Strength Archives – Mechanical Elements

Trailer Design – Meeting Your Goals

October 4, 2022September 17, 2022 by Mechanic

Trailer Design Sketch

It looks easy. Trailer design is not like building a rocket, but it’s also not as easy as putting a few pieces of metal together. Good trailer design includes meeting goals and ending up with something that will tow well, and perform to your needs. We see sketches fairly often, perhaps on graph paper with … Read The Article

Adjustable Hitch? Or, Adjustable Ball Mount?

September 26, 2022July 21, 2022 by Mechanic

Adjustable Hitch Options

Over the past few years the Adjustable Hitch and/or Adjustable Ball Mount have become quite popular. They are great for adapting to a wide variety of tow vehicle heights and trailer tongue heights. But, which should you use? Does it make any difference?

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Trailer Suspension Mounting – Misdirection !!

October 3, 2022May 14, 2022 by Mechanic

Suspension Mounting Too Close

Shopping online is both a boon and a bust. It’s great access to a wide variety of components, but it’s a bummer when misleading info causes extra work and frustration. That brings us to this Customer Story of misguided

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Car Hauler Trailers — New Trailer Plans

May 28, 2022March 5, 2022 by Mechanic

Looking At Car Hauler Trailers

Where do you get plans for true, tough, Car Hauler trailers. After a ton of market and product study, we are stepping in and stepping up. Our niche is engineering better plans for DIY, so read on to learn about our approach to Equipment Transport

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Car Hauler Design – Trailer Research

October 4, 2022February 25, 2022 by Mechanic

Car Hauler Design Research

Prior to starting new plans, we do research to understand the landscape, then look for opportunity to improve and make a better product. That is certainly the case with our upcoming Car Hauler & Equipment Transport Trailer design. New plans are coming soon.

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Easy Gantry Crane Lift Conversion

January 31, 2022January 22, 2022 by Mechanic

Gantry Crane Lift Feature

The beauty of a gantry crane is the beam overhead, and the clear access for lifting things. To make them more useful, telescoping legs put the top beam at a height appropriate for the job — in your garage, or outside, or wherever. One of the challenges

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Trailer Hitch Class Ratings

October 3, 2022October 22, 2021 by Mechanic

Trailer Hitch and Drawbar Classes

As a convenient way to help with safety, trailer hitches, balls, and receivers have categories or load rating groups called classes. Each trailer hitch class has ratings for how much it will carry. A look at the ratings for each component

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I-Beam Shape Choices: I, S, W, M or H?

July 1, 2022September 7, 2021 by Mechanic

Which I-Beam Shape?

When is an I-Beam not really an “I” Beam? While it’s common to use the generic term “I-Beam” for any beam with an I shape section, there are actually variations with different letter designations. And, there are advantages for the various shapes

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Why No Plans For Aluminum Trailers?

March 4, 2022August 23, 2021 by Mechanic

Example aluminum trailers

This question comes up often — because there are not many good plans for aluminum trailers out there. We have great trailer plans, but none for aluminum. Why? As one of our Frequently Asked Questions, this one deserves a good answer.

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Bent Tongue — Judging A Weak Trailer

July 5, 2021 by Mechanic

Bent Trailer Tongue

When buying a trailer, how can we decide if it’s well built, or just cheap? How do you know if it’s strong or weak? While there are always tale-tale signs, we’ll use this example of a trailer with a bent tongue to illustrate.

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Who Says Welding Doesn’t Affect Strength?

March 4, 2022June 17, 2021 by Mechanic

Fracture at Edge of the Welds

I love seeing failures. Not that anyone wants things to fail, of course, we always try to make things that last. However, when a failure pops up, I love to look it over and understand the “how” and the “why”. It’s an excellent opportunity for learning, and I love to learn.

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Good Ways To Shorten Trailer Safety Chain

November 23, 2022April 20, 2021 by Mechanic

Need To Shorten The Chain

In previous articles we discuss the importance of trailer safety chain length. If the chains are too long, what can you do? Yeah, odds are you won’t need them, but what if you do? Long chains can complicate things quickly, so how can we safely shorten a chain?

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Dangling By A Single Trailer Chain

March 9, 2022March 22, 2021 by Mechanic

Saved by Trailer Chain

If you ever doubt the sanity of safety chains, then see this example of where a single trailer chain literally saved lives. The story is amazing from all angles –

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Are Aluminum Trailers Good or Bad?

August 30, 2021February 11, 2021 by Mechanic

Aluminum Weld Adjustments

I’ve heard different opinions, so let’s look again at the Engineering and clear up some facts. Maybe we can also debunk a few misconceptions.

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Engineering: Welding Trailer Spring Brackets

June 15, 2021September 24, 2020 by Mechanic

Welding Trailer Spring Brackets

There is some disagreement in trailer building about how to weld-on trailer spring brackets (also known as spring hangers). Some of you have sent questions about which techniques are best, especially

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How To Choose Bolts

October 18, 2022November 12, 2019 by Mechanic

Understanding Bolt Choice

This is Page 2, continuing the Bolts 101 article. Here we discuss choices for bolts for an application. The previous post, Page 1 of Bolts 101, gives a ton of background info, so we recommend reading that first,

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What Bolts For DIY? – Bolts 101

October 13, 2021November 12, 2019 by Mechanic

What Bolts for DIY?

Bolts are an amazingly simple yet complex fastening method. They’re used everywhere so mostly we take them for granted, but why are there so many different kinds? And what bolts should I use?

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How To Make A Trailer Longer

December 29, 2021May 11, 2019 by Mechanic

How To Make A Trailer Longer

Sometimes I wish my trailer was longer. Is there an easy way to make a trailer longer? Is that even possible? And, what are the limits

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Gantry Crane Failure Modes

October 3, 2022April 17, 2019 by Mechanic

Gantry Crane Failure Modes

There are a lot of ways to abuse a crane. We won’t go into those, but let’s do take a minute on crane failures and what they look like.

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Practical Safety With A Crane

November 9, 2022April 2, 2019 by Mechanic

Spring Foot for Gantry Crane Safety

Nothing ruins a pleasant day quite like a goose egg on your head, or a throbbing finger pinch. Avoiding those things (and, of course, the much more disastrous potential events) is the context of this gantry crane safety article.

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