Will I ever buy a used trailer again?

When I was in the process of refurbishing it, the answer was definitely NO. Now, I’ve softened on that stance, but I will say, it was quite a bit of work and planning over more than a year to get my trailer from this….

… to this.

The trailer didn’t look so bad when I bought it. It looked like this…

Notice the fancy pinstriping. There was some paint missing on the fenders and a few small rust spots. Oh, and a dent in the edge of the roof with rust. You can see it about 2/3 from the back. Nothing structural though. The first thing I did was check the floors well with a screwdriver. I’ve heard enough stories of horses going through trailer floors to make me cringe. No way that’s ever going to happen to any horse of mine, if I have anything to say about it! This is what I found…

I wanted to have a clean trailer, so I got out our pressure washer. Unfortunately that was a BAD IDEA. The seller told me that she had Trails West paint this trailer to match her Bronco. So it was a factory paint job … from 1992. I’m not sure if it was the passing years or something that was missed by Trails West, but the paint came off in sheets! I swear, it was jaw droppingly amazing. My son had to come out and have a go. It was that much fun to see the paint fly off! Somewhere, I have a short video of it. I’ll post it if I can find it.

I was not very happy with this turn of events. I had thought about painting it, since it was black, but I figured that I would have some time to think that through, while still pulling a trailer with paint on it

Back to the floor… I went out and bought pressure treated 2x10s to replace the entire floor. Then I found that the boards ran all the way to the front, under the fixed tack room wall and the plywood floor in the tackroom. That was a little more than I wanted to get into. There was no cross brace under the slant wall, so I found the first one after the rot, about half way through the horse area, and carefully cut the boards there, leaving half of the support for the new wood to rest on. That was the easy part.

Next came treating all the rust I could get to, inside and outside. I used Ospho, spraying it on. Just as it says, it does turn the rust black. What it didn’t say, was that it also eats through galvanized coating.  By the next morning, I had streaks of bare steel all over the trailer, that continued to rust. I had thought that it would look a bit better. Well, it looked worse!

I got the floor put in, with my lovely husband’s help in driving the self tapping screws. Those are quite difficult to get going. I also took it to get the brakes, wiring and bearings checked out. At the end of this I did have a trailer that was safe to put horses in. Oh, I got a new brake controller for my truck too. It all worked well. It just didn’t look too pretty…

I was planning to take it to Wyoming in June to the 50th Anniversary SMR Meting. I really wanted to get new paint on it before then. Well, that didn’t happen, so I was there with the ‘trailer with leprosy.’ After a spring (it rains in western Oregon in the spring) of sitting outside, it looked more like this…

The streaks are from where the Ospho dripped, with subsequent rusting. My advice: don’t use Ospho, unless you are going to paint right away.

I spent the winter researching painting methods and materials. I ended up choosing products from RustGuy.com. That was an experience in itself, that I’ll spare you the details of. Suffice it to say, be clear what you are paying, if you buy from them. I did finally buy the paint and rust treatment products from them. And they ended up working well.

Another spring came. Then summer came and I was busy with work, actually going places with the horses and oh, family! I really tried to get a couple of weekends in the good weather to paint it, with no luck. September rolled around. I REALLY didn’t want to go another winter without getting it painted! I was taking Lily to a clinic on October 12th, so I bit the bullet and did it in late September. The weather sort of cooperated. It was pretty damp in the mornings. The directions said to protect it from dew and rain. Ha! It seems to have worked anyways…

I liked RustGuy’s rust treatment product quite a bit better than Ospho. I had gotten it in spray cans (I used nearly 6 cans). It was thicker than Ospho, so stayed where it was supposed to and wasn’t as corrosive. Still, use a good respirator that fits when doing any of this sort of thing.

I sanded. I masked. I taped. I scraped. Whew! I ended up using black spray paint for the tongue and touching up the roof, where it had rusted. For the main part of the trailer, I used a 1″ roller that was 4″ long. It worked great! I was able to get into the corners well, with only a small bit of brushwork. And it left a slightly pebbely finish that is rather nice. I knew that using a sprayer would not work well. I didn’t have, nor did I want to construct, a spray booth. It was windy enough that I knew it would have been futile to spray without one. I ended up finishing the second coat at dusk on Sunday night. I knew that if I didn’t get it done then, it would never happen. Oddly enough, a neighbor down the street had put up a temporary booth to paint one of his cars. It was a lot smaller than my trailer!

I painted the inside of the tack room too. I had also been black. I didn’t want to run out of paint for the outside, so I used rattle cans here. Definitely respirator work!

Later on, I added ODOT strips and “Caution Horses” on the back. There are a few things I would still like to do, like pads for the stalls and a bumper on the back. Those may come with time, or not. Well, the pads will happen, as I bought the foam and vinyl to make them. The bumper, not so sure. In the end, I guess it was worth it. I probably put in a little more than half what it would have cost me to just buy a new trailer. And I have something affordable that I can get around in!

I didn’t mention it, but my pickup is also a ’92 model. I now have a matching, nearly vintage rig.

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