After studying up on building and designing a trailer….I can say Lapeers right about how the combination of the frame and body portion gives any rig a lot of its strength.
Before I started stockpiling steel to build a trailer, I went to the dump here to check out an old 30 foot trailer frame that someone told me could be picked up cheap….
It’s amazing how flimsy those things are .
All you had to do was give the frame a good push at either end to make the whole thing wooble and bend.
It’s not that it was made poorly, it just was designed with the idea that…..
When you bolt the body to the trailer frame that’s when the whole thing tightens up.
School Buses are no different.
Even though a School Bus is a hell of a lot more strong then some cheesy trailer , you’d still run into some pretty serious frame flex if you took off the body.
Not saying you cant overcome those issues…just that a person would need to make sure whatever they attached to the frame had the right stuff to handle that flex and calm it down a bit.
This is just my opinion Brad …. If you do go the route of attaching a trailer body to your buses frame, I don’t think welding it to the frame is the way to go.
I’d just bolt it down to the frame. That way the frame could still flex a bit….and you’d get a nice strong combination. If you did weld the trailer to your bus , I imagine it wouldn’t take very long for it to start falling apart because it would be too stiff.
So I’d seriously think about just bolting it down…plus it also would be a lot easier to take the trailer body off and put another one on if you needed to.
This is a cool discussion. I’ve got a dog in this hunt too.
I can’t do it as quickly as I want to because of my job and the lousy weather here….but even so I have been Hacking off parts of Latcho Droms body.
We need to shorten her up to tow a trailer with. So, I’m getting rid of the approx. 2/3 of the body.
I’ll leave the front on and build a small ‘cabin’ on what’s left .
What I’m going for is something like this pic ….but a lot prettier.
http://www.mobilehomestead.com/latcho2/ ... uuler1.jpg
Michael & Millie, Sitka , Alaska
http://www.mobilehomestead.com/