Of Gates and Axles...

[Sunday April 6th]

The fence gate behind our 2nd garage has been annoying me. It just doesn't close right. I took a closer look at it and realized that the gate itself was too wide! I decided to shorten it. Now that may sound easy but its harder than you might think. You've got to take off the gate, then take off the chain link of the fence that is stretched on the fence, so it's a little tricky to get off. After that you have a basic frame to dismantle, cut shorter and reassemble. Some elbow grease and some big swings of the hammer breaks the pieces lose. Unfortunately it also breaks one of the corner pieces ;) After getting the frame and new parts together, how does one stretch the chain link back onto the gate? Enter some cranking tie down straps! I used them to pull the chain link tight.

Now that's out of the way, time to start a challenging project. Relocate the axle of the Teardrop trailer! Turns out that the tongue weight of the trailer is 185 lbs, a little hefty for my Ford Taurus who's limit is 175lbs. It's close but I'd feel much better if it were under! My theory? Move the axle forward and the tongue weight will be less! After several hours of wrenching around, I managed to get the tear axle moved ! Not only did the tongue weight go down, but it looks alot better too! After weigh it, we dropped from 185lbs tongue weight down to 120lbs! Not bad!