Xtreme Ultimate Trailer

Before you go wheeling, you got to get your rig to the trail.

Ian and Jessi take a pile of steel and some plans to build the ultimate trailer. Plus one of rock crawling, toughest challenges navigating the tunnel that and more today on Xtreme 4x4.

Welcome to Xtreme 4x4 where today we're going to put together a project that any off Roader can use. That's right. Whether you have a trail, Jeep, a fun buggy rock crawler, there's got to be some way you need to get it to the trail. And so far you've seen us built some pretty great projects like

six AJ

cheap Jeep Ranger Resurrection

and we are this close to finishing the ultimate tow rig, the suburban gorilla. So we got the ultimate tow rig and we got all these great trail trucks. So what's missing from that equation? Obviously, the ultimate trailer,

there's a lot of trailers to choose from already ones that carry your toys to the trail and some even have living quarters. We found one major problem though. All the enclosed trailers are too narrow for projects with bull with a

like the poison spider. But when we were looking, we found something that was perfect for us.

The Scorpion from Fleetwood has the best of both worlds,

a

flat bed deck to carry your toys to the trail

and the front of the trailer has a folding camper to put up. Once you get there

inside the camper, you have all the amenities of home. It sleeps four comfortably has a small galley

and of course, a bridge,

a CD player

and a toilet and a shower.

The only problem with the Scorpion is the deck. He and L

and of course, the low capacity cannot handle a vehicle because it's designed to carry four wheelers and motorcycle.

But since the design seems so well thought out, we thought the best thing to do is just build our own.

And for that, we're going to need a plan. So we made it called a master plans, trailer plans. Now master plans has basically two different packages. They'll sell you a complete set of engineered blueprints with step by step, instructions on how to build a trailer of your dreams or

the one we chose is the plans and every piece you need to build your trailer. I mean everything, the axles, the tires, the wheels, the springs, the nuts, the lug nuts, lights every single piece you need to put a trailer together, less steel. And this is actually a pretty good deal because we got everything we needed to build our trailer for about 2500 bucks,

whether you're taking account of the sales bar or you're the landscaping business or you're just taking your classic car of the show and shine master plans as a trailer for you. But when we sat down and told them what we need it,

we designed a brand new trailer

called the 26 ft Extreme Transport

with engineered blueprints in hand. We ordered all the steel needed for our trailer.

The first step is to build the basic frame for the flatbed portion of our trailer. Since our trailer is a heavy duty 14,000 pound model, our mainframe will be built using eight inch C channel.

Our flat bed is 26 ft long

and like most fuel yards, ours only carry 20 ft sections. So we will have to make a butt joint with our channel.

This is a little trickier than you might think because when you deal with steel this thick, you have a couple of steps you have to do to ensure a strong weld. The first is to be

the edge of the steel. This V notch will allow the weld to penetrate into the steel

to make that mainframe stronger and making these fish plates out of quarter inch steel.

This will bridge the gap between the two pieces once I weld all the edges

to be back.

Oh,

it's like we meant for it to happen.

Now, you can really see this is where a set of engineered blueprints pay off big time. This whole structure is only supported by four cross members. That's all it needs to hold all the weight. If you're building this yourself, you may think, oh, I need more cross members and all you'd be doing there is adding weight to the trailer,

not strength. And then the fifth cross member is supposed to go up here to keep that distance equal. But we're not going to put it in yet until we know the actual ride height of the trailer because we're building this specifically for the gorilla.

So we might need to put it down here up here. So we're just going to say it later

with the base frame assembled measure from corner to corner. These measurements must be the same

if they aren't the base

is it square,

spend time here making sure the frame is square.

We'll bring in a forklift to hold down one side

since right now it's a bit catty one.

Once it's lined up, move from end to end and side to side when welding to keep the frame from distorting from too much heat input

before our trailer will be supported by this two inch by three inch quarter inch thick

and

it's going to be welded flush to our sea channel. So in order to do that, we need to not out every piece,

each floor in support will have a brace that runs from the bottom of the sea channel to the cross bar to keep the floor from flexing

later on axles, wheels and a sleeper. But up next, it's the toughest obstacle in rock crawling

the tunnel.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4. Check out this shiny aluminum diamond plate that's going to be the new floor of our killer trailer. Now

being a champion in almost anything is all about taking risks and rock going. One of those risks is trying a line that no one else does. But for we rock driver Bruce Zeller, the risks he takes goes beyond the course, including the sacrifices his family has made in his quest to become king of the hill.

It was billed as rock crawling biggest event

and the We Rock Grand Nationals drew 21 of the best pro mod drivers in the world.

This is a big event. Bruce

Zeller's hit it hard style has made him a rising star in the sport

that's treating me like

and the favorite to win the championship.

I hate playing, follow the leader because then you're just running point for point with everybody else. I want to cut a new line. I want to take a bonus line that nobody else will even try.

I want to advance my skills in this car

beyond

anybody else's skills. His road to rock crawling premier series began as a spectator, run heavy

equipment all my whole life. So you're used to being on the hills around Phoenix and doing this stuff. So it just comes naturally and I'm thinking

these guys, I'll watch him do something. I think I could do that. I, but I'd go over here, I'd use that hill to my advantage.

And I thought, well, god damn it, I just gotta try that. He did

then two years ago he went from,

there's no turning back now and you get so hooked to this thing. I never thought going slow could possibly be fun in my life.

Only six drivers would qualify for the $10,000 shoot out.

And while most of the fields struggled, the Arizona boys became the first to nail the tunnel.

This is really the toughest obstacle in

rocking. It's 14 ft inside diameter, which is just a hair over the wheelbase of a vehicle. They'll use every kind of shifter and brake system that they have. This is where you take everything you learn and apply it into all one setting.

I'll

tell you what that was something

I've never done anything like that.

Oh my God.

I wanna come back in here after they close and do that again. It doesn't surprise me with his driving skill that he was able to pull it off. That was the sickest thing I've ever done in a car. And when I spun it around that tunnel,

that was the coolest feeling of my life as far as rock crawling so far in rock crawling, failure is just an obstacle away.

Cover it,

cover

it on a 31 of the main beams

let loose

and that is in a bad area.

He'll be back,

he's broke

and he's twisted,

but he'll be back tomorrow

seller and his crew got it fixed and they didn't 50. The next course,

I heard some ghost in the closet when we was creaking down through there. I thought, oh God, don't break now,

man, I am stoked. He'd go on and earn a spot in the shootout in a rig. He calls the scrapper

right now. This year, this car is the hot ticket

on our car. We run an average of 3.5 to 4 inches of shock shaft showing.

So it, when you get the belly onto something that drops out,

you know, the, the 11 inches you have remaining most of the time we run the pinions

o

offset the, the third members we own them offset so we can cruise over the boulder. We use the, the height of the wheel to get the third member over the boulder. So we don't spend so much time hung up

the Atlas. You cannot do these competitions without the Atlas two transfer case. This is the creme de la creme of all transmissions. You can really manipulate the car with just which wheels you want to drive. Success comes at a price to be truly competitive in this sport. It, you've got to spend some money, you're gonna spend some, some hard earned money.

My wife sacrificed building a house for this car

that ain't gonna be good on TV.

In the shootout, Zeller finished third behind Jessi Haines and Marty Hart.

It was just

100% effort on George's part. My part in a car in a sport as demanding as rock crawling. Bruce Zeller will continue to make sacrifices for his love of the rock. Just the adrenaline rush. When we make a wall that nobody else makes or you make that tunnel turn that nobody else has made.

You got away with something that nobody else did. And for some reason that just, just keeps you stoked. You look forward to that.

Welcome back to extreme for by Foreigner ultimate trailer bill.

This idea all started when we spotted a Fleetwood Scorpion at a local trailer dealer.

The design was so great that we took the idea and ran with it started to build our own trailer. Thanks to a set of engineer blueprints for master plan

and with those plans, we also got all the trailer specific parts in one package so we could take steel from our local steel yard and put together the ultimate trailer. Now, the first thing to come out of this pile are these heavy duty fenders.

We can have a total

of 100 and two inches and with our state pockets and chain ra we were right at the limit.

Now, here's the tricky part and the part that's almost impossible without a good set of plans. The gooseneck hitch that comes off the front of our trailer needs to be exact both sides, right and left. So to accomplish that, we're going to build it here on the floor, basically side by side

with a 30 degree notch. Cut it off some eight inch channel that will be

the ends to prep them for. Well,

then cut some gussets out of another piece of eight inch channel

to make sure they're the same. I will place each piece on top of each other and tack them at either end,

then finish, weld them,

turning the piece. So the weld is always flat.

This will ensure good penetration,

trim the ends for the gooseneck coupler

and then separate each piece and place them back to back to weld the inside,

be sure to leave them clamped until they are cool,

using some temporary bracing to hold it at the correct height.

The entire goose neck piece can be attached to the trailer,

they

called horse

and finally weld a 24 inch by 30 inch piece of quarter inch plate to gusset the entire assembly

and hold it in place.

The master plans trail package has some of the best products included with it all from quality trailer products.

Our package includes the slipper spring assemblies and 2 7000 pound

ales with pretty ingenious greasing systems for the actual bearings.

Now, most

ales simply have

a

fitting on the outside does cover, but as you can see in this cut away, there is a grease to that is machine right in the

h you can get grease to those back bearings

to make sure we have good quality. We

on our spring hangers, we will mount the entire assembly on a piece of half inch thick steel

with everything bolted together. We can raise the trailer

and place the entire assembly in position 208 inches from the uprights to the actual center line.

And before we weld the axle plate in for good, we'll roll the trailer back and forth to make sure it's tracking straight.

All right, this thing really starting to come together

and with it sitting on its wheels, we can go ahead and get the position for our twin front jacks

and we're going to mount those using these little pieces of angle iron

that will weld to the jack body, but bolt to the actual trailer in case we ever have to take them off and service them and all that's left up front here is the actual gooseneck

assembly itself. And the master plans kit comes with a typical 20,000 pound bulldog goose neck. But we're going to upgrade to this goose neck coupler from pop up industry. It's a rubber isolated gooseneck coupler that's designed to take a lot of that kick out of hauling a goose neck trailer.

And then once this is all done,

good to go.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4. All the heavy f

work is finished on our ultimate trailer

and now you can get started on all the finished details like the floor.

And since we're building the ultimate trailer, we decided to go with this aluminum diamond plate for the decking material. It only added about 500 bucks for a total steel order. And I think

it's well worth

it.

I know what you've been wondering all this time is building this trailer really worth it.

Well, we called around and got an average price of $19,000 for a similar 26 ft goose neck trailer.

The base kit for master plans was 2500 bucks.

We had some upgrades like the chrome rims and the gooseneck coupler and that added about 700 bucks. All the steel was four grand flat. So the total investment of 7200 bucks, we are well ahead of the game.

Now, the ultimate trailer is really starting to come together,

but we're really still missing one key ingredient that really drew us the old Scorpion trailer design and that key ingredient sits right here. But don't worry because right now it's sitting right over there.

We were able to pull a few strings and get the actual pod used on the Scorpion directly from Fleetwood. But if you're building your own trailer, you can go ahead and get any pop up camper that you so wish new or used.

We are going to mount ours using a system so that it can be removed from the trailer if we want to and just have a 26 ft flat bed

Miller welders in our shop. So we thought why not put one on our ultimate trailer.

Electric has introduced a new series of engine driven welders that are small in size, but big on welding power.

It has a 12 and three quarter horsepower

cooler motor with an electric start

an hour meter and an auto I will feature that will lower the RPM when there is no electrical drop. This will save us fuel and maintenance costs.

This baby will pump out 100 and 85 amps of our

we the power in either stick or T

plus it's a true 6000 watt generator.

So it'll power all of our good is when out in the middle of nowhere.

Now, if you remember Jessi said we were not putting a chain rail on this trailer and this is why

when we called up max custom tie downs for our tie straps and axle loops. They told us about their unique versa track system. This extruded aluminum strip will go all around the perimeter of our trailer and give us tie downs for light duty cargo as well as heavy duty cargo like vehicles. And the best thing is with this set up on this trailer, we can tie down anything and then all we have left to do is wire up all the lights and the brakes, paint all the bear steel. And as soon as the gorilla is done, this will go on the road with it too.

So we'll see

Alex.