Totally Overbuilt Race Car Trailer Made to Withstand Baja Can Be Fixed With Chevy Truck Parts
The Drive ·
Here's what happens when a race car designer tries his hand at a trailer: It's incredibly sturdy yet lightweight where it counts, and you can repair it with spare parts from any salvage yard. The post Totally Overbuilt Race Car Trailer Made to Withstand Baja Can Be Fixed With Chevy Truck Parts appeared first on The Drive .
As much as I love race cars, I know I’ll never be a pro driver . I’m too big, too slow, and if I’m honest, too scared. But I could see myself being a race car transporter someday, where it’s my job to haul the vehicles from one track to another. And because I’m more Mack than Lightning McQueen , I get especially excited when I see specialized equipment like this trophy truck trailer from JEHC and Valew. Plainly put, it’s one of the most well-thought-out haulers I’ve ever seen.
You can tell this trailer is something neat just by looking at it. It’s intentionally utilitarian—from the tongue section, which incorporates a huge storage box with room to fit 35-inch tires on either side, to the deck that’s made to fit a Class 6100 rig while remaining as narrow as possible. Still, there are other features that show how JEHC’s Jason Heard has a unique paradigm when it comes to trailer design.
Allow me to geek out a bit over the storage solutions here. It’s true that many trailers on the market today have built-in, lockable compartments; I’m well aware of that. But this Valew model features three aluminum boxes per side, while the one up front houses the electric-over-hydraulic brake assembly. Between the frame rails—in the trailer’s belly, so to speak—there’s also space for up to five 42-inch tires. Heck, Heard even suggests that you could fit 10 of them if your race truck has enough clearance to drive over them. Rest assured that there are plenty of tie-downs, too, whether we’re talking about up high where the rig drives onto it or underneath it.
The entire unit is roughly 24 feet long, and it measures 96 inches wide—about the same as a new Chevy Silverado 3500 dually (96.75 inches). Ramps are stowed away out back, but the trailer actually sits low enough that trophy trucks can simply drive up without ’em. One stat I’m not sure about is overall weight, and I do know that the trailer itself is made with lots of steel; however, those aluminum boxes apparently save 800 pounds compared to the first iteration. I’m sure your modern diesel will pull it without a problem, especially if you’re hitching it to a new 8.3-liter Duramax .
JEHC shared CAD drawings of the trailer’s chassis, which show just how “gnarly” it is, to use Heard’s words. The two main frame rails are 2-by 6-inch with 3/16-inch walls, while many of the other support thicknesses are 1/8-inch or .065. That means it’s sturdy throughout and lightweight where it can be. Placement of these supports was extremely methodical, too, as Heard explained, “At no point in time, if you have a race car on this trailer, is the contact patch of the tire ever floating between sheet metal. There’s actually a rib down the entire center of the trailer, so you have all the weight of the race car on the primary structure.”
It’s optimized to fit cars with wheelbases between 120 and 128 inches. So whether you have a front-engined Class 6100, a mid-engined Class 1, or something else entirely, it should sit nicely on the trailer.
JEHC went with a pair of 8,000-pound axles to undergird this big boy, and Heard explains that a tri-axle version is on the table. What’s especially interesting about the inner workings of this trailer is that it employs a Timbren assembly, which eliminates leaf springs and torsion bars. You can fit these assemblies with shocks, but for now, the prototype trailer doesn’t have them. Instead, Heard explains that the setup they created has been exceptional at dealing with bumps on the “roads” in Baja, if you want to call them that.
Rough paths with giant chugholes are also why JEHC designed axle housing ends that accept mid-2000s Chevy and GMC 3500 front unit bearings and brake assemblies. This means they’re incredibly repairable, as you can find those trucks all over Ensenada. The hope is that any downtime will be cut short, limiting any episodes where you might be left stranded in the sandy desert.
Typically, JEHC designs race cars instead of the trailers that haul them, but Heard wanted to create his ideal hauler. That’s why he partnered with Valew, a high-quality truck body manufacturer that has the know-how to build these at scale. It seems like a match made in heaven for anyone who needs this type of setup, and I’m eager to see more of them out in the world. How much they’ll cost has yet to be announced.
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