Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

This is a basic picture of my plan. Trailer will be 6 feet tall on the interior at it's highest point, as to allow full standing. It will be 6 feet wide and 10 feet long. Probably a sink and stove to the right of the doorway. Left of doorway will be a seating/table area that will collapse into a full size bed.

This will be my first time building any type of travel trailer. I am trying to do it within a budget of $1500 or less.

EDIT *$1500 is my budget for the main structure only. The interior and all accessories will come later.*

The most immediate questions and concerns that pop out to me are as follows:

Being sure I have no trouble registering it for legal street use.

How I will get the plywood to flex over the curved area. Thin plywood? Will 1/4" bend sufficiently?

Where is the best place to get legitimate RV doors and windows?

What is the most effective way to protect the wooden undercarriage from rot?

I plan to build it with plywood and 2x3s for framing. I do not plan to cover it with aluminum or any type of RV siding. I want to fill all of the gaps and cracks between plywood sheets with the best product I can get (some type of wood bondo maybe?) and then finish the entire thing with something very thick, rubbery and flexible. I have heard people mention liquid roof products. If possible, I would like to be able to spray a product through my HVLP gun and put like 15 coats on it as be sure the wood is well protected from the elements.

Thank you for any feedback you can give me on my plans! It's inspiring to see all of your work in the galleries.

$1500 or less is pretty optimistic unless you are the worlds best scrounger or you are planning on something that is ultra minimalistic with no power or cooking facilities. You have a HF trailer pictured. That alone will eat up nearly a third of your budget. I have not built a trailer yet, other than the ones I built when working at Santa Fe Trailers years ago, but I think you need to double, if not triple, your estimate. Other experienced builders will chime in, I'm sure.

CarlLaFong wrote:$1500 or less is pretty optimistic unless you are the worlds best scrounger or you are planning on something that is ultra minimalistic with no power or cooking facilities. You have a HF trailer pictured. That alone will eat up nearly a third of your budget. I have not built a trailer yet, other than the ones I built when working at Santa Fe Trailers years ago, but I think you need to double, if not triple, your estimate. Other experienced builders will chime in, I'm sure.

Ahhh, yes, I forget to say. I meant $1500 for simply the bare bones structure. I intend to use it with the inside totally hollow at first. And I will slowly add from there. All I am aiming to do now is create a totally sound and waterproof structure. The interior will come later.

I and many others have "floated" the aluminum skins on our teardrops. The windows, doors, trim, etc. will hold the aluminum in place without any problems. Others glue theirs and I'm sure will chime in soon. If you don't use a flexible glue it will not hold due to the road vibrations inherent with towing a tear.

I would suggest at least considering covering it with aluminum. I got all of my aluminum in a giant roll from a semi trailer repair company. It covered my 4x8 sides and the 5x14 roof for around $350 and I had a bunch of leftover so it probably wouldn't take you too much more than I got to do yours. I think my piece was 8.5' wide and about 25' long. Yes you could probably find some kind of enamel paint or something like parnold used on his build but aluminum is probably the toughest skin you'll find and is really quite easy to do. An afternoon's work will give you a lifetime of protection instead of 15 coats costing you a couple days time each coat. Not to mention the added protection from scratches, rocks, etc. as opposed to a painted finish. Just my opinion.

I think your budget for just the shell structure should work! I built my entire trailer for less than $1500. Maybe use any leftover towards aluminum? You can be pretty resourceful if you keep your eyes open for good deals and hook-ups. I found all my electrical parts for very cheap on Amazon! Ebay is another good resource for doors and windows! Or Lil' Bear sells great windows! That's where I got mine from. Once you get the shell built I would do some serious thinking and planning ahead before you put on any interior skins or insulation and run your wiring before hand so you don't wish you did later on when its all enclosed.

Other than that let's see a pic of your entire design! I'm curious to see a 6x10 on a 4x8 frame.

Thanks for the tip on the roll of aluminum. I will definitely look into that. What concerns me about covering with aluminum is making sure that there are no leaks where the aluminum meets other pieces..

Most of my plan is still in my head at this point. Essentially I am planning to weld a few additional parts onto that harbor freight trailer to add an extra 1 foot on each side as well as on the front and back. The wheel wells will end up within the side walls and a little bit of interior space will be taken up by the encasement of the wheel wells.

Another idea for the expanding of the trailer is to just build out your sub-floor framing instead of welding on to the trailer frame. The Harbor Freight trailer frames aren't much more than ~14-16 gauge C channel so there isn't a whole lot of strength there to support an appendage hanging off the side of the C-channel rail let alone supporting weight on it. There are a few builds that went wider with the sub-floor framing but kept the 4x8 HF frame stock.

To address your concern for protecting the underside of the floor. There have been a bunch of methods used on here but the cheapest and easiest (and sometimes the messiest) is the Henry's roofing tar. It is cheap for a gallon and can be bought at any Blue or Orange hardware store. It goes on thick and bonds really well with the wood. You could even do a couple of coats if you wanted. It literally dries to a thick but flexible rubbery finish. If it's good enough for a building roof I'm sure it's good enough for a seasonal use trailer.

As for the aluminum joints, corners, seams, etc. How I did mine was I ran a thick bead of black Polyurethane Roofing sealant around the entire perimeter and all openings and stapled the edge of the aluminum to secure it in place. There is a ton of push-out so you know the sealant is sealing that edge good. I then used a 30 year rated roofing sealant under the corner molding and in the screw holes. You could blast the seam between the roof and wall seam with a pressure washer even without the corner mold and there is no way water could get through the first bit of sealant. I wouldn't try it on mine but you get the analogy. I would be much more concerned about UV rays, sticks, rocks, expansion/contraction of wood, etc. damaging a painted finish then water ever penetrating a few layers of industrial roofing sealant. Tom did a good job of showing what I'm talking about with his build. I followed his build pics when I covered mine.

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=54767

^^^3rd post down...

Here's a quick exaggerated drawing of how all the skin/sealant layers overlap... Hope this helps.

Excellent. Your advice is most helpful. Where have others found their aluminum? Anywhere to order a large roll online that you have found? How much did you spend on it? I initially was looking at ordering large sheets of it from discountsteel.com and then realized that shipping was too cost prohibitive..

Also, what material works well at the corners and seams that overlaps the aluminum?

I found my roll at a local semi trailer repair shop. It is the stuff they use to roof the long semi trailers so the roll is right about 102" wide and as long as you want. I think the price for the stuff I got was about ~13-14 dollars a linear foot. So total was about 350-400 dollars. I could have gotten like 4' less but I figured better safe than sorry. Just look in your phone book or online for a local semi trailer repair company and give them a call. Surprisingly the lady that helped me over the phone said they get calls for stuff like this a lot so chances are they'll know what you're needing it for.

For exterior plywood skin I used 5mm moisture resistant hardwood underlayment from the big orange box. It was no major problem to bend that basicly 1/4" plywood over the roof line. I just attached one end, and leaned my weight on it and added screws as I went. I'm a big ol' boy, and my weight pushed it right down into place. I'm smoothing out the corners and seams with short strand fiberglass body filler. It sands smooth to nice radiused corners.
That brings me to rot protection. For the underside, I painted everything with two coats of black jack fiberous roof coating. It's a thick black tar that seals everything up. For the rest of the camper, I'm applying at least two layers of 6 oz fiberglass fabric and epoxy resin. That should make a waterproof, durable outer skin.
As for registration, If you use the Harbor Freight trailer chassis in the picture, it comes with a "certificate of factory origen." Just take that, and your reciept to the courthouse and it should be no problem to get a title and tags.

Hi Irving,

Welome to the forum !

Check out the Foamie section. There is a lot of useful info there
for cheap and light ways to build. E.g., an old-school technology
from boaters for waterproofing, was to imbed canvas [ other fabric
works too] in paint and then do another coat of paint over that.
Several forum members have done that on their plywood sided
trailers too and are happy with the results. [You can always add aluminum
over that later if you want to.] There is(are) a(some) thread(s) there
that covers this technique. Check out the Foamie build method too.

Check out the forum for a while before you jump into building.
There are a lot of different approaches to producing a TTT and a
plentitude of great ideas throughout the forum pages.

Cheers,
Norm/mezmo

Great, I will check out the foamie method.

There are two harbor freight trailers I am considering. Both are 4 x 8. One is 1195 lbs capacity and the other is 1720 lbs capacity. Think it's worth it to get the higher capacity one? Or has the 1195 lbs capacity suited some of you just fine?

I got the heavier HF chassis. I liked the stronger frame.

Anyone built their own doors? Have pictures of your building process? I was just checking this out: http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/26249796.cfm and got me thinking about building my own. Seems hard to find a full size door for under $300+ when you add shipping.