies.

A brown van will haul a ton of poop

My ugly brown $450 van brought home another load of manure. This is a load of horse manure, a mix of horse apples and sawdust. I don't have much of an estimate but am pretty sure it is in excess of 3000 lbs of material. For Jeff, we'll just round it off to a ton of poop.



Last year I got a five by ten flatbed trailer from a friend. It has stake rack sides, about 36 inches tall. I can hold about five and a half yards if I can handle the weight. That's a lot of poop to pitch by hand, though. Last fall I built a pair of bins on pallets so I could lift the poop out of the trailer with the forks on my tractor. The bins are about 5 x 5 and four feet high. The bins do make unloading the trailer lot easier. But with bins that large, it's not hard to over load the tractor. It's not so much the actual weight as it is the distance of the center of mass from the front axle. The bins allow the center of mass to be a lot further out, giving it more leverage. So there is still a lot of hand work getting enough compost out of the bins so I can safely move the bins with the tractor. It's still worth using the bins because the tractor allows me to stack the compost much higher than I could reasonably by hand.



It is nice having these big bins for materials that I can handle in or near full bins worth. The debarker chips from the saw mill across the way are a good example. But I am toying with making some smaller pallet bins for denser materials. If I cut the bin depth by a third I could handle them with less hand work. But then I would need a place to keep the bins I am not using. And unloading three bins is significantly more difficult than two because it requires a different approach angle. I am waiting for inspiration to hit me.

Lend a tool program

That's a front wheel spindle on my new to me $450 van. The van is a 1991 GMC Vandura 3500 series 1 ton van. When I bought the van, I could tell from the steering there was an issue in the front end, so I wasn't surprised when the inspection turned up a loose ball joint. I have done plenty of tie rod ends over the years, but this was the first time I tackled a ball joint.

It wasn't easy.

The ball joint allows the steering knuckle to be attached to the upper and lower control arms and allows that whole assembly to flex while keeping the tire in a vertical position. That allows the tire to follow the road surface with some independence from the vehicle body.

The ball joint is connected to the steering knuckle by a tapered rod. Time and function tend to lock the tapered rod in it's socket and it takes a fair amount of force to get them apart. The bottom of the ball joint is a press fit into the lower control arm.

I had to buy a ball joint separator, but I did manage to get the tapered end of the ball joint out of the steering knuckle. But in doing so, I buggered the threads for the nut on top. That meant I could not reassemble the joint and move the van. And this became a problem because I couldn't get the press fit end out of the lower control arm. I use a trick using the a jack and the weight of the van to separate tie rod ends, but that wouldn't work in this situation. I worked on it off and on for three days but was unable to get the ball joint off the lower control arm. This was a big problem because in order to get the van to a mechanic to have the job completed would now require a tow truck. So on top of wasting my own time, paying to get the job done, paying for the tow, the mechanic might have given me a hard time about using the part I had bought ($70). Mechanics make part of their living on the market on parts and the labor rate for installing customer provided parts is usually punitive. I fretted about this all weekend, but after one last attempt on Monday morning to get it done, I was convinced I couldn't do it and I called the mechanic to make arrangements. But they were not open, I always forget they are closed Mondays. With the extra night to think about it, I decided to try getting a ball joint press through one of these lone a tool programs several of the national chain auto parts stores provide.

I called around and Advanced Auto Parts and Auto Zone both have this program. Auto Zone was the only one with the tool I needed available, though. The way Auto Zone's program works is you can come in and buy the tool, use it and bring it back for a refund of the purchase price. And they didn't even give me a hard time about not buying a ball joint. I took the tool home, used it and brought back a week later and they politely credited my account. There were no fees and no hassles. I was really impressed that they are willing to accept such an expensive tool back like this.

Not everything went perfectly, though. The press is a large arbor and a threaded rod like a big C clamp. There are various cups and adapters to make get allow the clearance to push the ball joint out. Unfortunately, the arbor was not wide enough to get the ball joint of my 1 ton van into it. I had to Jerry rig it a little and I wasn't able to use a straight line push. But I eventually found a way to do it. Pushing the new ball joint in had similar challenges, but I managed it.

So, I am giving Auto Zone a plug here for providing the lend a tool program. It saved me a lot of money getting the van towed to a mechanic to have the job finished. I was a lot happier with myself after getting it all back together than I was when I was contemplating getting the van towed. I still have more work to do on the van but it has already pulled home more $ in composted manure than I paid for it.

I am doing my part

I just bought a GM vehicle. I am doing my part to prop up the US economy.

So what if I only paid $450 and GM lost interest in this particular vehicle about seven years ago.

I just acquired a different van. When I say Van, I mean a full size GM van of the G series. I have had a long string of them. This is my ninth, I think. I have a definite pattern. When I find my previous van is faltering for the last time, I look around for a high mileage business van being sold at a loss. I generally buy a van at around 150K miles. At the time of purchase it needs to be ready to pass inspection, have a strong running engine and no obvious mechanical problems I can't fix in my driveway. The previous owner has already gotten as much use as they anticipated from the van. Every thing I do with it is bonus. It's kind of like recycling, but better since my way doesn't require tearing it apart and working to turn it into something else. The color is unimportant.

I was being facetious. My wife might correct me and say "You were trying to be facetious".

I think any vehicle that is running, road worthy and inspectable is worth at least $500. I think I have paid as little as $300 and as much as $3000. Both of those extremes ended up being mistakes. On that $300 one I did extensive body repairs, painted it and then hit a deer. After I replaced the radiator the main bearing on the engine went. I owned it less than eight months. The $3000 one I bought from a used car salesman, the only and last time I'll do that. The used car guy lied about repairs he had done and did not disclose the extensive electrical problems in the van. That and I found shovelfuls of gravel in the door cavities. I only drove that one about 30K miles, making it the most expensive per mile van I have owned. Outside of those two, I have gotten outstanding performance out of my beat up old vans. The rest of them went 60K to 100K miles and cost in the $.15 - $.25 per mile range. And that's everything, purchase price, repairs, gas, insurance, tires, any improvements. Everything. The honest truth is my motorcycle, which gets 50 mpg, costs several multiples more to drive per mile than my full size van. I won't bore you with the details, trust me, I have checked my math. I really enjoy my motorcycle, but truth be told, if I had to make a choice I'd probably choose a van.

I like my vans because I don't care if I need to scrape through brush driving down a logging road. As a a commercial vehicle, they don't have a lot of extras to maintain. They have high clearance, another plus on logging roads. As a cargo van, there isn't a lot of plush interior for goat piss to soak into and the poo sweeps out pretty easy. I can carry six or eight kayaks inside. A van can pull a large trailer of manure. I can sleep across the back of the van without getting cramped. I can do the majority of reasonable repairs in my driveway. A motorcycle rolls in to the back like a horse into it's stall. The G van body style began in the sixties and ended in 1996. My first was a 1979 and the lessons I learned on that one have been applicable on each subsequent van.

I have had eight vans. I lost the first to a connecting rod protruding from the side of the engine block. The second was the main bearing. The third, a manual transmission, lost 2nd gear. The fourth the transmission. In the fifth I was T-boned by a driver doing twice the posted speed limit at an unmarked intersection driving it home from the purchase. I salvaged the engine and transmission out of #5 back into #4 and kept #4 alive. #4 went on to do a cross country trip that included kayaking the grand canyon, back country snowboarding in the Tetons and Niagara falls the Canadian side. The sixth I sold as a running vehicle, a one and only time for me. Seven was was a personal best and favorite but I had to put down with a bad cam shaft after 100K miles of my own driving and 255K total on the van. Original engine and transmission. I called it the old gray mare and she went out to pasture when she could no longer pull the wagon. The eighth was the $3000 electrical basket case. I still managed to drive it for six years, but it was never my primary vehicle. I bought Eight thinking number Seven's time was coming soon. Seven fooled me and went three more years. By the time Eight was my only van, the price of gas was through the roof and I was driving a civic as my primary vehicle. A bad fuel pump is the end of Eight. That and the rust I don't feel like fixing and the electrical problems. And I found a replacement for $450.

It isn't perfect. It isn't pretty. There are a few things I want to address right off, like paint it anything other than the ugly maroon it came as. But it has a strong running engine, is road worthy and I think it will pass inspection as soon as I replace one headlight.

The Joads or Two trailers for the price of one

Does this look like something you would stake your life on? I suppose if you were driving behind me you were if you knew it or not. I borrowed a friends trailer a while ago and dragged it through three states. Lucky for both of us, I dragged it empty. I didn't a load in it until I got home and then it was behind the van.



It's a little embarrassing, but I just assumed it was Honda original equipment and I trusted that idea. Now that I have looked at it more than cursorily, I have come to realize it is just bolted through the tow loop. A rusty tow loop. An originally flimsy, now rusty tow loop that has driven for more 200 thousand miles and close to two decades. And by the looks of my fenders, this car spent most of its life on salty roads in the north east. Lets all just feel better that I didn't try to pull my new trailer full of trailer home through three states. It might have gone fine. Or it might have ended in a blaze of fire, twisted steel and broken glass. One or the other.






This is my new trailer. Full of trailer It came with a very nice pile of compost. And some started seedlings. The seller did me a great favor allowing me to purchase it. I am not kidding.

That's a second trailer upside down on the trailer. A friend, upon seeing my new trailer on the way home, realized immediately that his father's old Studebaker pickup bed trailer would look perfect pitched on top. I forgot to load the kiddy pool and child's bike he also offered.






I did not try to pull that load behind the Honda. My new trailer is well built. That's a polite way of saying it's heavy set. Husky. When speaking of a trailer, though it doesn't have the negative connotation it might otherwise.






The new trailer came with stake rack sides. The we swollen and a bear to get out of their sockets to load the second trailer. But they will be really helpful to bring bulky loads like compost home with. It also came with that dancer XS that is hanging from the ceiling of the van. The XS is a smaller version of Perception Kayaks popular dancer white water kayak. It will be a great boat to use when my son is ready to get out on the water. Vans are a great vehicle for the right application.