Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

It looks really good!!!! I like it!!!!

low277 wrote:It looks really good!!!! I like it!!!!

Thank you.
Carefully taken photos hide what does not meet my expectations, lol

I really like your kitchen cabinet faces, did you purchase or build them? And did you stain/finish yourself? They look great!

I've never done cabinets before so I'm fishing for ideas, don't want to end up with them looking like junk.

I noted your TV capacity is 5,000lbs, same as mine (2000 Tacoma). I'm also targeting a tow weight of around 3k. I'll be interested to hear your experience on the road.

tylerjd wrote:I really like your kitchen cabinet faces, did you purchase or build them? And did you stain/finish yourself? They look great!

I've never done cabinets before so I'm fishing for ideas, don't want to end up with them looking like junk.

I noted your TV capacity is 5,000lbs, same as mine (2000 Tacoma). I'm also targeting a tow weight of around 3k. I'll be interested to hear your experience on the road.

Thanks. Yes, I either painted or stained myself. Stain is a pain because any cross grain sanding shows thru, even orbital sanders. I prefer building myself to fit the space I have plus the majority of store bought have harticle board.

For a house, I will simply build boxes from plywood, then face frame them with wood of choice. You simply screw the boxes together. But for the trailer I utilixed 1x2/2x2 faced with either 1/4" or 1/8" ply built in place. A lot more trouble but I did this for weight savings. Utilizing box construction, you have 2 sidewalls of boxes sitting there. Plus being constrained between 2 walls that may or may not be plumb sucks trying to get them in.

My TV is a 2014 4runner. It should do ok at 55-60 mph. A lot better gas mileage than the F150 I had before that got no better than 13 empty.

We have hot water and a very happy wife.
Took longer to get parts than to install gas line, leak test it.
Since it is so smokey today from fires, I spent almost 2 hours trying to decide how I van lay out the hitch area for the battery, spare and propane tank. Just wouldn't fit without extending past the A-frame leading to issues with tight turns, backing up in the mountains on narrow roads, so opted to only put spare and battery on the nose, portable propane tank with quick disconnects.

Friday was spent fabricating a simple nose spare/battery rack.
No propane tank on it, wanted simple and elegant.
Propane rank will be carried inside, brought out, connected with a quick connect coupling.
The rack itself weighs 15 pounds surprisingly. So with the spare, battery on it, to gue weight was 294 pounds.
The trailer was basically empty except normal gear that stays in it, although the water heater was full which puts 50 pounds plus/minus behind the axle. I could drain it for travel....
Friday evening UPS brought the Etrailer brake assemblies, drums. I will install them today, won't take long.
Each assembly adds 30 pounds, so an additional 60 pounds added to trailer weight, though this weight is transferred directly to the tires.

Brakes and drums on. Maybe 2 hours.
Worst aspect is I lost the top for the Loctite tube.
I will wire them in same time I rerun my battery wireing as I will be installing a hot lead from TV to battery to simply keep it topped off.

Air bags arent inflated in this shot

Nice work ... You will love those trailer brakes!

fourbtgait, Howdy;

Just something to keep in yer noggin, easy way to "see" if the magnets that operate the brakes
are working when you activate them, either with the peddle or the controller, is to hold a compass,
not an engineers but the map & compass type near them. The needle should point right at them.

hank

So by my calculations;
Trailer originally weighed 1,300 with 130 TW.
I added in with build 628 pounds for a total weight of 1,928. Give an additional 10% for things, dry weight with propane is 2,118.
Tongue weight is 292 but that happens to include 6 gallons of water in the water heater.
Our typical food, gear, water load is 370 pounds for a total of 2,488.
Hope it holds true when I take it to the scale. I'm fine with tongue weight and that trailer weight is about 50% of TV capacity. Even if it tops out at 3,000 ready to go I'm only at 60% tow capacity.

I have been learning a lot from this one.
http://www.engineersedge.com/calculator ... alance.htm

McDave

Yes, Ive used that to test several scenarios. As it stands it is a bit basic. I know of some people who rewtite parts of it to be able to include more load variables in more spots which would be good.
Part of why I wrote what I did was in reading thru builds, very few wrote of materials weight, even trailer weight when finished. So it leaves a person guessing/wondering, if they even think about it from the beginning. Who would imagine that foam insulation added 80 pounds to the build?
Tongue weight can also be subjective. Is something full or empty? Thats why they call it trailer balance. It is a balancing act.

A teasing experiment.
$20 invested

fourbtgait, Howdy'

lookin' to build an outdoor shower/throne room???
Easy u-n-down privacy curtain rod do-thingy...

hank