RECOVERY TRAILER PROJECT

[lanceley]

Not directly Land Rover related but I’ve recently acquired an elderly (1984) ex-AA recovery trailer. Bought unseen off e-bay and in need of some TLC, picture on the trip home attached. Seems complete and tows OK but not sure yet what horrors await in the brakes / suspension / chassis department. Tow hitch needs replacement but easily sourced. Couple of points;

Is anyone familiar with this type of trailer – any thoughts?

I plan on fitting an electric winch – what kind of line pull should I be looking for? 2,000lb? 5,000lb? more? I plan to use the towing vehicle battery for power. What’s the easiest way to supply from the vehicle battery (at the front) to the winch (at the back)?

[DasLandRoverMan]

Certainly looks nice and low, what's the deck size and max gross weight?

With the winch on my flatbed I have an Anderson jack plug on the end of the power cables, and a corresponding plug on the back of my 110 running up to the vehicle battery.
It's quite a handy setup, and is also useful for jump starting without unearthing the battery from under the passenger seat.

I suspect doable on your Rangie, although there is less choice in terms of mounting points, unless you were to run it up into the spare wheel well and have the plug accessible either under the boot floor or in one of the side compartments?

[Wheeledbeast]

Looks like a handy bit of kit, but that winch will pull some serious current, you will need big cables

[jjcymru]

put some legs on the back or it will bend the back of the trailer when loading due to the long overhang from the axles

[lanceley]

After a bit of research a 5,000 lbs winch pulls 200 amps at peak load so say a 35mm x-section cable. I understand RR electrics are pretty sensitive and I don't plan on using the trailer very often I'll probably go for a simple system that will basically extend the winch power leads to the RR battery - sort of long jump leads. Will also allow other vehicles to use the trailer and winch.

Had thought of a separate battery for the trailer trickle charged from the 13-pin plug but I think too much trouble to maintain. I did wonder if a mains-charged jump start unit would provide enough power for the winch - need to experiment

Trailer is a tilt bed so the rear overhang shouldn't be a problem. Haven't actually tilted it yet so a little unclear how all that works.

Busy with MPX for the next few months so unlikely to be much progress on the trailer before the summer anyway - projects stacking up!

[Wheeledbeast]

I like the battery on the trailer idea, charge it off the rangie while you are going, and just un plug it when you want to winch

[lanceley]

Problem with the battery on the trailer is that for occasional use the battery is going to need charging separately from the "running" charge it would get while being towed. The trailer will be kept in a field remote from a mains power supply so pretty inconvenient to charge every time I want to use it.

[DasLandRoverMan]

Having seen under the back end of an L322 with a tow bar fitted in the past week I would suggest going with the Anderson Jack at the back of the car.
With the tow bar setup I saw it should be possible to mount the jack plug on the bar and it be usable without rolling round on the ground.

Plenty easy to run a decent size live cable to the back of the car from the battery with the earth picking up on a tow bar mounting bolt or similar.

A set of cables a few metres long with a jack at either end can then serve a multitude of purposes. A jack on the winch to power it, and a set of jump lead clips on another means you can use it for both purposes.

It also means if you put a jack plug on anything else that might be used for towing it (like the FC?) then it's nice and easy to run the winch from it.

A jump box will run the winch, but will die very quickly when used with any load on it. Jump boxes are intended to give a big boost for a short period rather than a lot of current for a long period.
My one will end up running pretty slowly with an L322 battery and a 100 amp alternator backing it up dragging heavier stuff (101 ambi) onto the trailer.