Scratchin' My Head

[Guest]

This Norwegian is a bit stumped!
I did up a scaled drawing with a 17 1/2' canoe mounted on top with the pop-up lowered for travel and this thing looks like a Benroy that would haul a dragster! My daughter tells me that it looks like a bus!
I don't think that a trailer, 15' long can still be considered a teardrop.
Hmmmph! Gonna have to rethink things a bit.

[Shrug53]

Let's see the drawing and maybe we can make some suggestions.

[Guest]

Hi Shrug,
I'd be happy to get you some pics and I'm sure you will get a good chuckle out of them, but I'll have to email them to you in jpeg. I went to your site, but I don't see an email address. If you want you could PM your email address to me.

[mikeschn]

Dean,

Just upload the .jpg photos to your personal album here....
Click on Album->Your Personal Gallery.

Mike...

[Shrug53]

Hi Shrug,
I'd be happy to get you some pics and I'm sure you will get a good chuckle out of them, but I'll have to email them to you in jpeg. I went to your site, but I don't see an email address. If you want you could PM your email address to me.

If you have trouble uploading them here, please feel free to email me at [email protected]

[Guest]

Thanks Mike,
I tried, but they were just a bit too wide, so I will need to reduce the image size. Shrug came through with his email address, so I sent them to him and I'm letting him have all the laughs for himself as for now.

[Guest]

OK Mike,
I got the images reduced, so have a good laugh for yourself!

[mikeschn]

Okay, I've analyzed your design, and have made my determination...

This is what you have...



Mike...

[angib]

Dean,

It ain't what you want but here's a design for a canoe-carrying trailer I did a while ago.



That's a 15.5ft canoe on a 8ft trailer so extrapolating to your 17.5ft canoe suggests that a 10-12ft trailer should do.

Andrew

[Guest]

Hmmm,
Let's see..... with the pop-up feature lowered and eveything squashed down to four feet tall while in transit, with boats on top..... And then parked, with the pop-up extended with those neat clerestory windows across the back end of the pop-up... Just maybe, maybe with a little tweaking.... I could qualify for an elongated tear, No?

[Shrug53]

Your idea is fine. It does, in fact, look a lot like Mikes.
Andrew is right though, his design would work great. I would say you could have the canoe overhang 2-3 feet in either direction and still be fine. If it is too far over the raer you will just need some clamp-on lights.
I would say an extended rail on the top wired for light, say something you could could extend, would work. The hard part here is still going to be getting the pop-up working right.
I have spent hours looking at Sumners photos and can still not figure it out. Short of studying it in person, I do not think I oculd make anything quite that elaborate.
There is a grerat book available on Amazon though called "Slide Out Rooms, Mechanics and Structures" by Dave Galey
As soon as I can scrounge up an extra 20 bucks, I will be picking it up.

[Guest]

Andrew,
That looks really good!
I think I'm going to keep tweaking and not give up on my idea, only because I've heard so many comments about folks wishing that they had gone bigger with their designs and certainly that shouldn't be a problem with what I came up with on my first go at it. Heck, I have room for a hot tub right now.

Since I'm into this wood strip boat building thing, it seems a natural choice for me to go all woody on this thing, but that low maintenance of other materials sounds pretty nice.
(Decisions, decisions....)

[Guest]

Hey Shrug,
I seem to be one step behind everyone today.
You guys have some very good valid points, for which I must consider.
Thank you for all the input, it has eased the design frustration a bit and Thank You All, for not laughing me out of the park!
It took me a bit to get Sum's mechanics pictured correctly in my mind, in fact I had to assume on a couple of things, like how he kept the top from wandering all over the place when he raised or lowered it and how he incorporated insulation into the raised sections. I must say that his cable system and routing layout is supreme.

Back to the drawing board.
My next image post will be more detailed, I promise! (Gotta figure out how to draw with this stinkin' mouse though)

[Shrug53]

I will probably stick to a thin plywood shell to pop-up raised on a couple of power window rails. I should be able to scavenge what I need out of the local junkyard.

[Chip]

Hey mike on the duelly baja benroy,,(((( I LIKE IT!!!!))))
ok when ya gonna start building and what is the tongue weight estimated to be on this one

later,,chip