Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

For inspiration, in Czech Rep. exist a special type of home made trailers, called "submarine" - reason of this name is maybe lowering floor. It good trailerable with a small cars, weight abouth 1000 lbs. Many photos are at:

http://www.retromuseum.wz.cz/auta/ponor ... norky.html

Design is wery simple, photos of interior (every was DYI - another):

http://kevalholeb.rajce.idnes.cz/Prives/

http://tomi336.rajce.idnes.cz/Wenzel/

http://gloriet77.rajce.idnes.cz/ponorka_WENZEL_2/

http://vasax00.rajce.idnes.cz/ponorka_WENZEL_2/#

They look very nice, almost like spaceships. Cool!

Hi Brady,

Welcome to the forum. Quite a nice first post. I had come across a pic
or two of the Wenzel a good while back but never was able to find much
info on it other than it was supposed to be a homebuilt unit from somewhere in continental Europe. Your links are a great source of info on it. It is a very
singular design approach. Perhaps that's not surprising from the land of the Tatra?

It seems it would be a good candidate for a homebuilder to gain inspiration
from. I wonder if you have been able to find out where a copy of the original
plans may be found? I did dig out that they were published in an old GDR official magazine and also sold for the home builder to use to construct their own. I
surmise that the patent should be over with by now on it.

Enjoy the forum and thanks for a great initial contribution.

Cheers,
Norm/mezmo

With all straight lines and no curves , that should be easy to make one of Foam... They sure are attractive...

Brady,

No kidding---NICE first post!

You rock.

What advantage is there to having angled side walls?

It seems that any miniscule gain in MPG would be offset by the design/build issues.

Doors are hard enough to make and seal when they're flat...add in those complications seems like asking for trouble.

Tom

Treeview wrote:What advantage is there to having angled side walls?

It seems that any miniscule gain in MPG would be offset by the design/build issues.

Doors are hard enough to make and seal when they're flat...add in those complications seems like asking for trouble.

Tom

Coolness factor perhaps.

These have the same sort of design “feeling” as my Zephyr project currently in the final planning and materials acquisition phase ... Only I was trying to keep it really simple and use rear doors only and less angles ... Gotta ‘ admit these “submarines" sure look Cool ... and every penny of gas saved (MPG) is less fumes we’ll have to breathe later...

Thanks for sharing, and interesting concept. I would also question value in sloped sides other than coolness factor. I would also question that much of a dropped floor. Some of the roads I have taken ours on I was fearful it would take out the gray water tank.

mezmo wrote:Hi Brady,

Welcome to the forum. Quite a nice first post. I had come across a pic
or two of the Wenzel a good while back but never was able to find much
info on it other than it was supposed to be a homebuilt unit from somewhere in continental Europe. Your links are a great source of info on it. It is a very
singular design approach. Perhaps that's not surprising from the land of the Tatra?

It seems it would be a good candidate for a homebuilder to gain inspiration
from. I wonder if you have been able to find out where a copy of the original
plans may be found? I did dig out that they were published in an old GDR official magazine and also sold for the home builder to use to construct their own. I
surmise that the patent should be over with by now on it.

Enjoy the forum and thanks for a great initial contribution.

Cheers,
Norm/mezmo

Hi mezmo,

this trailers are home built in Czech and Slovak republic. Plans is not simple to finding, but the founder of this are died two years ago. Major pieces are built in round year 1980.
Construction and used material were strong simple, in "komunistic" land were buing some "sofisticate" materials a a big problem, all resources were strong limited.

Brady

----
Pls excuse my English.

Hi Shadow Catcher,

That isn't a permanent mounted drop floor, but one that is
lowered once the TTT is parked for camping, like this vintage
NZ caravan.



To me it looks like both a solid wall and a canvas wall were both
used by the different builders on the drop[ping] floor on the Wenzel. Note
that it also had a pop-top as well. Using both gave the Wenzel adequate headroom
when set up for camping.

Also, check out emiller's Covered Wagon restoration thread, with its drop-down
rear floor:
viewtopic.php?f=53&t=41752
And his Shutterfly page(s) on it:
https://oldietrailer.shutterfly.com/
[BTW, Arthur Sherman, the Covered Wagon builder, built the first wooden Covered
Wagon TTTs with a drop-down rear floor in them too.]

Cheers,
Norm/mezmo

Hi again Brady,

With the limited resources available to the builders, the Wenzel
is a great accomplishment.

If you ever do come across a set of the plans or a way to obtain
a copy of them, please do a followup post here with that info.
They'd be very interesting to see.

And for those wondering about the sharp angled sides;

For what it's worth, to me, those highly angled sides, besides being
a design style element perhaps, were an attempt to do some
aerodynamics with flat planes, sort of an angular pumpkin seed
effect - if you will.

Cheers,
Norm/mezmo