Cob Jockey

Last year at one of the last Dressage shows of the year, I was stabled at the end of the barn.  I looked over toward the end of the day, and saw a woman loading horses into my exact model of trailer not 10 feet from me.

This post will be punctuated with "Before" photos.  Even before pressure washing.

I ran over and said, "Hey, I have a weird question for you.  I have that exact same trailer - have your back doors ever rotted out?"

"Oh my gosh, I am so glad you came up to me!  I was just taking pictures of the metal bracing system you have on your ramp to show my husband, I hope you don't mind.  Yes, my back doors and ramp have both rotted out."

The bars she was talking about.  These are after market.

"Who fixed them for you?" I said, "Yours look amazing and mine need done.  They're not even on the trailer right now."

She said her husband did them, he does all of the maintenance on her trailer, and that he's an auto body professional by day that does some moonlighting on the side.  She said he'd probably do mine as well, and we exchanged numbers with a text from her that said "It's Robin, your Trailer Twin!"

Poor, sad upper doors in the tack room.

Now that I'm either fixing my trailer up to sell it or fixing my trailer up to keep it, I decided to take her up on her offer, and dropped it off at her farm on Sunday.  I was just going to have him do the doors and was going to take it to the dealer for everything else it needs, but that was before I learned this guy is a freakin' early 00's KieferBuilt expert.

Things I learned about my trailer that I did not know before:
- The bar that goes through the springs at the bottom of the ramp was coming out.  Two whacks with a mallet fixed that.

- The doors and the ramp both are missing corner weatherstripping, so the side weatherstripping starts to fall off and the combination of both allows water to get into the doors.

I wish I had post-pressure washing pictures to share.  It looks awesome..

- On Saturday, I pulled up the dressing room floor to discover that it's totally rotted through in one small section on the front wall, but I couldn't figure out where the moisture came from.  The skylight was an obvious suspect, but the roof didn't leak when I sprayed water on it, and the rot was nowhere near the skylight.

TURNS OUT it's because KB didn't caulk between the diamond plate gravel guard and the body of the trailer on the nose.  Water gets between them and makes its way into the dressing room floor.  I am a pretty good "moisture where it shouldn't be" sleuth, but I never would've gotten that one.  People with aluminum trailers with gravel guards and wood floors, public service announcement: make sure that bad boy is caulked.

The location of the rot is just to the right of those two bag chairs hanging on the wall.

Side note:  This is a good reminder to pay attention to moisture issues and floor quality everywhere, not just in the horse compartment.  I knew there was a small amount of moisture getting into the dressing room, but I had no idea how bad it was til I pulled the carpet up.