Tilt trailer

450 · Mar 10, 2019

Has anyone converted a hand pump (full tilt) trailer to a powered tilt or gravity tilt? It so how was it and where did you get your parts? This is a H&H 20 full tilt trailer. Thanks

Fallon · Mar 10, 2019

Double Acting Units would be a good starting place.

George2615 · Mar 10, 2019

I did convert the same exact trailer. I bought the power up / gravity down unit through Graingers, the cylinder and hose from Surplus Center. I put the unit inside a Tractor supply box I mounted to supporting steel frame for a winch in the box as well. If I recall I believe the power unit was around $500, Cyl and hose was another $125, and box about $100. The rest of material I had. In all was around 800-850. A single acting cylinder worked great for power up /gravity down only needing one hose. I looked for a cylinder with a similar length closed, same stroke, and larger piston diameter. I bought the higher capacity hyd. fluid box for the pump (square box) but the original round reserve would have been fine.
The original cost of a H&H with power unit was $1600 more so I saved about $800 or so.
I bought my trailer new in 2006 but by 2014 had outgrown the 7K weight rating so it was sold and replaced with my PJ 22' full tilt 14K.
The link Fallon listed has a pump similar to what I used.

450 · Mar 10, 2019

George, was your pump unit double action or single action? I would be fine with gravity down if it would stay up until I let it down. One hose would be nice. Thanks for the help.

George2615 · Mar 10, 2019

As shown in my first pic there is a round black knob. Pushing the knob one way engaged the pump to fill the cylinder and tilted the bed. When released the bed stayed tilted. To lower the bed the knob was moved the other way relieving cylinder pressure. You could vary how fast or slow it lowered.

lennyzx11 · Mar 16, 2019

450 said:
Has anyone converted a hand pump (full tilt) trailer to a powered tilt or gravity tilt? It so how was it and where did you get your parts? This is a H&H 20 full tilt trailer. Thanks

Watching. I just put a double acting pump in my amazon wish list for my exact same trailer.

450 · Mar 17, 2019

Lenny, when it warms up here I will convert mine to HPU. It’s still snow on the ground here so it will be a couple of months.

lennyzx11 · Mar 20, 2019

I have read of a couple of times where guys converted a bottle jack or engine cherry picker from manual to hydraulic in the past.
I am going to use a regular hydraulic cylinder though.

It’s a lot of pumps to get to the ground sometimes, huh?!