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After a wonderful 5 hours on a Sunday, I had the basic trailer together. I have an engineering degree and I was guessing at how this thing goes together. I was lucky and did not mess up to many times and I got the whole thing together and it folds flat like the instructions claimed. Now mind you that it was completely worthless for hauling a bike, as it had no place to hold the bike down with. That was my job, to attach two 4×4 foot sheets of plywood as a decking.

Now I took a few minutes and measured the thickness of decking that would fit, and I had just 1 1/4” of space between the rails of the folding trailer. The instructions recommended 3/4” plywood sheet, which I would have loved to use, but then again, I would have not been able to close the trailer. Now maybe if the trailer was put together in METRIC, it would all be good. But at my local Home Depot, 3/4” plywood sheets were actually 3/4” of an inch thick, so I had to go with the 5/8′ thick plywood and continue on.

So after I got my lovely 5/8” thick plywood, I bought some outdoor paint with some added silica (Sand) for texture and grip. No one likes a slippery deck to load a motorcycle on, so I figured the added sand in the paint would help. Since I had to buy a gallon of the stuff, if anyone needs 3/4” of a gallon of gray paint with sand in it, let me know. I bought the hardware to attach the decking to the trailer, which was conveniently absent from my kit. With this I added another $85 to my project of $230, brining this up to $315 for my discount trailer.

The wife lovingly applied the paint with 3 coats just to be extra thick. This was good as we had so much paint it really did not matter. But the paint dried quickly and we did not have any troubles with the paint, but the fun part came to attaching the deck to the trailer. See the holes are all on the bottom, and while that is good and fun, the best part is you can’t actually get to those holes with a normal drill. I considered buying a right angle drill, but I decided the mark and drill method to be the best. It was a fun job of marking and drilling and marking and pushing bolts though and hoping everything lined up correctly. It would have been even easier if I had not had to make 45degree cutouts for everything to fit up. But we got it cut out and again the trailer folded up, but not as much as before. Seems our friends in China don’t fold their prototypes with the wood deck installed. If they did, the would have noticed that the bolt heads would interfere and prevent the whole contraption from folding flat. The difference is just two inches at the top of the open end, but it just seems like a silly over site on their part.

Once I got the deck installed, I had to hook up the lights. This looked like an easy project, till I noticed the wire harness was to SHORT, so I had to do some extra splicing and routing to get everything to work. Then when I plugged the unit in, the lights did not work and I could not figure out why. I check for a break in the wires, bad connections and everything. I was very frustrated and then folded up the trailer to put it away for the night. I did not remove it from the vehicle, but when I folded it, it worked fine. I opened it up and the lights stopped working again. I check around and the lovely powered coated parts did not have a ground path to the front where the ground screw was. After some fun drilling and adding some ground wire, I was able to get the lights to work. Add $20 in extra wires and tape to hold everything together and we are up to $335 for my trailer.

I went back to harbor freight and bought a nice trailer stand with a wheel. At $40 it seemed overkill, but later on I found it nice to be able to move the whole trailer around without the vehicle. I was up to $375 for my discount trailer.

Next I added 4 tie downs at $20 for the tie downs and hardware. I added a pop chock for $45 to hold the front wheel so I could put the bike on it. I ponyed up for some ratching straps from CostCo at $15, and now I was up to $455 for the whole package.

I had a nice ramp that I had bout earlier from Harbor Freight for $40 and about $10 for hardware. I really like my ramp and I can push the bike on the trailer without using the motor. So set me up for $505 for the trailer.

Now comes the fun part, which is hooking it up to my new towing vehicle. When I got my latest towing vehicle, I added the “Towing Package”. But when I received the vehicle, I found I had the “Towing PREP Package”. No big deal, just add it to my tab for the hitch and some wire, how much could it be. Well the OEM Receiver unit, weiring and payment to a friend to help install it set me back a bit over $600. Yeah $600 mistake is my fault, and not the trailer, but it was a nice extra bonus.