Hello there,

[spchytr]

I figure this is probably the best place to start posting.

I've been tent camping for the last 2 years or so, going into my third winter now. I started with an Ocala 5 (coleman) tent, but that got stolen at the end of the first year and I picked up a bigger tent. The Ocala was a 9x12(interior) with a large and small vestibule at each 12' end. I used aluminum laminated bubblewrap to insulate it durring the winter as I needed something flexible.

The new tent is a 17x10 so I'm able to have a bigger heater, I use a mr heater that mounts on a 5gal propane tank. I end up having to refill the tank about once every 2 or 3 weeks, depending on the temperature. I have camped in sub zero temperatures using the tents for the last 2 years, I pretty much live at Tuttle Creek State Park here in Kansas.

My primary concerns with the tent camping is having to move every 14 days, which is a real pain with the amount of stuff I have in the tent. But that's only durring the summer. The other concern is that some tree is going to fall on me while I sleep. In the last 2 years I have witnessed 1 entire tree, and 2 limbs big enough to destroy my car fall. I figure on building my own teardrop sometime in the next year or so, I know that some of the limbs that fall will still be able to wipe it out(even with a steel frame) if I build it light enough that my honda accord will be able to tow it.

I've been looking here for plans, ideas and resouces to help me in deciding what it is I want to build. Building a traditional teardrop (rounded) while not looking all that difficult seems like it may end up taking longer, and if I build a second I may end up going that route, at the same time I like the way they look. I'm leaning toward the weekender, as it seems like it will be simple to build, I also have ideas that may help it some with the weight. I hope to use cutouts like the weekender improvements use, but I wish to do so with almost all of the panels of the weekender. By skinning them with luan, or some other veneer I will be able to produce torsion boxes of all the walls and most of the panels, and I think 1/2' plywood would end up working well for the frame.

Cost is going to be a major issue for me, and so I hope to build it without a trailer, but using the same general plans of the ultralight. I think a straight tounge with a piece of angle iron at the back end where the tongue meets the center of the floor should work out well or I may end up using the ideas that were used on the other wooden trailer tear which was 5x8 floor plywood with 1x3s forming half of a torsion box. Then simply bolting the spring hangers directly to the wood, or possibly some small pieces of angle iron to spread out some of the stress a bit.

I would also like to have the back hatch open enough to be able to stand in the back, with a walkthrough galley. I would like to attatch to the back of the galley a canvas tent, which I hope to make out of either muslin, which comes 10' wide, or possibly duck cloth, depending on whether or not I will be able to adequately waterproof the muslin. I am looking for cheap solutions for waterproofing the outer skin of the trailer, and am not sure what material I will end up using. I have heard luan used quite a bit, aluminum sheeting (probably a bit expensive for me) as well as vinyl sheeting as used in bathrooms. I'm leaning toward the vinyl as it seems it would already be waterproof, but I've not looked to the cost of that yet. I've also seen various epoxies and paints used, but have to wonder if something like thompson's water seal would be sufficient. It will probably be one of the things I test while trying to waterproof the muslin, as well as some white roofing material which seems to dry something, like vinyl or tar.

Anyhow, been watching for about a month and reading though some of the threads looking at the ingenuity of the folks here and have a few ideas concerning popups, and such that I'd like to eventually share with you all. Don't know if you've seen the popup crates that staples has, but that was one idea that I thought might work for popups/drop floors. The end sides fold down and in, and the longer sides then fold like > < to alow the top to drop down. I've also seen some type of siccor mechanisms used in popups on vw microbusses, which look fairly easy to use, not sure about how easy it would be to build using that though. I've also seen pulley systems used, and they seem to be an easy way for setup, but they also seem to need a metal frame, and I would rather build in wood because of cost/ease of build.

Well folks that's about it for now. Just thought I'd say hi.

Martin

[stjohn]

Welcome to the board ,there is a design floating around this forums called a
Winter warrior or the escape hatch I cannot rember which,sounds about what you are looking for do a search on them both and you will find some info and pics hope this helps

Take care Mike

[calwes]

Wecome !! I'm sure you'll be able to find some ideas, although it may take a while to get through all the pictures.

[mikeschn]

Hi Martin,

Welcome to the forum...

I'm not familar with those popup crates. Got any pictures, or urls?

As far as building something light enough to pull with the accord, I'm sure we can find you something.

I am looking to lighten up the Escape Hatch... maybe some of those ideas can be applied to your build.

Mike...

[JawjaBoy]

Welcome,Martin ! Sounds like you've been doing some serious camping of the kind I used to do in my younger days [moving every 2 weeks !] I even lived in a Pinto station wagon for a good while with a dog [4-legged !] Have fun with whatever you decide to build,and remember: home is where the heart is ! David

[ARKPAT]

Welcome Martin.

Mike's Weekender is an easy and lite trailer to build. You can make it wider and lengthen it even on a four foot trailer. Also you can leave the galley out and or add it as time / money allow or use the area for storage.



Also there is Mike's Ultra Lite trailer. This would be for lite and small trailer.

Then as Mike mentioned is the "Winter Warior".




The configurations are endless as you can read from the post.
What ever you build as "Madjack said LUV THOSE PICs".

Good luck and have fun.


Pat

[Miriam C.]

Welcome Martin,
Sounds like you did some homework. Now go out and price some wood and plastic.

1. house paint works. Tompsons water seal is just that and has a short expected life. Considering the price Same for plastic. If you are on a budget you might consider that you can always come back and do aluminum or plastic.

2. no trailer frame. If cost is the issue---price oak 2x4's ($45 for 8') then look at the Harbor Freight when it is on sale. There is also the price of Axles and tires.

3.. I saw the escape hatch. It basically is the weekender with a standup. Like Mike said, "needs some weight trimming" for your needs, but it is great. You can also keep some of your tenting for standing up.

4. Tuttle Creek huh. How's the fishing?

[spchytr]

As to those collapsable crates, here's a quick link I found that kind of shows what I'm talking about.

http://www.ajprindle.com/products/sku-1 ... LNXTG.html

I'm not sure what the strength of it would be with piano hinge, but I figure it would depend on how close together the screws are, how long the screws are, and what material the drop floor was made of. Something like spruce 1x6's I would think would work, and I'd probably have to increase the number of screw holes in the piano hinge to hold up my staggering 300# weight. It shouldn't have to hold my weight for extended periods of time though, just enough to get in and out when the floor is dropped. Though I'm thinking of making it with a walk through galley, and having the bed fold either to the side, or toward the front to form a couch/bench. If I did this though having a table swing down from either side would be kind of tricky depending on where I have the doors and what a comfortable distance to have the table away would be. I also considered having it drop down from the ceiling similar to the way these same collapsable crates >___< something like this. But that would have to be put back up when I wanted to get up off of the couch. I'm thinking some kind of table that swings out from the wall would end up being better, but not sure of the strength such a table might end up having. Of course I also considered simply building something that would work like a tv tray for simplicity's sake, or possibly even a lap table would work easily enough.

Sorry for the length, I tend to be a bit longwinded sometimes. Lots of ideas boucing around in this skull of mine.

I'm also considering using tileboard for the outer skin, it's about 1/8" thick, seems pretty flexible, which would probably work pretty well if I went with a curved profile. I'm still leaning toward a facetted design though. Similar to a classic profile, but using 150Deg angles instead of the simple curve. I may end up decreasing that angle to what's used in a 10 sided polygon, but haven't decided yet. That would decrease the number of panels I have to make, I'm not sure how I would seal the ends of the tileboard if I end up using that though. If it's not UV resistant (which it's probably not) then I will probably end up using luaun with a white roofing paint of some kind, the stuff that ends up kind of rubbery.

I'm also looking at ways to charge batteries using my car. Possibly having a battery isolator run a dc to dc charger to charge a bank in my trunk. I'm also researching using the 6volt golf cart batteries, I may be able to charge them without using a charger, but don't know if I could have them wired in a way that I could charge them as a 6volt configuration and have them in a 12volt configuration when using them for power without having to rearange wiring, or possibly some heavy duty switching.

I'm going to be using CadStd to do up my designs, I try not to install anything on my computer that I can avoid and CadStd can be used portably(ie. not installed simply unzipped).

That's about all for now. Talk with y'all later.

Oh, I'd also be interested in any kind of links to future gathering dates/locations. I'd like to meet some of you folks and get a closer look at some of your own builds once I get mine up and running.

[spchytr]

Ok, Finally got a design started, and uploaded to my gallery, though it's just a side profile for the moment. I still need to add dimensions to it, but the floor is a total of 8'x5' I'm hoping to do this without the need for a full metal frame. Hopefully this won't be too difficult, though looking at the way I'm going to have to put the framing together I may change my mind about how easy this is supposed to be :)

I've also got dfx files of the design so far but nowhere that I can upload them to.