Utility Trailer into a Kayak Trailer for $200

Loaded up heading to New York last year.

My current trailer design was built on a 4 by 8 utility trailer I had designed it to free up space in the Jeep for day trips and overnighters to allow maximum sleeping space in the truck. The design worked well and the only problem I had was that after long trips the bolts that held the 2x4s together would loosen up by the end of the trip. We have also out grown the first iteration of the trailer we have added another boat to the fleet and we need more storage for longer trips. We have big plans this year to travel and fish from New York to Texas and everywhere in between. This means the trailer needed to be updated to be able to carry more gear and withstand highway driving without falling apart all for less than my budget of 200 dollars. 

Tearing it down back to stock.

The main improvement of the new design is going to an all metal construction I used a set of Universal Truck ladder rack as the crossbars which included mounting hardware. The bars were super easy to install and are very sturdy I also added Loctite to the threads of each bolt to prevent loosening like last time. Instead of using PVC pipe as the supports for the kayaks I opted for the commercial kayak rollers and cradles. This would have added a huge cost to the rebuild as two brand new cradle systems would cost more than what  the trailer cost me. We were lucky that Collin won a complete Yakima cradle system at a tournament raffle last year which and I bought a used Thule system for $60 on eBay. My used system was missing some mounting hardware but the existing hardware didn't fit the 2 inch crossbars anyway so it didn't really matter. I had to buy $10 bucks worth of U bolts to attach it to the trailer so $70 for 2 sets of kayak cradles couldn't be beat. If I was being really cheap I could have mounted the PVC to the crossbars but the cradles conform to the boats much better. Plus the cradles were designed to perform on high speed long distance trips and overall they look much cleaner. So far I have spent $146 to rebuild my trailer I still need a spare tire mount and I plan on adding locking rod storage.

almost finished kayak trailer

the boats are the same height as the truck