By Eric
I haven’t been too fond of the trailer jack I am using. It served its purpose for the initial stages, but needs to be replaced for what i need.
The problems I have with my current one is mainly the mounting. It requires a bigger surface area to mount to than just the tongue. Sure I can make a plate on the side of the tongue and then have the appropriate mounting surface, but I don’t care to do that. The other problem is it’s not easy to remove when off-roading.
I have read and learned that when wheeling a trailer, you remove the tongue jack. Mainly this adds clearance for the tongue. I did not figure this out until Tillamook, OR when a rock hit the tongue jack and shoved it back along the tongue, also cutting some wires in the process. Removing four bolts is just too time consuming and i know there to be a better way.
I have had my eye on a jack at Harbor Freight for a long time. It’s a quick release style jack which I really liked, but it did have it’s faults for my needs. First it didn’t have a wheel on it, just a skid. That’s fine for a lighter tongued trailer, but not good for me. Second was the stand inside the jack didn’t rotate, so i couldn’t mount a wheel on it and use it.
Today I needed to fabricate and modify something. I am still unpacking stuff in the garage, but I knew where most of my tools were. So i decided to make a jack to fit my needs. I bought the Harbor Freight jack along with an inflatable style tire mount.
When i setup the jack with the tire underneath against the tongue of the trailer, i realized that the jack stand is too tall to accommodate the tire i wanted to use. So here is what i needed to do; shorten the jack, make the jack stand rotatable, and mount the tire on it. Easy.
I disassembled the jack to see what i was dealing with. I noticed that what made the stand not rotate inside the tube was an inch and half notch in the exterior tube which guides the stand inside, with a matching groove, up and down and not able to rotate. So this notch would have to go.
I figured I needed to cut 3 inches off the total length to make things work. By cutting 3 inches off the exterior tube, i also got rid of the notch, so now the stand rotates.
To cut the internal tube, i had to remove the threaded insert on top of the tube. I chose to drill out the notches in the tube which held the nut in place. Once removed, I was able to cut the necessary 3 inches off that tube. Also cut was the threaded rod that makes this whole thing work.
When reassembled I had a shortened jack which also rotates. Now all that’s left is mounting the new wheel in place of the skid, and mounting it on the trailers’s tongue. 
You may be wondering what the other jack is lying on the ground. It’s a solution to an idea I had for working on the trailer in my garage. It allows me to do this:
