Trailer Maintenance Time!

After a year of not, it was finally time to address my trailer and do some needed maintenance.  We have always been good about maintenance and usually work on it a little every year, however after the move it hasn't gotten anything except some grease for the wheel bearings.  It didn't even get a bath last year, and it showed.  Badly.  EEWWW!!  To say it was dirty was an understatement.

So clean!!

At the beginning of the year, I ordered 4 new tires with galvanized wheels.  After tax time, I bought 2 sets of brakes, hubs, hardware for it all, trailer jack (the one I bought last winter sucked badly), new rear door locks and a breakaway battery kit.  Phew, that's a lot of stuff!  etrailer.com should really be giving multi-customer discounts for realz.

Brakes in progress, steel not cleaned/painted

Brakes after, steel scraped/painted

Last weekend we were only able to do one set of brakes due to the pouring rain so we finished it all this weekend.  Despite being an all aluminum trailer, it does have a few steel beams so I crawled under the trailer and got all of the flaking paint/rust off with the air tool.  Next I put on 2 coats of paint via spray paint, I had bought some good Rustoleum Professional paint but SO had me use up virtually all of our old paint so my trailer beams were grey, white, blue, orange, bright orange and black.  Ha!

New wheels and powerwashed

Sunday after it dried, I put on a 3rd coat of paint using my good black paint so it wasn't multi colored any longer.  I would strongly recommend that Professional paint over regular or other paint, after using 5 different brands putting the 1st and 2nd coat on, wow that Professional paint went on SO easily.  One coat coverage to get great color, it sprayed so much better and was much easier to work with.  Whodathunk?!

New jack and breakaway box

After the paint dried, we applied a new undercoating called Fluid Film.  It is a fantastic lubrication and is apparently used in Canada as a rust protectant on cars and has very good reviews.  The ease in which this stuff applied was amazing, I was expecting a huge mess and there really wasn't.  Super easy to apply, within 20 minutes I was done!  Am really curious to see how well it works as we have enough to put on all of our vehicles this summer.

New rear locks, no longer need to literally assault the lock to open it!

SO tore all of the wiring apart at the hitch and replaced all of the scotch locks with real butt connectors and hooked up the breakaway battery with the trickle charger.  Apparently, my breakaway wouldn't have worked even with a charge, one of the posts on the battery had broken completely off!  We tested the new setup and it works, and now we won't have to worry about the battery being dead.  I was even able to get the fender LED light to work again with some cleaning and TLC, I didn't have to replace it.

New 2nd tire rack on the right

After the wiring was done, the new wheels were slapped on and the trailer lowered to the ground, it was time for deep cleaning.  The mats got drug out (ewww, do NOT skip a year on this folks.  For real) and power washed, the inside got a good cleaning as did the outside.  I power washed the pinstriping off because it was very cracked/faded/peeling and the trailer looked good.  I cleaned up the adhesive on one side without problems but when I did the passenger side, it was taking paint off!?! OMG.  New pinstriping is now ordered to cover THAT up.  The difference in one side vs the other?  Who knows.

WHY ARE YOU COMING OFF PAINT!?!?!? STOP ALREADY!!

New saddle racks, cost $8 total!

Lastly, I added 3 new hanging saddle blanket racks and a second spare tire carrier.  SO insists I carry 2 spares and now both are wall mounted instead of one laying on the floor.  Woohoo!  All hinges got a good squirt of lubrication and the only thing left to do is to wash the windows and load everything back up into the trailer.  We should be all ready for our show on the 25th!