Wait… WHAT??!!
I had been watching YouTube videos for a while to see what other people had done to fix up their trailers. I myself have rehabbed houses and customized cars. I was confident that I could do this. But as it turns out, trailers – for all of their similarities to cars and houses – are a different beast.
I stumbled across the YouTube channel of mobiltec who has been posting videos for the last decade or more. He had a very methodical and informed approach to trailer repair. I started to watch his videos and it began to dawn on me that the other videos I’d been watching were all amateurs. Then I found his website cannedhamtrailers.com, and then I found out he had an online class.
Now, at this point I was still pretty confident that I was doing the right things. The class met on Tuesday nights, and it happened to be Tuesday, so I thought I’d join and get a little advice on my plan. My plan was to tear off the roof and the walls over the coming weekend. I attended class, and during the Q&A asked “I’m planning to take the roof off of the trailer this weekend. Any gotchas or tips?”
His response was that I should go binge-watch the Anatomy of a Trailer classes before I did another thing. Which I did. I watched, I took notes, and I learned a TON. For instance, now I understand why I couldn’t get the cabinets to come off of the walls without destroying them. They are attached from the OUTSIDE. They go on from the outside because they are actually structural supports. I was approaching this like a home remodel, and it turns out trailers are not built like houses.
Larry (mobiltec’s real name) also recommends that you document your build with a blog, and that is why this blog exists. Knowing what I know now, I wonder if I’ve made a huge mistake. This project was supposed to be a quick fixer upper. I just wanted to make a neat little trailer that the kids can sleep in and play in. Now I’m hundreds of dollars into it, and I have to decide if I want to keep going or cut my losses and move on empty-handed (but doubtlessly wiser).
