power driven trailer

This kind of thing is done by Kinze Manufacturing for farm wagons. They have a kit for putting a truck axle under the rear of the gravity wagon, then a drive line that goes up to the tractor PTO to drive the wagon axle in soft fields.
Regards Marti

everyone keeps saying how its been discused but who has done it and where are the pics what problems did they run into

The Amish or whatever they are around here take a pickup and cut the cab off to make a trailer out of it. Then they run a pto shaft from the rear end to the tractor pto when they get it rolling in high gear with the tractor they can kick the tractor into neautral and engage the pto to let the truck rear push the tractor. I swear I've seen them running 40 or 45mph before(scary).

Also on using the pto slip shaft idea, I have seen them in pretty tight binds before with implements and they do fine. I would not want to do this at highway speeds but off road I think would be fine. Just my two cents

flighht2k5 said:

Didnt the Land Rover FC 101 have a power driven trailer?

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Land Rover FAQ: Part IV, 101" Forward Control: Power Trailer

Mike

m16ty said:

Not that I'm going to do this but I was sitting around thinking today and wondered about this. Could you take a M105 and put a deuce axle under it and power it off the rear axle output of the deuce? I'm thinking something like a PTO shaft on farm equipment to run from the truck to the trailer. Seems possible but I could be just crazy .

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Would this work with it moving all over or would you lock it in basically creating a 8by8?

With a carrier bearing near the hitch the driveline angles would easily be handled by U joints CV joints would take care of shaft-whip issues if they arose. The shaft going from the rear axle to the carrier has to have a lot of extension to allow it to keep up with rear axle suspension travel. The shaft from the carrier to the trailer axle would need a cv style high angle joint to avoid bind in a situation where the trailer hits the deuce (like jacknife). I would suggest lockout hubs on the trailer or disconnect the driveshaft for highway service. I want to do this I just dont have the parts or budget.

What I would be interested in is hydraulic drive. I see no purpose for the trailer to be self-driven at high speeds, only for it to "pull its own weight" off road so the towing vehicle won't be any worse off that if it were without the trailer. In that case, how about a PTO driven hyd. pump, powering a nice torquey hydraulic motor mounted to a rockwell. Fed by two flexible lines across the hitch. You'd also need a hydraulic motor speed controller, and all of the above can be purchased at Northern.

Well Sergeant Styker beat me to the punch--Hydraulic drive, or rather, assist. The European logging trailers have it as an option. I think you can see it if you google FARMI

remember KISS

keep it simple soldier.

Or buy a Pinz. They have powered trailers

Just joined the forum when I googled this thread.

I am renovating a 1969 Volvo Laplander and last night I bought #20 of the 100 PTO driven trailers that Volvo built for my truck. If you all are interested I can post more pics tomorrow when I have good light for pic taking. Here is a link to my friends trailer and Laplander. It is a very solid and interesting solution.

MobileMe Gallery

Well M16ty and SS, please bring us up to date on your thoughts or progress for doing what you posted. I watched the Laplander...it's very cool.

I'm staring at the back of my deuce that I am just making into a 4x4 and looking at the axle that just came out and well....I had exactly the same thought as you...put it under an M105 and drive it from the rear of the truck's axle.

An air locker in the middle and lockouts on the truck front and trailer....that's why I named it "Money Pit". Anyway...has anyone ever seem a powered M105?

I have 2 thoughts for mechanical drive, keep the driveshaft off center and allow for the length travel or bring it onto center, in line with the hitch....or something in between.

Is this such an odd thing that nobody can reply and stimulate some thought? Watching video of powered trailers makes me wonder why there is not more interest/discussion.

I’m all in, been on my list of to do’s, as soon as I find a donor for the trailer, or if bringing my parts truck back to life doesn’t work out. Should be a piece of cake, plan on using a double ended PTO shaft, so I can pull it out when not needed/wanted. I can run equipment behind the tractor to roughly 75 degrees before I start to get chatter in the transmission.

Hey Toby, I think you play with hydraulics a lot?
I’ve asked several times in threads about mounting a pump on the trucks pinion and an appropriate sized motor on the trailer pinion. Basically a high pressure closed loop system running 1:1 with maybe an adjustable inline relief to keep from over pressuring. I would imagine the pump and motor would be massive/expensive for the torque necessary. I always been told it wouldn’t work or couldn’t be done, and don’t think Ive ever got an explanation why not though. I imagine a massive amount of heat being generated and would be interesting to deal with, in a closed high pressure loop, and think thermal expansion would be an issue as well.

Even if it could be done I would imagine a shaft driven system would be way cheaper...

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Jbulach...it simply does not turn fast enough for hydraulics to overcome the leakage around the gear, piston or vane of the pump and motor. In a perfect world there would be no losses and 1 revolution in would be 1 revolution out. Instead, 1 rev of the drive may only get 1/2 rev of the driven (at the very low speed). Notice how about every pump and motor have a drain connect....that gets the oil back into the tank (while providing lubricant) that comes around the gear, vane or piston.

At higher speed we could make it work, even then it may need a second pump and an accumulator to store some energy.

Shaft, and like you say Jbulach, removable, is the direction I would go. I went to the farm store and was looking at splines and telescoping units....very do-able.

The rear of the axle (drive) is both offset and moves up and down in relation to the pinion hitch. I think it would be best to bring it to the center.

But I'm still pondering why I would need the setup....I don't go mudding with my trucks and I have the feeling that it might be a loser on the time/money vs. sale price that usually drives my decision. Eventually I sell most of what I build.

Having worked on a similar type of powered pusher ie: the Breda Bus, I can say there are several things that you need to consider. One is how are you going to prevent "jack-knifing" ? On the Breda bus they used high pressure hydraulic rams (6,000 to 10,000 PSI) that were controlled by computer. They sensed road speed and turn angle and throttle position to adjust the pressure in each cylinder. I can tell you when this system failed (which it did a lot) , it caused terrible handling of the bus. Many a driver found themselves in the ditch due to a ram system failure. Driving straight down the road was no problem. Going through curves or worse "corners" with the system non-functional caused horrible problems.
Another thing you need to consider is up and down angle control. Again the Breda used extremely heavy duty torque rods to prevent over extending the upward or downward movement. For example, if the trailer was pushing and the upward angle was uncontrolled it could potentially lift the rear axle off the road . More then likely it would push the axle over causing a loss of control. On a tandem axle truck like our deuces, they use the torque rods to control axle movement in relation to each other. Your trailer would need this too.
I know this can be done. It has been done, but there was a lot of engineering that made these systems work.

I wonder why they ever powered the back axle on an articulating bus, assuming the intermediate thats on the front section is powered as well?

Talk to Jesse at High Angle Driveline. He designed the driveline that was going to go into my powered trailer project. It became cost prohibitive to accomplish. My trailer is 34 ft long. A whole lot of drive line. Good luck.

Rusty, I would see this as an off road only thing for having the drive line attached, low speed. That said, there may be advantage to having hydraulic, maybe air cylinders to help it stay in the desired position, especially when backing. I'm going to have the PTO on the tranny, so could do some hydraulic steering. I have a surplus of 2" x 24" double action cylinders. There could be a floating position, a valve with open center and a powered turn left and right by position of a valve. Hmmmm

Re the drive line, it's 5 1/2" off of center. If the radius of the ark that the trailer would turn hooked to the pintle is a chord across, it would need about 2x that distance of drive expansion and contraction or 10" of travel for a full turn to one side. The going the other way, it must collapse about the same amount. I could be wrong, but having 20" plus of travel seems problematic.

I would bring the drive line to the center of the pintle and then at the trailer, do the same thing going back to the left side (axle location). Theoretically a straight turn would result in no length changes. Add in a high trailer angle going up and down and to figure that members linear distance it must move...I don't think it will be long.

Quick connect could be the portions connected to the two axles. It would be nice to have lockouts on the trailer axles but removing the driveshafts would be simple and not cost $1000