A-frame

The front of the trailer (A frame in trailer parlance) was pretty cluttered, with bits of an old weight distributing hitch, temporary lighting wiring, and a broken electrically operated jack without motor that could only be used with a knuckle busting 6" short emergency handle.




I decided that a manual jack was going to be fine, and ordered a Bull Dog 5000 lb sidewinder to replace the broken unit.   This gives us lots of extra lifting capacity - handy for  when things are stuck.

Front of the trailer at seller's house

 

At home, jack removed, supported on jack stands.

Cleaning up the rusty bits before priming & repainting.

I removed the weight distributing hitch remnants, and disconnected the propane tanks.  The original hold down rod for the propane bottles was badly rusted, so I replaced it with a length of stainless that I'd cut some threads on using my metal lathe.

I wire brushed everything, ground off a bunch of really ugly welds and repainted the hitch.  I built a new cable to connect the integral round pin connector (just visible in the photo above in front of my eyes on the front of the trailer) to the standard seven flat pin connector on the back of our F250.
I used glue-sealed heat shrink tube to build a waterproof cable.


The to-do list still includes replacing the propane regulator and pigtails, too.