Just came off a five day camping and wheeling trip with some friends on the Dusy Ershim trail in the High Sierras (couple of hours East of Fresno, CA). The scenery is beautiful, and the trail is tough in spots. We took the FJ and pulled the newly-built-not-quite-finished-redneck-as-all-heck trailer behind us. :D

Frank got an old Chevy S-10 bed for 40 bucks, picked up a used camper shell, and built the entire trailer, and we hit the road... all in less than 3 weeks time. The trailer has a 10 gallon fuel station for the FJ, a 21 gallon potable water tank and pump, 12 V battery that charges off the FJ battery, 5 gallon propane tank for cooking and lanterns, and still has plenty of room for 2 large marine coolers, tents, sleeping bags, etc. We had most of the stuff just laying around, including the 37" ProComp Xterrains and beadlock wheels.

Here's a link to a quick 20 second video of the trailer and FJ coming down the back of Chicken Rock... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8506279311696929717&hl=en

I swear it's totally redneck (at least according to our 9 year old)... but kinda cool, and it sort of grows on you.

We got the idea from our good friend Bruce Zeller (who drives a Jeep Cherokee and pulls a totally cool chuck-wagon style trailer).

I'll post up some pics of our hill billy adventure!!

Here's BZ who started this whole "hey-Frank-you-should-build-a-trailer-too" thing!

Unfortunately, since BZ was driving a JEEP :laughing:, he broke the steering and a front axle on the trip, so we spent quite a bit of time at a make-shift camp waiting for parts. Our kids resorted to begging on the side of the trail!

THX for the pics . . . I just noticed the hitch on that is different. Can you fill me in on that. It appears to give greater clearnce while Your on the trail . . .

It does give greater clearance for off road use, but the stock receiver is too weak for the amount of cantilever the hitch puts on the receiver. We had problems on the trail and had to reinforce it by welding some temporary gussets directly onto the bumper. Since the trip, Frank's built a custom receiver into the frame with beefy triangulation gussets all neatly hidden behind the bumper. The new receiver is raised into the center of the bumper, instead of the stock location below, and now has even greater clearance.

Hillbilly my ass, that's Hollywood:smokin:

We really like the way you guys have fixed up the FJ - looks like exactly what we want to do.

I'll bet your trip with BZ and family was a blast! Good to see competitors out there wheeling streetable stuff. Shows the fans you don't have to have a buggy to have fun.

Thats a Bad-Ass trailer! Great Idea and I'll be using a Toyota Bed for my trailer.like the hitch set-up too.

Cool Pics.

KC

Cool! I know it was Dusy but did you ever find yourself in a spot where the fj was through but the trailer wouldn't allow you to move forward? OR where you had to unhook it to get through?

We never had to unhitch, but we did have to worry about hooking trees. Luckily the trailer tracks inside the FJ tire tracks by about an inch and a half... that helped immensely.