I needed a trailer for luggage and supplies for travelling to various car shows because with four passengers, there's absolutely no room left inside the car.I didn't really want to use a Coke cooler, because it had been done many times before , but time was a factor and I needed something for the upcoming Syracuse Nationals that were just a few weeks away. I figured that finding a cooler would be no problem because I see these for sale everywhere, but now that I needed one, the closest one I found was 1 1/2 hours away. The owner told me it was a little rough, but had no rust. Money in hand, I drive down to pick it up. It was dark and pouring rain when I got there, so I paid the asking price and threw it in the back of my truck. The next day I started stripping it. What a piece of junk!! The reason it had no rust is because some hacker had already tried to restore it by laying fiberglass right over all the rot. I was going to scrap the idea, but had no time to find another cooler.



Every edge and corner had to be made from scratch. Even the "Coca-Cola" embossment had rust holes in it.



The straight edges were formed on a box brake, and the corners were formed by hammer and dolley.



With that much welding on flat panels, I had a lot of shrinking to do to get rid of the "Oil-Canning". It was even more difficult because I was not able to do any metal massaging where the embossements were. Once the sides were flat, I started on the frame to support the cooler.



I wanted suspension with about 4 inches of travel, but didn't want to use leaf springs.Some of the trailers I've seen others build, sit too high and bounce because leaf springs are made for heavier loads. It took me three attempts to get my final design. I ended up using VW beetle shocks with 250LB springs. The geometry has a 5 to 1 advantage so the heavy springs worked great.



Once I had the chassis figured out, I went back to smoothing the cooler box.After sandblasting, small pinholes were filled using Fiberglass filler, then a skim coat of body filler was applied to the whole surface.



After block sanding, the trailer was assembled to make sure everything fit right. A top door as well as a tailgate door was then made from plywood and aluminum. Gas charged shocks limit door opening.



I got the "OK" from Kyle that it was now ready for disassembly and paint.The frame was painted in Urethane the same colour as my car.The cooler box was done in base clear, with the embossement first sprayed in white. After 4 hours of taping off the lettering, the red was applied.



I carpeted the interior with beige carpet to give it a clean look. BTW, those tailights are housings from a '39 Chev with ring that I machined to adapt the glass lenses I found at a swap meet.



Here's the final product, and how I set it up at car shows. It took me longer to find that umbrella than it did to build the whole trailer!! I've towed this thing almost 600 miles, and you can't even tell it's behind you. On one occasion I hit over 90MPH with it because I forgot it was there. Just don't tell anyone!!