Quote:
Originally Posted by beckybillrae
From all the work I've seen done by Amish (furniture mainly), they take lots of pride in their work (I'm sure you know that!) My son (who welds a lot for his work) said you would need to know what a good weld looks like in order to judge their work. Word of mouth is always a good thing!
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All good points above. Word of mouth is great, or an established shop with a good reputation. The good part is that you can actually see the work they are doing since the frame is all exposed, you don't just have to trust that they are doing it right. What you would be looking for is not just a good weld, but moreover if they are making it structurally sound by adding and /or overlapping enough steel to really make it strong again.
After seeing that last picture I will admit, that's some pretty bad rust on the cross members, how are the C channels? I think the fact that it wobbles some is only really bad if you can actually see it flexing at the joints (or in spots the rust is really bad), otherwise the frame will have some flex to it since it's not super thick steel and it doesn't have it's floor to help hold it together. In my opinion these trailers were able to keep the weight down by using an integrated system where all the parts of the whole are dependent on each other somewhat for their structural strength.
In closing, you may want to post a few more pics and see if someone like Colin Hyde could take a look and give you a better idea on the best way to approach the trailer.
https://sites.google.com/a/colinhyde...ions.com/home/
I'm still not sure it can't be fixed with a couple days of replacing cross members and welding. But what I might decide to tackle may be silly
and may not be what you all are willing to tackle.
I still wouldn't let it get you down, this is all part of it, just the dirty part!