BF951

I had some fun with it, so far, and just thought I’d share.
While casually looking for a trailer I came across this. Well used and it seemed sound.






During the drive home, I found the lights didn’t work. I found copper cladded wire that had corroded at each tap & hanging-on literally by a thread. Whole new harness for $10. Soldered and wrapped all connections and covered with loom all around to keep off any road salt. This is PA. Cancelled a DE in April due to 32” of snow !







Second issue was some heavily rusted frame supports holding the tongue to the frame. Some sand blasting, primer and paint and ready to go.




Repaint the Tongue, for kicks.




Harness enters the back of the tongue so the plug end comes out or retracts without ever hanging down due to some foam pipe insulation cut up and stuffed sideways in the tongue.

B series tires rated at 55 mph. Very little weight on them & probably would be fine but I needed a spare so on go two C series tires rated at 80 mph.





Now I have two spares. Not enough room to mount one on the tongue so I mock up a bracket and head to the plasma cutter. A tire mount that fits under the frame but still easy to get to.



Cleaned up and painted.



Mounted under the trailer, easy access.




It came with a makeshift hitch. Just a 1 7/8 ball welded to the end of the factory tow eye.




Previous owner used it without issue but I just wasn’t fond of it. Too easy to fail IMHO. Back to the Plasma cutter to mock up a piece that goes over the threads & traces out the screw eye. Adds significant strength where the steel itself would have to fail, not just the weld.




Welding it up, not yet much to look at.




Grind off the excess & threads & clean it up a bit.




Painted up.




The tire posts worked fine but bare metal might scratch up those pretty wheel centers. Can’t cover with PVC, it’s the wrong diam and wall is too thick for wheel centers. Hmmmm… Central home vac line is thin walled but it won’t fit over the pipe…So a quick slit down the side to open it up a bit and viola ! For $3 I have new tire posts that won’t scratch and are durable.





$10 in SS screws and new D-rings and it’s all done.

I did take off the bumper and mounts and had a trusted chassis builder inspect them and he felt the welds & material were capable. I plan to make beefier mounts during the winter anyway.

Oh, the harness controller in the car went in the rear left corner. Easy to wire up except for a few failed attempts to find an un-switched 12 supply in that area. I eventually ran a fused 12ga wire off the battery and encased it in leftover heat protective loom. Previously had a 951 so I had all sorts of this stuff left over.






Hope you find something fun to work on!

BF951

If anyone is considering using their tow eye for this I recommend making sure it is screwed in fairly tight. To get it to line up perfectly up and down while it's tight you can remove the aluminum bumper and rotate the screw eye receiver 180deg and since the screw eye bottoms out against the back wall of the bumper you can lightly grind off the end of the eye past the threads so it screws in just to where you want it.