If you know your trailer wiring is long enough you can permanantly mount the four way to the bottom of the bumper or hitch. The problem is that a lot of four way wiring depends on the wire attached to the car to make it all work. Might be a good time to upgrade to a round plug with future provisions for trailer braking? It'll help a lot if you tow something as heavy as a car.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
Umm....
As a guy that hardly EVER tows a trailer, and can't back one to save his life, can you elaborate on the round plug thing?
I like the idea of permanent mount the 4 way. Girlscout trailer lead is definitely long enough to reach.
And what do you mean by the comment about depending on the car?
Dusterbd13-michael said:In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
Umm....
As a guy that hardly EVER tows a trailer, and can't back one to save his life, can you elaborate on the round plug thing?
I like the idea of permanent mount the 4 way. Girlscout trailer lead is definitely long enough to reach.
And what do you mean by the comment about depending on the car?
Seth is referring to a 7 round connector that includes provisions for electronic trailer brakes. A bracket like this could be attached to the bottom of your bumper, or even zip ties to your hitch.
https://www.etrailer.com/Accessories-and-Parts/Tow-Ready/18144.html
45 minutes over lunch.
Found the water leak and washed the truck.
Ac drain, and coming in through the bolt on inner door structure. Dunno how to fix yet, but at least i know WHAT to fix.
Yes, seven round with a trailer brake provisions. What I meant about depending on the car is that a lot of flat four trailers have short wiring and they depend on the wiring of the tow vehicle to reach them. The round connectors are always (or almost always) hard mounted so trailers that have brakes and use them generally have longer leads. When you want to pull a flat four trailer you just plug in an adapter.
Get a flat 4-pin outlet like this one ($7 on eBay) and mount it to the hitch bar, or behind the bumper. The trailer plugs directly into it. To be safe, make up an 18" extension harness in case the wiring on the trailer is too short to reach. That can be kept in the glove box.
There may be classier options out there. This was the result of a 2 minute search.
Trailer lights even work!
weight capacity far ex exceeded
That truck is awesome.
You're awesome.
Keep being awesome.
Definitely the heaviest trailer I have ever pulled. There's been about 20 more girls show up since that picture was taken. A lot of them are walking at this point because we're out of room. Load bags valve cores are leaking and the right rear tire is rubbing so I need to address that when I get home today
good enough for who its for.
Tomorrow night ill do a legitimate update with a laptop and writeup vs this Facebook style live updates if yall want.
And probably even if y'all don't. Cause you cant stop me without the banhammer.....
Snow day today.
So, starting the morning by installing keyless entry, 4 channel amp, and my auxiliary gauges. Then back to the interior rehab.
done for now, maybey ill get down to the shop after a while and scrub seats and reinstall....
long time since a legitimate update. Life's been busy, and I have been hard at building a challenge car with my dad. Its coming down the home stretch. Its almost ready for the shakedown runs, and should be absolutely NUTS. Even off the bottle.
But this is about the truck.
Last week I went to pick something up off the passengers side floor and noticed it was wet. Turned out that the carpet was SOAKED. And the jute underlayment. So, since half measures availed us nothing, it was time to do something about it. Oh, and its back to being my daily. And I HAD to have it on the road for Saturday morning....
Monday I went to work.
20181203_120556 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181203_140910 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
stripped EVERYTHING but the dash. The floors are absolutely spotless. I love southern trucks.
The carpet was really, really bad. Stained, faded, smelly. The jute had started growing mold. Headliner was junk, and the plastics were 50 shades of gray. All were known about except the mold. So, no time like the present!
20181203_131621 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
took everything but the headliner outside, fired up the castrol superclean, stiff brush, and garden hose. You should've seen the stuff coming out of the carpets. It was NASTY.
After:
20181204_092952 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
while that stuff was drying, I did my sound deadening. Again, using the mcmaster carr mastic with about 80% coverage. Then foil backed jute, and the foil bubble wrap from lowes.
20181204_075506 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181204_082138 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181209_112721 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
I tossed the seat and seatbelt back in the drivers side. I also went ahead and finally wired some trailer lights.
20181205_072930 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181206_163519 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
somewhere last week I also finally went ahead and recovered the headliner. And the overhead console. Last week and this weekend are a blur of work, to be honest. Only two days are solid for me at this point (yesterday and today) so take my days as a general timeline. In the process, I finally finished up the backup camera monitor mounting (piano hinge, short screws, and some 3m trim tape), installed the autodim and temp mirror, wired the stuff. Etc.
20181205_073955 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181205_080331 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181205_081517 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181205_083029 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181205_083917 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181205_085732 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181208_162542 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
so, Saturday morning, I backed up to the trailer, hooked up the wiring, and left out for the Albemarle Christmas parade where I was helping my wife's girl scout troop, and also, apparently, the whole countys worth of girl scouts. (had I known ahead of time about that, I woulda gotten a bigger trailer from brother Dallas).
20181208_090617 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
IMG_5434 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
IMG_5449 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
got home from delivering the trailer back, seeing the parents, etc, and went to doing serious work.
First, note that my camera doesn't pick up just how yellowed, stained with nicotine, and bad the interior plastics were. Here's some attempts. (door panel is striking, and the passengers side was the clean one. Its before and after, essentially)
20181205_081633 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181208_144540 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181208_144534 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
I finished cleaning and dying all the interior panels except the passengers door panel. Its still drying.
The door panel, I masked off the pad by your arm prioer to shooting with SEM dye. It tends to make carpet/cloth kind of stiff.
20181208_155343 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181208_162225 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
carpet got the same treatment
20181208_144544 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181208_153001 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
before reassembly (well, too much anyway) I went ahead and addressed the keyless entry and audio. Keyless entry has no pictures, but it was a cheap bulldog unit left over from some other project. Don t remember how much or which project, but it works.
20181209_104019 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
audio changed a bit. First, I replaced the blown 4x6 rear speakers with a pair of 3.5 I inherited somewhere. And I changed the rockford fosgate monoblock amp for a 4 channel kicker that came with my BMW. Two channels of the kicker are running the 6.5 speakers in the doors, and the other two channels are bridged to my sub. I also built an amp mount with one inch wide steel bar stock bent and drilled. Screwed it to the rear cab wall under the trim where it wouldn't pole through to the outside. Ran all my wiring behind the carpet on the rear wall for a clean install. Damn thing sound GLORIUS. Still need to build a different box, as I want the 8 down-firing under the passengers seat. Unused space there, and space is at a premium in the cab. But, were almost perfect.
20181208_162318 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181208_163133 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181209_135454 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181209_150947 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
finished the day with reassembly. And scrubbing the seats. Again, the dirt I got out doesn't photograph well....
20181209_173837 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181209_173908 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
now that the truck is on runflats and has load bags, I needed a compressor to carry with me. The hight dollar, heavy duty 12v compressor from harbor freight, and one of their 50 cal ammo cans, makes it pretty compact and easy to store.
20181209_174403 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181209_174414 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20181209_174344 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
up next is to finish reassembly, refinish the steering wheel, fix the worn out rag joint at the steering box, refinish the passengers side door panel, etc. plenty left to do....
In for post 666
looking good, haven’t mailed your Christmas present yet but it’s going to look good on the truck
In reply to Patrick :
Part of me says to end the thread on post 666.
The other part did this.
I must finally be finished. I spent all day putting screws in at the other door panel and light bulbs and such. I also rebuild the steering shaft. It's quieter than my BMW and has the tightest steering of any gmt400 I've ever driven. I will call this a resounding success.
I'm going to be buying a set of Rockford Fosgate's for my Mazda 3 as the stock speakers have basically berked off. 6.5 components in front with adapter plates (Mazda had some weird sized speakers) and 6x8's in the rear. I'm glad I don't have the Bose Centerpoint 10 speaker premium system because that's a whole other kind of berkery that I just don't have the patience to deal with. I'll probably add a Dual 4 Channel amp in the future as I'm keeping the stock head unit as it handles my bluetooth audio. I don't want to go any farther than just upgrading the speakers and possibly adding a sub.
Nice interior redo. Fun to see the kids having a good time. Maybe you can dye/spray the visors for now,if they aren't too ratty.
In reply to Dirtydog :
I honestly didn't think about doing that.
Nothing to lose!
That’s awesome. I wish you were closer so I could check it out. The noise insulation thing has always interested me.
I still need to blink a few times when I realize that this the parking lot build truck.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
I had to go back to the beginning of the thread to remember what I bought. Has come a little ways hasn't it? But it's still easily recognized as the same truck I think.
Brother Dustin is a damn GENIUS.
Take an extra power tool case, fill with all your tire irons, straps, bungee cords, and put behind seat. Use a vag to hold jumper cables, and do the same. Really makes life much neater and simpler, and it actually takes LESS space somehow.
You'll need to log in to post.
