Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Would like to build a 5x10 on a Dilly boat trailer. The frame is 48” wide with fender insides at 49” that extend 2.75” above the frame. What would be the best approach.? Extending the frame out 6” on both sides and building a sub floor that would put the fenders near flush with floor? I have not seen any plans that address recessing fender wells. Anyone know a good source?

Many folks have built a five foot wide on a four foot wide frame. Wheel wells are one solution, making your axle wider (or replacing with a wider axle) has been done too. I did what your explaining but only had to make up an inch with my trailer. 2.75 inch thick seams awful thick for a subfloor, for a lightweight teardrop trailer (just my opinion, others will vary), remember this floor will be covered with a mattress, not danced on.

del

This trailer is 64" wide (the width to the outside of the fenders) and the floor is flush with the tops of the original fenders.





The height of the sub floor deck is about 1 1/2", with the wood side rails at about 3". This 3" gave me plenty of meat to bolt the sides to.

Happy Trails

Len

I'm designing out to 5' on a 4' HF frame. I'm thinking of raising the floor to 3" using 1x4's and doing without wheel wells. I'd need to use a cleat to mount the walls since the 3/4" on the 1x4's is not much to screw into (though bolts would work). I've also thought about building a 1x2 sub-floor and raising it with 2x2's on top of the side rails of the frame just for height.

Thanks for all the replies!
Is a sub floor only for attaching sides if it is not needed for clearance or insulation? If building inside the wheels it seems it would be lighter, easier, cheaper and make for a lower profile TD to bolt the plywood directly to the frame and then the sides to the frame. Is this a common design?

calumet wrote:Thanks for all the replies!
Is a sub floor only for attaching sides if it is not needed for clearance or insulation? If building inside the wheels it seems it would be lighter, easier, cheaper and make for a lower profile TD to bolt the plywood directly to the frame and then the sides to the frame. Is this a common design?

You will find it done almost any way you can imagine. Bolting to the side is a good way to hide the frame and bring it down.

To build over the wheels you make wheel wells then you cut the mattress and your feet/legs won't know it isn't thick. Just make sure your axle is far enough back.

This is Mike Sch.


You can find it at http://www.mikenchell.com/

Thanks, Miriam. That is exactly what I needed!
I was trying to get away from sub flooring but, from the pictures, it looks like with a sub floor there would not be a need to extend the actual trailer frame. Think it would be okay to let the floor with sub floor extend over the metal frame 6” on both sides? It seems the sub floor would weigh a lot less than adding metal tubing to the frame but would it be strong enough?

I'm building 5x9 on an HF 4x8 frame and building in the wheel wells. I was concerned early on in the build about the overhang of 6" inches on either side of the frame and the strength of using a wood sub-floor. I decided to use 1inch aluminum angle to help support the walls which seems to have helped quite a bit. I'm not an engineer, but it appears to me that the 1" angle plus rear bulk head and front wall frame work to transfer much of the load of the walls to the surface of the floor and the "box" gets stronger as the build progresses. So far, it seems rock solid to me. I hope there are no surprises coming my way.

Here's a pic of my son holding the door in place and shows the wheel well cutouts. We will use rubber "Jeep Style" fender flares:


Insided wheel wells before being enclosed. Note the aluminum angle which helps transfer load to the floor surface:

This is how I did the widening on a HF trailer. We widened the axle and are building inside the wheels. Picture in album and more as soon as I find our digital camera.

ToyTaco2

So what are the complete dimensions on your Benroy. The height looks more then 4 feet. This looks to be about the same size I would like to build mine, as I measured my home bed and 4' wide would be a little cramped for me and my wife.

How are you going to cover the wheel well?

ChetDog

"I signed aboard this ship to practice medicine, not to have my atoms scattered back and forth across space by this gadget." -- McCoy

Chet, my trailer had fenders. I scribed the walls and floor but the cut out left a larger gap than I liked so I worked with a small piece of 1/8” ply, one for each floor and wall area where it meets the fender, just big enough to cover the gap until I got it as close as I liked. I then screwed it in place and calked the small remaining gaps.
The others were right, the small amount of fender sticking up is not really noticed.

ChetDog,

My trailer is built on the 4x8 HF 1740 frame. The floor width is 60 inches with sandwich contruction walls 1/4" ply outer skin, 3/4" framing and 1/8" inner skin. Total body width is therefore 62 1/4 inches. Length is 104 inches. Body is 60 inches tall but about 5 inches of it overhangs the frame and floor.

This seems to be a pretty unusual approach, but, so far we really like it. After looking at a couple of 4x8 Lil Guy trailers over the weekend, I am really glad we went for a little larger size as it will fit our needs much better.

Here is a pic of the covered wheels wells, although the details of how I did it are more complicated than it looks because of the need to make sure everything is leak proof.

Like ther rest - went right over them - trailer 6 ft wide on a 4 X 8 No floor TSC

Thanks for the dimensions and pics. So are you going to cut out sections of your bed to fit over the wheel well box?

Another quick question What size sheets of plywood did you use if your total length is 104"? I only see one seem.

ChetDog

He's dead, Jim. --McCoy

I'm thinking a 4 inch thick foam mattress with "notches" cut out to the size of the wheel wells will work. That will still leave about one inch thick foam covering over the tops of the wells and I don't think the thinner thickness will even be noticed in that area of the bed/floor since it will be down by our feet.

I used 1/4 inch thick 5'x5' Baltic Birch for the side wall skins and 1/2 inch thick 5'x5' Baltic Birch for the floor. I used a full sheet for the front section of the walls and floor and cut a second sheet down to size for the rear section. In theory, you could build a TD 5'x10' using this approach. I didn't want to build quite that big, although I'm sometimes having second thought about it.

Mike