Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Just be aware that most of these plastics don’t glue well, or paint well – not much sticks to them. You might be able to make a wood frame and then screw the panels to the wood. Then you could follow up at the edges with a light plastic or vinyl angle that attaches with that butyl tape stuff – it might actually stick to this if the curvatures are low. You could slit the inner skin (down the length parallel to the internal stiffeners) and bend it normal to the slit direction. You could probably bend pretty tight after that, but I don’t know how hard it is to slit that stuff.

Curves are easy, being a thremo plastic you can make bends of any radius with a little help from a heat gun or heating strip (at the sign shop). I would design with this property in mind and you could get away with very few joins. For bonds I would overlap sections and rivet and use a flexible industrial type adhesive.

From my years of painting PC R/C car bodies, you certainly can get paint that sticks to PC. You can get little rattle cans with flex additives for the perpose. I did find though that some colours would flake off easily, while others seemed to bond to the plastic and the paint would well outlast the body. Painting with rattle cans would be expensive and fiddly, but you can get flex additives that are mixed into auto paint that achieve the same result.

Also note that if you use clear PC you can paint on the inside and even the worst job will turn out perfect, not to mention scratch protected. However, any frame work that rubs on the finish will make it's way through in short order and look terrible.

I like PC as a skin due to it's puncture resistance.

3M VHB tape will work, or you could weld it. Our friends at Harbor Freight have a couple of models of plastic welders available. There are also glues that will work http://www.eplastics.com/Plastic/Lexan_ ... onate_Glue

I chickened out of the idea for now, although i think it's doable.

The one thing that worried is it's not too easy to cut straight edges with twin wall materials, and according to my friend who works at a plastic shop it's very hard to STRONGLY bond anything to Lexan .. he mentioned a few 3M aggressive glues that work OK, but he said you can't glue with the kind of strength you would get with PVC for example ... although It seem you could fasten an aluminum end-cap to the edge and maybe have better luck bonding / fastening that (They have those pre-made to use the Lexan on greenhouses)

Hi tcolar

Here's something I came across that uses a similar
construction method that you are thinking of. They
seem to have made it work for their purposes. Maybe
it's the type of plastic double wall panel that is the
important variable.

Check out the assembly video on the web site too.

Cheers
mezmo/norm

Don't paint it. Use a dark window tint on the interior of the sheets. You can get the tint in different colors and degrees of darkness. Could easily add a cool pattern to the tint.

I wonder if you would get a good mechanical fixing in that corrugated twin wall material?

If it's the stuff I think you are describing, they make 'for sale' signs out of it, and if it is the same stuff, it weathers and goes brittle.

One other material I considered is sign board consisting of a foam core sandwiched between PVC sheeting, but again it goes brittle.

Plywood is cheap, and doesn't come with all these problems.

Just my two pennies.

Hi again tcolar,

Here's the link I thought I had included in the earlier post (08/17/10):

http://www.thehabihut.com/index.html

Sorry for the omission. Posting too late in the
day I guess! Ha!

mezmo/Norm

Cool, thanks, not unlike what I had in mind !

http://www.thehabihut.com/products_01.html

This polycarb stuff..wouldn't it work best in a Weekender style trailer?

No curves, Butyl tape and some silicone. I think you'd probably need to do a sandwich type panel.

Like a 1/4 or 1/2 plywood. Youcould create the frame from the ply and then using silicone,butyl tape and maybe some chicago screws you could manage pretty good bonding and sealing. Maybe even a layer of insulation. I've seen some @1/4" stuff at HD and others.


I know you have a plan in mind for YOUR trailer. I'm just adding another .02 to the thread.

This give me what I have been looking for!

crazy idea:
get a really big sheet, make a TD shaped mold, find an oven big enogh to fit into, heated to the proper temp the plastic sheet will form and drape over the mold (you could make a more airstream shaped TD with a nice 1' radius to the wall-roof joint) cut off the excess. For one TD really crazy, for a factory....
along this line http://www.recumbents.com/wisil/Bubbles/hpvbubbles.htm

Just my 5c.... I'd toyed with this idea myself, as the polycarbonate twinwall (or even triple wall) is available everywhere in the UK and used on virtually every conservatory...
http://www.wickes.co.uk/twin-wall-polycarbonate-sheet/invt/246000/

But then I had second thoughts... speak to anyone with a conservatory and they will tell you it's notoriuosly freezing in the winter and baking hot in the summer, so it could make a tear uncomfortably hot.

But if you do go ahead, I shall watch with interest!

Just a thought on finishing.... vinyl wrap??? Sure it would stick better than paint, but might wipe out the "low cost" objective!

good luck

I have a completed steel frame now and want to use lexan or white tinted PC from eplastics, and then use 2" XPS foam for Insulation. Do we think the opaque white and the 2" foam would be enough to counteract the high and low temps issues?