Other than it's galvanized and I'd need to grind the zinc away to weld on it. This would be for a little teardrop-ish camping trailer which would be much less than 1000lbs.
Is there something unsafe about using it for a small, light trailer? Asking because it's cheap and seems beefier than the HF trailer material I've seen.
Thanks :)
I've owned a trailer made from unistrut for 35 years now, and it's held up well. I've hauled everything from motorcycles to gravel to a stack of drywall in it. It's pretty heavy duty stuff (without going out to the garage to look, I'd say the strut cross section dimensions are around 1 1/2" x 2 1/2"). You can get it in plain steel, that's what mine is made from.
The leaf springs are held to the frame with some Unistrut brackets - I'm not sure which ones but they make it nice as you can fine tune the location of the axle to get the proper balance. The U-shape of the strut is also handy for hooking up tiedown straps.
stuart in mn said:I've owned a trailer made from unistrut for 35 years now, and it's held up well.
Perfect :)
I have a small airbag axle assembly from an older boat trailer which I've restored (de-rusted, painted, new airbags) and a new piece of square tubing for the spine/tongue. It's the rest of the trailer frame that I want to make up. Unistrut seems like a good alternative to angle or channel or more square tubing with all of the bolt holes and other available hardware.
https://www.unistrutohio.com/beam-and-column-load-tables-for-unistrut-p1000-and-p1001
They can take some weight
What's a UniStrut trailer?
A trailer made of this stuff. It's pretty inexpensive and easy for me to get.
Thanks. Not familiar enough with it to be any help, please let us know how this ends.
Dan
914Driver said:Thanks. Not familiar enough with it to be any help, please let us know how this ends.
I'm going to check the Re-store today to see if they have a short length or two to practice weld on. From there I'll make up my mind.
Why not? Because it'll be considerably weaker than the equivalent hollow square section due to it being open on the one side and probably not significantly lighter.
RX8driver said:Why not? Because it'll be considerably weaker than the equivalent hollow square section due to it being open on the one side and probably not significantly lighter.
If it's strong enough and light enough to meet his purposes, that's all that really matters.
I have had to weld it before to make powerpacks at work.
(Similar to this but more robust)
It isn't much fun. Make sure to drink milk afterwards.
Cooter said:
It isn't much fun. Make sure to drink milk afterwards.
Either grind off the galvanized coating prior to welding, or simply buy Unistrut that's not galvanized.
In reply to stuart in mn :
You're not going to grind it all off, The shape precludes that, and also makes welding it a PITA.
And it sounds like OP has a source for strut that isn't simply buying it new.
Muriatic acid will remove the galvanizing, just do it outside and stand upwind.
You'll need to log in to post.
