English Benroy

[BobK]

An alternative way to camp

I enjoy camping, but my arthritic knees don’t enjoy getting up from the ground and I must admit that I don’t like the faffing about involved in putting up a tent especially when I am on my own so I have hit upon a solution:

For some time I have watched the Teardrop Forum and admired the American teardrop caravans and have followed their many designs and decided that this would be an ideal solution for me and set out certain criteria. The weight had to be low enough to be Citroen 2cv (602cc and 26 years old) towable, that is under 270kg for an un-braked trailer. It must not cost much and the skill level to build has to be low too. I rate myself as being 2/10 as I am a pop rivet and glue person rather than a skilled artisan.

The idea of building a chassis I find daunting (an expensive too) so I decided to seek an alternative and looked at old camping trailers and trailer tents. Tracking them on eBay I viewed those close to home finding a French Raclet. These are really well made with a decent chassis constructed from steel channel. The wheels are in-board which gives just that extra bit of internal space. It measured 2.06 metres long, 1.58m wide and stood on 10 inch wheels with a spare. It also benefits from 4 corner steadies.

An additional requirement is that it falls within the category of a small trailer when taking it abroad on car ferries and for this it has to be under 1.8m high and 3m long. This trailer is 2.8m long including the towbar. The conformity plate showed a weight of 280kg and a gross weight of 410kg. Just the job and I bid and bought it. I towed it home with my old Xsara Picasso and forgot it was there as it was so light!

I needed to get the weight down before constructing the teardrop so discarded the canvas, steel supporting hoops, hardboard bed boards, hinges, internal locker steelwork and the trailer’s opening rear tailgate which was used to support the “kitchenâ€

[Rigsby]

Sounds like my type of build BOB. made from the shed supplies.Hope to see you out and about in it.
If you pop your head onto the Tearjerkers forum or onto The Teardrop club of GB forum http://tcgb.freeforums.org you can show us your build (get a photobucket account to show your photos)
How about joining us near Coventry for the 2nd Stiff Upper Lip Gathering at the next Bank Holiday
steve

[steve smoot]

Bob, I really enjoyed reading about your build. I do hope you master the trick of adding some photos. We do like our photos over here...

[diy4life]

Hi Bob
Good to see another Southern Brit here. I'm just along the A27 near Worthing and have a 1931 Morris Minor, so am looking for lightweight inspiration. Not sure which of our cars is more powerful,lol. Can we meet up some time so I can take some pics and maybe put them on here for you?
All the best
Dave