Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Will it hold ?

My trailer is just abut ready to hit the road ... but all a sudden I'm worried about the front wind loading.

My car is lower than the trailer so the top 2' will be directly exposed.

The way I built, I'm wondering if it will be strong enough, or if i need to reinforce (how?)

Here are pictures of construction, that probably explain best:

Well take it for a ride and find out. Im not a "car" person so I dont know what the vehicle your going to tow it with is but are you close to max tow weight? I saw this in someones blog...might be an overkill if your feeling alot of drag http://www.jcwhitney.com/trail-eze-ii-w ... ilterid=j1

probably can make something like it out of a roofrack and some plywood.

deryk

It will be more than strong enough to withstand wind at highway speed. The teardrop is a torsion box that will take high loads. Nothing like a little pre first trip paranoia. I think we all go through that.

It's just natural........

I made it will it blow apart, what will break, what will fall off.

Looks like a well thought out build, take it out and start enjoying it and quit worrying.

I mostly worrying about the "struts" between the walls, not "resting" against the wall, but instead epoxied between.

Probably just paranoia, but i know wind loading can be quite a lot

There are so many more things to worry about after you see that the trailer will go down the road just fine.

Enjoy your trailer and stop thinking up reasons to worry about it.

Looking at the cameras through the Siskiyou Pass on Monday morning, it looks like rain. Here's the link for the pass cams:
http://www.tripcheck.com/Pages/RCMap.as ... urRegion=7

You'll do just fine. Take plenty of pictures and post for the rest of us to enjoy.

looks stronger built then most comercial units.

my guess is , like most small trailers,,, its almost automaticly over build just by the nature of materials used to build it.
go camping and have fun.

Mightydog and John Warren gave you some very good advice. Go enjoy what you have created. If you connected it to the trailer well, it will travel just fine.

John

PS, nice looking build, You will have a good time,

Looking at your pictures, I think you will have NO problems with wind load on that trailer. Mine is WAY less reinforced as yours, and I tow it behind a twin turbo german touring car at higher than legal speeds with NO worries.

Seriously, I went for ultra-low-weight on my build, and have a thin skin over 1X2 framing, and have done a couple thousand miles of highway driving with no problems -- even in heavy rains.

Take your trailer out for a good one-hour test drive at highway speeds just to help your confidence. Then, go out an enjoy camping in it.

CD

tcolar wrote:Will it hold ?

From what I can tell, you will do just fine. You have worked hard, now finish the trailer and go camping.
And only look back with pride that the trailer in your review mirror is one of a kind and built by you. Not a hole lot of folks can say that............

I remember my maiden voyage to Tearstock. 5 hours each way. It was white knuckle driving for the first couple hours. I kept thinking "Theres no way on earth that something I built is going to withstand highway speeds."

I was especially worried about the vinyl roof. But 1 year and about 1,500 miles of paved road (plus a few washboard dirt roads) later, it still looks like it did the day I built it! Its seen some highway speeds around 80mph too.

And your build is definitely stronger than mine! It looks good!

Just take it out on some roads and test it out at speed....... just pick a low traffic areas and have a friend follow a ways behind and help watch safely. I think you will be fine; but everyone goes through this with the first time they pull their own built trailer =)

If you have a small engined car or truck pulling the trailer you will find out if you can pull it at speed that way. This is kind of like pulling a parachute behind your car or truck.

Get you a big empty parking lot and practice turning and backing your new trailer with someone observing outside ...... you will amaze your friends in a short time of how good you will get at moving your trailer around.

Have fun camping in your new home-built trailer.



Pat

We were also scared our maiden voyage. Nothing else I had ever built had gone 70 miles an hour. But it worked fine, and yes, often I had to remind myself I was pulling something because it was so easy. You will do fine.

Greg(and Laurie)

I chickened out of taking it out on this trip, but not because of the trailer as I tried it and it did fine(65mph), but because of the distance (1900miles RT from Seattle to San Jose, CA) and the bad weather ... it's been snowing hard in OR / Northern CA - High wind warnings, winter weather advisories etc...

I actually took highway 101 in CA instead of I5 even with just the car, and we even had a bit of snow on 101 in CA (at < 1500' elevation !)

we are only gone for a few days too, so would not even have had any time to enjoy the trailer.

So I felt like that wasn't the right way and time to go try it out.

If the weather is decent next w/e I'll probably go somewhere within 200miles of home for a first trip.