Back in 1976 when my 13' Scamp was produced, one of its features was that it cleared a 7' overhead door for garage storage. During remodeling, however, I upsized the wheels. More ground clearance let it access more interesting places to camp in recent years since. Currently, however, it's time to tuck it inside a garage for a short spell. Except now it's several inches too tall.
No worries. I have a solution. Baby wheels. I had a pair in storage from a previous project. They would've fit the original axle whose hubs used 4 lugs on a 4" circle. But when I upsized the axle I changed to 6 lugs on a 5.5" circle. (For compatibility with 15" wheels/axles from an old Airstream that I used to build a car hauler for Loretta's Audi.) So now I needed baby wheel adapters.
My solution was to first design a set of plates to establish the different bolt hole spacing. Two sets of steel brackets made from 3/16" plate were overlapped.
Coupler nuts were added and once all holes were tweaked and all bolted together, everything was then welded to lock the geometry. For baby wheel lugs I downsized from 1/2 to 3/8 inch threads. Washers were welded to the couplers as hub face for the rims.
Tapered shoulder bolts then provided some self centering once torqued. Since the trailer was jacked up to remove the big wheels, improvised ramps were placed under the baby wheels when it was lowered. Then it just rolled down the ramps, under the 7' door header, and into the garage.
Since lil' yeti needs more body work, among other attention, hopefully that is in its near future. Something to look forward to...
