rk_az
Adventurer
I had a request for more photos of my trailer, so I thought I would do a short "build" thread in case anyone else is interested. First, a little background on the trailer. I purchased it used from the former owner of the now-defunct "Mil Spec Offroad". He was building these trailers in Lake Elsinore, CA, but apparently couldn't sell them for what he put into them, so he went out of business and moved to Oklahoma. The one I bought was the last of his "show trailers", and while it was several years old, it was hardly used and had been sitting at a friend's house in San Diego.
He had a web site, and last I checked it was still out there (milspecoffroad.com), but was infected with some sort of trojan so I wouldn't advise trying to go to the site if it still exists, unless you really trust your anti-virus software. But as I said, he is no longer in business, the web site has been abandoned, and the phone number listed on the site is no longer his. I originally found his site a couple of years ago when I started looking for an offroad trailer. I thought the trailers looked totally bad-***, so when I found the used one for sale I couldn't pass it up.
Here is a photo from the online ad he placed to sell it:
So once I decided I was going to take the offroad trailer plunge, there were a few things I needed to do to my truck ('04 dcab Tacoma). First came a lift and new tires:
Then I decided I needed to figure out a way to get the hitch up as high as possible to improve the departure angle. I had a U-Haul hitch on the truck, just a standard one that sits right under the stock bumper. One day it occurred to me that I could remove the stock bumper and flip the hitch upside-down. It put the hitch in a perfect position just under the tailgate:
So I made a prototype bumper out of cardboard, and took it and the hitch to a fab shop, and had a custom bumper fabricated to incorporate the hitch. It actually turned out better than I first thought it would:
So the day finally came to head to San Diego to make the purchase. Here are a few "before" photos of the trailer as it was when I acquired it:
Here are a few "action" photos from its first trip to the desert:
The first order of business was to swap out the brake drums in order to switch from the 5-bolt Jeep pattern to a 6-bolt pattern to match the Tacoma. I also picked up a few steel rims from Tacoma spares. In the process of pulling things apart to replace the drums, I decided to tear the whole trailer down, give it a good cleaning, and a new paint job. Here are a few "in-process" photos that also show some of the design details, like all the D-rings and hi-lift jack points:
The next step was to get a RTT on it. It was already drilled for brackets to hold "stuff" (like the hi-lift jack seen in the first photo above), so I decided to make use of those existing holes to attach the rack to mount the tent. I searched in vain for a suitable rack, and ended up having one fabricated. Here is the trailer as it is today:
I don't really plan to do much more to it. I like the flexibility to load it and tie stuff down in whatever configuration I want. The bed and front deck have lots of holes for attaching cargo tie-downs (the style used to strap the spare down in the first photo) in whatever arrangement I want, but so far I have not found the need to use any.
Cheers,
Roger
He had a web site, and last I checked it was still out there (milspecoffroad.com), but was infected with some sort of trojan so I wouldn't advise trying to go to the site if it still exists, unless you really trust your anti-virus software. But as I said, he is no longer in business, the web site has been abandoned, and the phone number listed on the site is no longer his. I originally found his site a couple of years ago when I started looking for an offroad trailer. I thought the trailers looked totally bad-***, so when I found the used one for sale I couldn't pass it up.
Here is a photo from the online ad he placed to sell it:
So once I decided I was going to take the offroad trailer plunge, there were a few things I needed to do to my truck ('04 dcab Tacoma). First came a lift and new tires:
Then I decided I needed to figure out a way to get the hitch up as high as possible to improve the departure angle. I had a U-Haul hitch on the truck, just a standard one that sits right under the stock bumper. One day it occurred to me that I could remove the stock bumper and flip the hitch upside-down. It put the hitch in a perfect position just under the tailgate:
So I made a prototype bumper out of cardboard, and took it and the hitch to a fab shop, and had a custom bumper fabricated to incorporate the hitch. It actually turned out better than I first thought it would:
So the day finally came to head to San Diego to make the purchase. Here are a few "before" photos of the trailer as it was when I acquired it:
Here are a few "action" photos from its first trip to the desert:
The first order of business was to swap out the brake drums in order to switch from the 5-bolt Jeep pattern to a 6-bolt pattern to match the Tacoma. I also picked up a few steel rims from Tacoma spares. In the process of pulling things apart to replace the drums, I decided to tear the whole trailer down, give it a good cleaning, and a new paint job. Here are a few "in-process" photos that also show some of the design details, like all the D-rings and hi-lift jack points:
The next step was to get a RTT on it. It was already drilled for brackets to hold "stuff" (like the hi-lift jack seen in the first photo above), so I decided to make use of those existing holes to attach the rack to mount the tent. I searched in vain for a suitable rack, and ended up having one fabricated. Here is the trailer as it is today:
I don't really plan to do much more to it. I like the flexibility to load it and tie stuff down in whatever configuration I want. The bed and front deck have lots of holes for attaching cargo tie-downs (the style used to strap the spare down in the first photo) in whatever arrangement I want, but so far I have not found the need to use any.
Cheers,
Roger
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