Harbor freight trailer wheels adapter

I have been thinking of buying a Harbor Freight trailer to carry my wheel and other equipment for racing this year as my "carrier" cost me enough money in tires last year. After reading about wheel bearing issues I think putting taller wheel's on the trailer will help to reduce heat in the wheel bearing, the trip is 3 hours, each way. My search for wheels adapter has not turned up much but I did find some of the Jeep guy's have put five lug wheels on the trailer but I cannot seem to find the answer just a few pics hear and there.

The HF trailer bolt pattern is 4x101.6 (or 4x4) I would like to use a 5x100 bolt pattern as this would match the car and save the weight/ space of two different tires.

Anyone here ever do this?

Thanks, Paul

if you just remove the hubs, rinse the cheap non-moly grease off the bearings with brake-kleen, and lube them properly with a good moly-lube wheel grease (ford red or blue is my fav), you will be fine. the grease gets hot due to its properties being inferior, not the bearing or wheel speed.

remember with a roller bearing, rotational speed is only a fraction of the heat load on the material. weight, ambient temperature, preload setting and friction are the biggest contributors. Don't overload it, check hub temps when stopping for fuel/food, and pack them properly with good quality grease.

no need to modify, unless you WANT to...

-J0N

I want to know the same thing, only 4x100. (because I want to)

Years ago I built a couple of trailers. In both cases I made a simple axle with flat plates on each end. The plates were then drilled to accept the bolt on rear axles from Chrysler K cars. I towed the small trailer with my VW GTI ,so the VW spare would fit the trailer. If you want a GM pattern, many of their FWD vehicles had bolt on rear axles,too. Alternatively, could the HF hubs be redrilled to 4x100?

Take a look at Northern Hydraulics' trailers: http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/category_trailers-towing+trailers They have one similar to the HF trailer but it has 12" wheels.

I want to do the same with my boat's trailer.. so I can run the same bolt pattern as my Disco (and maybe run some nicer rims on it too)so I can avoid using a dedicated spare on the trailer that always seems to rot before you use it

You might be able to cut the axles off the rear of a FWD car with 5x100 wheels and weld the stubs into the ends of the HF tubular axle. That might be easier than trying to get mounting plates welded square to the axle tube and bolting them on.

The rear spindles off a "K" car bolt on, and off

So far I have only found one wheel over 12" with the same lug pattern, it is 13" not much of an improvement.

http://recstuff.com/13X4.5-4-4-White-Spoke-Trailer-Wheel.aspx

After that I went back and searched the Jeep forums found this thread, this could hold all the answers but is 133 pages long.

http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f27/mini-harbor-freight-type-trailer-ultimate-build-up-thread-1180456/

I have glanced over some of it but this part may hold the answer, changing out the hub's seems to get the 5 lug bolt pattern. Read page 47, link to bearing

I still have more reading before I do anything.

Paul

Wobble nuts and 4x100 wheels?

I took mine on a 2,300 mile run a few months ago. 8" wheels and fairly heavy. As suggested to me here I used a high heat lube. No problems.

The smaller trailer hubs are available in either 4x4" or 5x4.5" bolt pattern. Trailer rims are almost always 0 offset rims as well. Since a lot of Jeeps came with 5x4.5" 0 offset wheels for those guys it's a simple bolt on solution.

The easiest option for using car wheels on the trailer is to get hubs with the right number of lugs and then get a set of wheel adapters that get you to the bolt pattern you want and are the right thickness to compensate for the car rims offset.

http://m.ebay.com/itm/251667580517?nav=SEARCH

http://m.ebay.com/itm/281554861827?nav=SEARC