teardrop toy hauler.

[sumo]

My intital plans were to buld a fill size camper on an old pop up platform that i aquired but after seeing what it was going to cost i think I have decided to to go the teardrop route. Here is the first swing at what i want to do. i dont know what the teardrop will weigh , but the atv will be a 750 brute force. weight just under 700 lbs. What do you all think.

[geochris35]

Looks awesome, I ride four wheelers a lot and would love to have a tear like this. Good luck with it.



Chris

[sumo]

Thanks, We go to the Hatfield Mcoy trails ever year and after the last trip it coat me nearly 400 bucks to stay in a Cabin for 3 days , I decided that i would try something different. The area that we go is filled with cabins and campgrounds (no hotels) so if i can pull this off maybe it will pay for itself in the long run.

[Techguy]

Not sure about this but if you add a 700# ATV/Quad to front plus the frame weight plus the TD weight, should you be looking into a double axle trailer frame to control the tongue weight and how much the tongue drops when your ride the quad onto the front platform?

Seems to me you could convert a double axled "landscapers" trailer into what you are looking for.

I am not an expert here but looking at your drawing, it seems you would have at least 800 pounds forward of the axle and directly onto your TV's hitch. Most TV cannot handle an 800# tongue load.

[sumo]

I have already started building this trailer( see the build journal section under teardrop toy hauler) . The tong weight thing is on my mind. I have seen some commercially available trailers namely the little guy 6 wide that have the same basic layout. The axel on the little guy is further back than mine, I would think that that would create more tong weight than my design with the axel more toward the middle. I put the atv on the trailer last night to see how it fit, It did have a very heavy tong weigh, I have no way of knowing what the actual weight was. I know a few guys have built toy haulers this way , I would like to hear from anyone with experience hauling an atv in front of a teardrop. How does it pull, pros, cons.

[Techguy]

You can get a scale that weighs the tongue weight of the loaded trailer. Some have used bathroom scales but that seems impractical for your rig as it is likely to exceed the scales range. I did a quick google and found this way of measuring the tongue weight with a bathroom scale and a beam to scale the load to within the bathroom scale's range.

http://hildstrom.com/projects/tonguescale/index.html

Good luck.

[sumo]

that is good information. I will have to try that when i get some time.