HF 40 1/2" x 48"

[mrsteve]

The former owner of my house left me a Harbor Freight 40 1/2"x48" trailer. I am building a 5'x8'x4' teardrop on it. A couple of people have told me it wont work because the wheels are too far in from the outside. So I am asking your opinions. The outside of the tires are 6" in from the edge of the body sides. I plan on having a longer tongue for battery and storage. With the low center of gravity, does it seem that there would be a problem with this set up?

[KCStudly]

Even with a low center of gravity there are other factors that will determine the stability; specifically wind speed and sail area.

If you build long, tall and narrow, there could be enough wind force (wind pressure x area applied at the centroid relative to the ground) to cause enough leverage to tip the poor thing over. Narrow is worse, taller is worse, larger area is worse, higher wind speed is worse, lighter is worse. Conversely, wider, shorter, smaller area, lower wind speed, and heavier are better... with respect to tipping.

So, not necessarily an issue, but you will want to look at some of the numbers to see what level of side wind speed you can reasonably expect to survive in... and then don't under estimate the possibility that those wind speeds won't ever be a factor (e.g. "Well I live down in the hollow where the wind never blows"... then later when you are traveling across country with your shiny new TD, "guess what happened on our trip thru Santa Fe?" Plop). It is a real possibility. Penguino I link (sorry Catherine).

Somewhere on here there is a discussion of the math that goes into the moment calculations and wind force factors. Post your wall height and length (or actual sq footage, if you know it), wall height above ground, track width and anticipated weight, and we can help give you an estimate.

[mrsteve]

Today was a good day. I was working on my teardrop and one of my neighbors stopped by to see what I was hiding behind the plane that I'm building.
I told him that it is the camper that I'm going to tow behind my plane! Then I told him about the guys that said it was too narrow for safety. He asked if they had numbers to back up their theory. I told him that I didn't know. We talked for a while about teardrops, he really seemed intrigued. He came back about 2 hours later with three other guys, that are now thinking of building, and said that he ran the numbers and it would take a side gust of 53 miles an hour to blow my teardrop over. I trust his calculations only because he is a retired aerospace engineer (rocket scientist). I live at an airpark and there are many retired aviation guys here. All of them smarter than me, heck, my phone is way smarter than me. So the build will continue.
Thank you KC for your reply.