D.I.Y: How We Built a Kayak Trailer From a Standard Utility Trailer

Hi kids, this is Dustin from That Adventure Life, and today I want to tell you a little fairy tale about how an ugly utility trailer became a beautiful kayak trailer. So if you're ready, let's begin. Once upon a time, in a land called Southern California, there were two adventurers named V and Dustin. One day they got a little bit carried away and bought two beautiful new kayaks, but these were too big to carry on top of their adventure jeep. And as they thought about what they were going to do, they... Okay, enough with the fairy tale stuff. So the thing is, somebody ended up buying two kayaks without planning how we were going to carry it. And these things are so big, but we love them so much, so now we have two options, either buying kayak trailers or build one. So now we are building kayak trailers. Pretty much. That's how it goes. Since we decided we were going to build it ourselves, we came up with a list of requirements. The first one was, obviously, it needs to be able to carry our kayaks. The second requirement is, we wanted to be able to remove the racks and use it as it was originally designed as a utility trailer. And the third one was that we wanted to be able to use it to store our kayaks when they're not in use. We have a lot of kayaks, so... We do, we do. And we started off, we have a rack that holds six in our garage currently, but we figured that this can be dual purpose and it can hold them as well. So that's the game plan. So this means that this trailer has to be able to fit inside our garage. And then since we have six or more kayaks and we have tons of friends and families that we want to go with, we were hoping that this trailer could fit at least four to six kayaks so we can bring our friends with us when we go out. So with all these requirements in mind, when we went shopping for the trailers and making our designs, we have to look at the trailers at different stores to see if they actually would be able to fit our requirements. So we ended up narrowing it down to three different trailers. There was a folding trailer at Harbor Freight, there was a trailer at Lowe's, and then there was another trailer at the Tractor Supply Company. The first trailer on our list is the Harbor Freight utility trailer. This trailer is pretty cool because not only is it the cheapest at right around $550, but it can be folded up when you're not using it. Some of the cons of this trailer is that it is not a super robust of a build. You have to put it together yourself and it has small tires. It's not probably the trailer for you if you're going to be traveling long distances at highway speeds. If you're hoping to use this for the fold up option and you're using it with a kayak, you're going to have to take all of your kayak racks off of it. So it's going to be quite a process to fold it up and put it away in the off season. So our second option is actually from Lowe's. It's double the price of the Harbor Freight one, but it is more sturdy from what we've seen. However, it has a mesh bottom and the tires are the same size as the one from Harbor Freight. And the fender wells are also open on the inside. So if you're driving down the road, rocks could fly up inside the trailer and hit the bottom of your kayaks. And also the tailgate does not fold all the way flat on the trailer without some modification. So our third option is actually from the tractor supply company. This is the one that we end up going with. It is more expensive. In fact, it is the most expensive one out of all the choices that we have. The tires on this trailer are 23 inches and it's also has a very nice wooden deck. Yeah, the wooden deck definitely gives it a nicer build quality. It feels a lot more sturdy. It also has fenders that seem a lot more tough and solid wheel wells. So we don't have to worry about those rocks hitting the kayaks anymore. One more bonus that this trailer has is a lot of anchor points to help us tie down those kayaks. And did you know that this trailer is made in America? So after deciding on which trailer that we were going to get, we actually asked Dustin that for help with the designing process since he's retired and he's a very skilled handyman. We needed to decide on which materials we were going to be using for the build, the shape of the racks, the spacing between the racks, and we even came up with the idea of a removable top rack. So if we were just taking a couple of kayaks, we didn't have to take out this super tall trailer. We started off our calculations by measuring our widest kayaks, which are the Crescent Light Tackles. We figured out that they would need a slot that was at least 35 inches wide to sit flat. Knowing that, we made the base of our design 70 inches wide. This had two small vertical posts that would actually slide into the trailer. Since we would be welding in a 24 inch vertical bar in the center, that would give us two 35 inch slots, one on each side. At the top of the vertical bar, we added two more 35 inch bars. And now things got a little bit tricky because the top section was going to be completely removable from the trailer. The top part, or the T as we call it, had one more 24 inch vertical bar and two more 35 inch bars. When you combine everything, you now have a rack that will hold six kayaks. But don't forget, you need to build two of these. One for the front of the trailer and one for the back of the trailer. So after multiple drafts and the designing process, we actually realized that we need to hire a fabricator to actually make the trailer sturdy enough to carry six kayaks. Luckily we found Joe, who is an incredibly talented fabricator. At first I was a little bit nervous to show Joe my design because it was kind of over the top and a little bit overkill, but he didn't even flinch when he saw it. In fact, he ended up adding some braces to make it even more sturdy. Joe also added a series of coupler pins that were used to keep the various sections of the trailer from coming apart unless we wanted them to. I thought that this was a really nice touch because this lets us transform the trailer without the use of too many tools. All we need is a mallet at times to help pound the sections apart. So after Joe finished with the trailers and we brought it home, there were still a few more things that need to be done. When we originally thought up the trailer, it was just going to be this ugly workhorse trailer, but it came out so nice that we really wanted to make it look as good as it was going to work. The first thing on our list is to paint the trailers and to do that, we have a few steps that we need to do to prep it for painting. This means sanding down the bars and taking a wire wheel to the welds. This took quite a bit of time because there is a lot of bars on this design. While we were at it, we also added holes for the eye bolts so we could use that to tie down the kayaks. After all the prepping, it's time to paint the whole rack. This means we have to paint every single bars and every nook and cranny. As soon as we were done painting, it was time to finally install the eye bolts. Even though this trailer has a ton of tie down attachment options, these eye bolts make it just a little bit easier to tie the kayaks down. I'm not sure why, but I've always been obsessed with black wheels, so I figured why not paint the trailer's wheels to match the Jeep. I think that the hardest part was actually masking off the wheels. And also while I painted the wheels, I decided I'd paint the hubs as well. I have no idea how this is going to stand up to the tortures of the road, but worst case scenario, I'll just paint it again. So the second step in the process is to stain the deck. This is completely unnecessary for the performance of the trailers, but we really, really love how it came out. So we're happy that we've done it. We started off by taking a sander to the deck to make sure it was buttery smooth. It was at this point that we realized that the tailgate on this trailer did not lay flat either, but it was a really easy and quick fix. All we had to do was take a router and notch a small pocket in the deck of the trailer and it laid flat in no time. So after we finished sanding the trailers and making the notches, it's time to stain the deck. This step actually did not take too long and it made a heck of a difference in the overall look of the trailer. So now it's finally time for the finishing touches. Since we already have the two Rhino racks that we previously used for our kayaks on top of the jeeps, we ended up repurposing them to put them on top of the bottom racks. For the top four racks, we ended up using pipe insulation foam. I was going to try to use Fun Noodles, but the diameter of the racks is just a little bit too wide to slide them on. The pipe insulation foam has a slit on the bottom so it slides on with ease. The foam will hopefully keep our kayaks from getting scratched or dinged up. We also ended up covering the tailgate in insulation foam. That way when we slide the paddleboard on the bottom, it won't get scratched up either. One more addition that we ended up making is adding a trailer jack. This trailer is very light and easy to move around as it is, but this makes it just a tiny bit easier and it also makes it so that it sits level in the garage without having to prop it up on a milk crate or something like that. One more addition that we would like to do in the near future is to add the spare tire holder. And with all of the work done, I'm proud to present to you the official That Adventure Life Kayak Trailer. So for our first attempt, we're actually really happy with how it came out. We think it's pretty awesome and we're completely in love with it. Our friends and family are actually even more in love with it because now we can take them out, you know, bring them anywhere we wanted. We definitely love being able to carry between four and six kayaks and it's even more awesome that we can also turn it back into a utility trailer because we've actually used it as a utility trailer several times since the build. Not only can it carry four to six kayaks, but we found a way to strap a paddleboard down on the deck as well. That brings our total to seven Fun Water Toys. One more awesome thing about the braces that Joe added to the trailer is that we were able to end up using them as another tie down point as well. On our first run, we actually take it out to Newport, which is about 100 miles from our home, and it handles very well. It's a lot better than we were expecting. If we were to build it again, I think the only thing that I might change is I might make a slightly smaller gap between the bars, which would give the trailer just a little bit of a lower profile. This way it would be, I think, a little bit more stable and we can load it better because this is pretty high right now when you're trying to load up the top part. We hope that this video gave you a little bit of inspiration if you're hoping to build your own kayak trailer, and we really appreciate you stopping by and spending some time watching us on this journey. It was definitely a very fun journey, and we enjoy building and doing all the DIY stuff, so we're hoping you guys just stick around with us on our future adventures and more building DIY projects. If you guys have any questions or comments, you can leave it below, and don't forget to like and subscribe, that way it can help our channel grow and it can help us afford to make more videos like this for you guys. For all the information about this build and other awesome adventures and DIY things, head on over to ThatAdventureLife.com.