Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Added a few more gussets to match the location of the mounting posts and performed final install of the bed-frame.






Okay, enough metal pics already. Time to move on to woodwork, finishing the insulation, electronics, and cutting holes in the side of the trailer.

Made some more progress last night after a trip to Home Depot. I always need just one more thing.


I cut 1/2" XPS insultaion to fit between the roof framing. Most pieces were +/- 1/2" of 15". In the lower part of the picture is the wood I'm using for furring strips and spacers to make it a full 1" tall. This will allow a complete layer of 1" foam board that is only interrupted by the wood strips.





In the back of the trailer you can see one of the ceiling panels installed in the garage area. Here the roof will only have the 1/2" insulation between the rails. I'll use a piece of trim to hide the ceiling step later. The wire hanging down on the left is for the fan and the red wire coiled up high in the back is for the overhead garage lights.

Furring strips are in.

Other items for the build are starting to arrive!



Dogs were already in-hand. :-) Best price I found on the ARB Fridge is from http://www.my12voltstore.com

Suburban 16,000 BTU furnace from Amazon

That furnace looks awesome. I have been drooling over these for quite some time. Although I'm not sure I have room to squeeze one in. Looking forward to your installation.

I wouldn't mind havin' one of those ARB's myself.

McDave

awesome stuff! Excited to follow your build. I'm hoping for my trailer to be ready to pick up from the factory in late march!

The weather was beautiful in East Texas this weekend and I had plenty of time to work on the trailer. Something about sunshine + a project you're enjoying + a full cup of coffee brings about a special kind of joy.

I cut a few more sheets of 1" XPS down to size to fit between the furring strips. So far no glue is required for the insulation. Everything is friction fit and then paneled over. Even the roof. I try to aim for cutting everything 1/16 too wide and use a long metal T and a utility knife to cut the insulation. A serrated knife secretly lifted from the kitchen helps with trimming.




At this point I was ready to re-install the ceiling, but first needed to fabricate the "divider" between the bed area and garage. I used 1/2" maple plywood with the good side facing towards the living quarters. This will be stained or painted later. The interior decorating committee hasn't decided yet.

To make a measurement record of the roof line I cut a piece of the extra furring strip material down to the width of trailer and rested it on top of the walls where I planned to mount the divider. Then I marked on the piece of wood the distance to the roof-line. These measurements could then be transferred to the plywood to create a "template".

My crude roof-line template...




Transferring measurements to the backside of the plywood.



The base of the plywood was then notched to allow it to sit 1" down into the bed-frame. After the initial notching I probably took it into the trailer and back into the garage 7 or 8 times. Each time shaving just a little bit here and a little bit there with the orbital sander to get a smooth fit.

Here it is closer to finished than not.




Once the fit was right I used 1" x 1" wood studs on the wall, the back of the bed-frame, and a few brackets attached to the furring strips to mount the divider. Here are a few pics.





With screws into the bed-frame and small brackets connecting the roof. The backside also has small blocks at the furring strips to keep it from moving rearward. Goal was to allow enough "flex", but make sure everything is snug and vibrates as little as possible.




Once the plywood was mounted I filled the 1" gap on the back with a solid layer of 1" XPS. The garage isn't as well insulated as the living area, so I wanted to thermally divide the two. Here you can also see the 1" studs used to secure the frame to the walls. The piece of insulation was cut to be between the strips and rest on top of the 1" metal bed frame edge.



This insulation will be covered with thin plywood or FRP to finish out the garage. I'll likely place a few items like helmet holders, paper towel holder, etc on that wall up beyond head-banging height.

Excellent work!

The keen eyed observer will note that the garage ceiling panel in the last photo stops about 6" short of the wall and the wall plywood stops about 4-6" short of the ceiling joint. This gap used to be covered by a strip of sheet metal that was stapled to the wall and ceiling from the factory. The white paint line indicates where this sheet metal used to connect to the wall.

Any suggestions on what to put in place of this? If money and materials were never-ending I would have replaced the ceiling panels with new units that were 96" wide instead of these...which are a bit shorter. However, it seemed silly to not reuse this material, so I need to fab some sort of covering. Any ideas?

Padding and upholstery/carpet? Faux ATP wrap?

McDave

Padding and upholstery/carpet? Faux ATP wrap?

Thanks. Will keep stewing on this.


Brown santa delivered this over lunch. Keys for scale. I need to figure out a way to adjust or swap the labels or covers.

PigTrail wrote:The keen eyed observer will note that the garage ceiling panel in the last photo stops about 6" short of the wall and the wall plywood stops about 4-6" short of the ceiling joint. This gap used to be covered by a strip of sheet metal that was stapled to the wall and ceiling from the factory. The white paint line indicates where this sheet metal used to connect to the wall.

Any suggestions on what to put in place of this? If money and materials were never-ending I would have replaced the ceiling panels with new units that were 96" wide instead of these...which are a bit shorter. However, it seemed silly to not reuse this material, so I need to fab some sort of covering. Any ideas?

I used some mirror channel from the local glass shop at the bottom, and 1/4" plywood screwed to the ceiling in case I needed to run anything else in that space



Tim

PigTrail wrote:

Padding and upholstery/carpet? Faux ATP wrap?

Thanks. Will keep stewing on this.

Hey PigTrail,
I guess I did not comprehend the question, I thought you were just concerned about the garage area trim. My solution was similar to Tim's. I made up some trim pieces and slid a bunch of my old licence plates in there and ran wiring behind. They run the legth of the cabin at a 45 to the wall an ceiling. They are lit up from below by indirect LED's.

Pic Quality is poor but you get the jist.

"Brown santa delivered this over lunch. Keys for scale."
OK, I give. Keys for what scale?

"I need to figure out a way to adjust or swap the labels or covers. "
Or attach corresponding wires to proper switches?

... ... ... ... I'm missing something.

McDave

Thanks for the ideas and photos on artfully filling the ceiling to wall gap.

"Brown santa delivered this over lunch. Keys for scale."
OK, I give. Keys for what scale?

The pic of the dc control board has a set of car keys on the left for size reference. The first pic I snapped was zoomed in on the control board with nothing around it...makes it look like it's 2' wide! Keys were to give a sense of how compact it is. Maybe it's not displaying correctly?

wap the labels or covers

Sorry I wasn't more specific. I love the look and apparent quality of the dc board. However 4 of those switches are going to be used for lights, but the current labels read "Fridge, Fan, and TV & Audio". I'm going to have to get creative with my label maker to make the switch label correspond to its action. Some of the other kits on Amazon had a sticker sheet that has labels, but this one came pre-applied. Not a downer, just needs some more attention.

The back of this setup is nicely pre-wired with a shunt and all connectors. All I need to do is connect a 10ga power wire, ground the neg into the frame, and starting attaching accessories to the switches.