Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Today is a day of "Excitement" for us..Our frame was delivered this morning... What a nice Christmas Present

I have a question on the frame of our tear...I used a converter to convert the measurements and this is what I came up for answers since we use the metric system...

The width is 4.9212598 feet
The Length of the square frame itself is 7.1522309711 feet

That is the frame itself.. so from the front of the square frame to the Ball Hitch it is an extra 150cm or 4.92 ft.

So actually the frame is almost 1 foot or so short of 8 feet.. without the tow bar.

Can I build the floor as to the length going over on each end equivalent to 6 inches ?? without any problem.. ?

The measurements for the trailers are real strict here... The frame itself has been Safety Inspected already according to Finnish Law..

Can anyone assist.. ? Other than that the frame looks real nice in our opinion...can hardly wait to install the cragar smoothies and tires now...

I,ll post photos of the " Finnished" frame now that its done shortly..The frame has been galvanized as well.. It does have a warranty on it as well
for 20 years against rust... Now that is good.

Best wishes
Classic Finn

Finn

I think there may be a mistake with your conversion. A frame that is 715ft long and 492ft wide would be a big enough to be used as a boat trailer for a battleship.

150cm is just under 5ft

Asianflava

gee .. its 7.15 feet in length and 4 feet 9 inches wide ...sorry decimals are definitely in the wrong places..

I need some coffee.. woke up too early this morning

The online conversion did the calculating...

Maybe you can assist in the conversion... 1.50 meters wide and Length at 2.18 (Only frame) then another 150cm from frame to ball hitch.


Classic Finn

Finn,

Please give us the metric measurements... it sounds like you moved the decimal place over a couple places too many...

If your trailer is 48" wide, that would be 1219.2 mm

Mike...

P.S. or just take your trailer dimensions in mm and divide by 25.4 to get inches.

i.e. 1219.2 / 25.4 = 48 inches

Mike this is confusion to us....

Okay the metric is 150 wide and 218 length without the tow bar..an other
150 length on the bar itself..

Classic Finn

okay, you've quoted the dimensions in cm...

so it's 59" wide and 85.8" long...

You can build a nice trailer on that.... my 120" (10 ft) long weekender was built on a 96" (8 ft) long trailer, for example! So yes, you can hang over 6" without a problem...



Mike...

P.S. So where are the pictures? MJ loves dem pics!

Mike when we get home from shopping in a few hours I,ll set the measuring tape on the frame and I,ll take a few photos... Im going out to see if I can find a measuring tape with inches and feet...


Its a nice looking frame though...thank you for the assist...

Classic Finn

Heikki,

218cm sounds perfect - the flat bottom of your trailer is 220cm long, so you have 1cm spare each end:



Andrew

When I was in 7th grades (aprox. 12 years old) in the early '70's I distinctly remember my math teacher telling us that the entire U.S. would be converting to Metric in within five years. Well, here we are 32 years laster and we're still talking inches and feet.

Anyway, I put some of that education to work and did the conversion myself. I agree with Mike's figures. Your frame is just under 5-feet wide. That's a good width for a tear. The length at just over 7 feet is a little short if you want to include a built in galley. Unless, you extend the trailer body past the frame.

It might also help us if you gave us the measurement from the back of the trailer frame to center of the axel before you make any decisions about extending the trailer body past the frame. You want to make sure that you have the proper ratio of tounge weight to overall weight.

I havent been this excited in a long time....

Sorry folks - we just got home from all the Christmas Shopping and such.. Its too dark for taking photos at this time but I,ll get them for you
in the morning.....

Id like to go and build outside now....

Thank you indeed for all the conversions. I tried looking for a measuring tape with inches and feet this evening but no luck but I guess they do have them someplace but thay are not too common here..

Im really anxious to start building ...

Thanks Guys
Classic Finn

TomS

I,ll get that dimension for you in the morning as well... I was thinking of welding another section onto the backend at first but... then I saw Andrews measurement that he gave before... so we,ll leave it at that.

We,ll learn from this build Im sure though.... so it ought to be easier next trailer ...

I remember those talks too... it's all gonna be metric someday...

Let me tell you, where I work is metric. But they really never converted... they just pretended they did. For example, the track width of a vehicle is 1676.4 mm. What kind of a track width is that. I thought one looked for the closest even mm dimension when starting out with a new design. Wouldn't 1676 or 1678 be easier? Then just for shits and giggles I thought I'd divide the track width by 25.4. Wouldn't you know it, their vehicles still have a track width of exactly 66"

Mike...

TomS wrote:When I was in 7th grades (aprox. 12 years old) in the early '70's I distinctly remember my math teacher telling us that the entire U.S. would be converting to Metric in within five years. Well, here we are 32 years laster and we're still talking inches and feet.

Anyway, I put some of that education to work and did the conversion myself. I agree with Mike's figures. Your frame is just under 5-feet wide. That's a good width for a tear. The length at just over 7 feet is a little short if you want to include a built in galley. Unless, you extend the trailer body past the frame.

It might also help us if you gave us the measurement from the back of the trailer frame to center of the axel before you make any decisions about extending the trailer body past the frame. You want to make sure that you have the proper ratio of tounge weight to overall weight.

And even in the metric world, the size of many things doesn't change. Plywood still comes in 1220x2440* - which curiously converts to 48"x96"....

But working in inches, pounds, etc on plans for you guys has reminded me what a wonderful thing the metric system is. I mean, eighths and sixteenths and all that stuff?

Andrew

* When you're really, really metric (ie, a recent convert) like Britain, you don't even have to put the units. Of course all measurements are in mm! But this doesn't work in countries who've been metric for a long time - you see Classic Finn using centimeters, which are dressmaking units....

TomS wrote:When I was in 7th grades (aprox. 12 years old) in the early '70's I distinctly remember my math teacher telling us that the entire U.S. would be converting to Metric in within five years. Well, here we are 32 years laster and we're still talking inches and feet.

Ah, 7th grade, the best three years of my life! Seriously though, I have a hard enough time reading the 16ths on my ruler without having to look at all those mm. I'm too young for tri-focals.


Scott F.

Seems to me NASA lost a mars mission because some group was using "standard" and the other was using metric. Embarassing, but accidents happen.