I need a Two car trailer
one of the ways we help people - From Idea to design…
How do you adapt an existing trailer to carry two off road cars?
Hammack Bros Offroad are owned by Rico, a Marine Veteran who we are supporting with Business Mentorship and access to our design and manufacturing services. Rico had a great idea to build and sell a ramp assembly that bolts to the front of a trailer and allows two cars, particularly offroad cars, to be transported. He did some work in his yard to figure out how high the tower needed to be, as well as the angle of the ramp to allow for clearance. After sending us some sketches of his idea, we started with a basic tower frame and simulated the stress with a 1600 lb load to understand where the forces would be, particularly during loading and in the event of road bump creating a sideways force. One of the design briefs was to allow side access to the space under the towers for gas storage, this presented some challenges with the structural design, but the basic design helped us understand where the the potential weak points were. Although the intention was to include the cross brace between the towers for carrying wheels, we wanted a tower design that achieved a minimum safety factor of 3 without any additional support. After many many iterations of adding and subtracting tubes, to achieve a balance of strength and weight, we achieved a tower safety factor of 3. We then evaluated different cross brace designs and achieved a minimum safety factor of 5, with the majority in excess of 8 and weighing around 300lbs when using 0.083” 2x2 tube. We also did a simulation with 10x load which showed we have a very strong design that may allow us to use 0.065” wall thickness. We’re now starting the detail design and manufacturing drawings to begin manufacture of the first version.
Please let us know what you think - is this something you might be interested in? Let us know in the comments below.
Loaded with 1600lbs on each tower
Original sketch of idea showing the side view
Showing the end view
Initial evaluation - 1600 lbs load.
