Hadn't even thought about the suicide doors being scary. They are held where they are with a household deadbolt with plenty of engagement. I'm not too concerned about them. And I guess one good feature is that won't even stay closed unless latched so hopefully it'll be pretty hard to forget about them and leave them unlocked. Due to the d door shape I don't think there is really any other way I could hinge them.
As for the shocks I plan on pulling this camper a good 10,000 miles this year and I want it to haul well. I'm sure I will be towing it up plenty of dirt roads and on some rough highways. I'm also towing it behind a toyota matrix which is a bit of a light tow vehicle so it can tend to feel more of what the trailer does inside the vehicle than a bigger truck might. So in order to keep from scrambling all our stuff whenever we're rolling down the road and to try and reduce the amount of bucking and pulling the trailer puts on the car I decided to give them a shot.
They are Monroe Gas Magnum Shock Absorbers Part Number 555002. The same ones used by many other members on here. I picked them up from
amazon for $25 a piece and grabbed some 5/8 bolts and angle from my work to put them on the trailer. They are slightly compressed in that position but still should be able to work through their travel without bottoming out. It's not the most optimum position to get lots of travel out of them and have them work really well but it was a pretty convenient way to set them up and the trailer axle moves backwards as well as down when the suspension compresses so I think they'll use enough of their range to make a difference. If you do a search on here for shocks you'll turn up what lots of other people did to retrofit shocks onto their trailers.