trailer

[mikeschn]

Me? Geography? Not a chance. Maybe if I start dragging a small teardrop all over the place I can learn where a few places are? Ah well, thanks for letting me know where you really are!!!

As for having it all, well ya, kinda sorta... a teardrop is a bed, and a kitchen, basically. Anything you can get in there beyond that is a bonus.

Being located that far north, seems to me that if you had a basic teardrop with a furnace you would have it all! But then you would still need a porta-pottie tent.

I saw somewhere on the web that someone had built a teardrop with 2 doors on the side. 1 door led to the main teardrop sleeping area, and the other door, I assume led to a bathroom. It was one of the larger teardrops I had seen. So it's been done before. If that's what you want, it's do-able. Do you have a large enough tow vehicle for that?

Or maybe what you really want is a mammoth... my idea of a tiny trailer that has it all....




What do you think?

Mike...

P.S. It's only 14' long, it can NOT be built in a weekend, but you can have it all!

[catrinka]

We still like the idea of cooking outside. For now we are planning on pulling it with my intrepid but do have plans for upgrading to an explorer or something similar in the next year or so.

[beverlyt]

Cathy,
Does it have to be a teardrop? How about a "tiny trailer"
What about the floorplan on the Alite 400? The galley is stored inside above storage and can be brought outside.
http://www.aliner.com/page32.html

Or build something like the Sequoia. It has a large opening for the kitchen area.
http://www.glen-l.com/campers/sequoia.html

Both these have a place for a porti-potti.

Just a thought.

Bev

[mikeschn]

Cathy,

I took a look at your plan in your album. It's hard to see without a side profile. Can you draw that up in MS Paint?

I did notice you didn't leave much space for the porta potty. 2' is tight, even if you are skinny.

I'd really like to see that in a side profile, I think you'll find that opens up your porta potty closet quite a bit...

Mike...

[catrinka]

Mike, the side profile for the bed/portapotti layout looks something like the tailgater. There would be a bit of a partition between the bed and the potti. I know 2' doesn't seem like much but if you check the space around a regular toilet there isn't much more room. The potti itself is about 14" square. I actually went to the store and measured them. My son has a webcam on his computer, maybe we can figure out some way to get pictures through it onto the computer.

[catrinka]

After a quick trip to Best Buy there are some scans of my sketches in my album.

[mikeschn]

Kewl! Let me print those and eyeball them this morning. I'll get back to you on them.

Scanners have gotten cheap haven't they? Too bad digital camera's are not that cheap. You'll need one to build your project.

Mike...

[mikeschn]

okay I took a quick look...

The body alone is 655 pounds, and it's huge!!!



Can you get the length down to maybe 10'?

You've got to do like Dean did... keep drawing and refining. Now that you've got the scanner, you can do that!!!

Dean's first model was 15' long. Now he's down to about 10'. In the tiny trailer world, that's a lot!

The Raven Argonaut which would also work for you is only 9' long.



Mike...

[mikeschn]

Hey Catrinka,

Here's an idea for you that you can play with.

It starts with 2 sheets of 5x10 plywood and a 5' wide trailer.

And ends up looking like this, with a slide out kitchen in the rear! Notice, the kitchen has to be out for you to sleep. But during transport it's a simple 5x10 tiny trailer.

Here are two different concepts. What do you think? anyone else got any ideas?



BTW, in the front you have room for a 3' wide porta-potty closet, just like on the tail gating machine!

Mike...

[catrinka]

It's not that huge, its just 11 feet long counting the bubble at the front. I thought of a slide out kitchen, but I'd like to be able to close the hatch at night if need be. Some of the area that we would like to camp in is bear country.

Hey Mike, once you are done building tears you should travel north and do some exploring up here.

[mikeschn]

Bear country...

That reminds me... I have to design a survival trailer for someone... I think he was talking about plate steel with these huge rivets... that would probably work in bear country too!

Mike...

P.S. If you want to build me a Raven Argonaut, I'll stop building tears and start exploring your bear country!!!

[catrinka]

Sounds like you are a little afraid of bears???

[mikeschn]

No, not really... never met a bear yet. I met a raccoon while backpacking, and he took all my food while I was asleep. So if bears want my food, I'll have to lock it up in a sturdy metal case or something!

Mike...

[catrinka]

I just added a pic of the trailer that started this discussion to my album. I was going to try to add it to this message but I'm not sure how to do that.

[mikeschn]

Ah the Snowbear trailer. Hey if you can get it for a good price, then you could build a tiny travel trailer around it. What's a good price? Well here in Michigan I can do the prices shown on my Weekender chassis page...

http://www.mikenchell.com/weekender/chassis

Worst case about $814, so I would say that's the price to beat. So how much is the Snowbear Trailer?

Mike...