Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

With shades of the Sawtooth XL and borrowing liberally from the Vistabule and from members here, I've produced this preliminary plan for a camper of my own. It will feature a full 2" extruded foam shell. I'm still up in the air about the skin. Maybe PMF. Maybe fiberglass and epoxy. I'm not sure yet. I might still change the entire design to use skeletonized plywood. I am a woodworker and furniture designer, so it's a little weird that I'm designing for foam. I was looking to cut weight, but I ended up maybe a bit oversized.

Lots of details still to go before I'm ready to start building. Or to start over with an all new plan. We'll have to see. It's all designed in Sketchup. I'll post a few images now, and will be back to post more later.

Thanks for looking.

Mike

Looking forward to your build details. Impressive Sketchup drawings! I wish I was more patient with Sketchup, but, old dog, new tricks. I'm better with pencil, paper and especially eraser!

I struggled with the foam vs wood issue as well when building my son's foamie. What it came down to is weight savings and I was able to use my woodworking skills, amatuer that they are, to make some impressive trim work, shelving, cabinets and other cubbies. I would build in foam again.

It looks good to me. I scratched my head over your tongue length, but I suppose you have a reason for it being that long.

And I assume you can handle manufacturing the front window? And have a plan for its greenhouse effect?

But... :thumbs-up:

Tony

Please continue;
I think, I would want to ride in the back

TimC wrote:Looking forward to your build details. Impressive Sketchup drawings! I wish I was more patient with Sketchup, but, old dog, new tricks. I'm better with pencil, paper and especially eraser!

I struggled with the foam vs wood issue as well when building my son's foamie. What it came down to is weight savings and I was able to use my woodworking skills, amatuer that they are, to make some impressive trim work, shelving, cabinets and other cubbies. I would build in foam again.

Thanks Tim. I've been using Sketchup quite a bit in my work over the past few years. It can still be completely frustrating at times, but I do think it's worth the pain of the learning curve for the ability to design in 3-D.

Thanks again for your interest. Looking forward to checking out your build threads.

Mike

tony.latham wrote:It looks good to me. I scratched my head over your tongue length, but I suppose you have a reason for it being that long.

And I assume you can handle manufacturing the front window? And have a plan for its greenhouse effect?

But... :thumbs-up:

Tony

Thanks for your comments, Tony. I have a copy of your excellent book and refer to it often. In fact you probably recognize a few details from your frame design in mine.

Inexperience might be the biggest reason I made the tongue so long. Actually I read a comment on the forum about clearance angles when backing, and how one should shoot for 90º if possible. This sounded good to me and had the added benefit of providing enough extra space up front for the propane tank. So I slid the tongue assembly out an additional 12".

I could get to about 70º before hitting anything hard with my original 50-1/2" tongue length. (Of course the propane won't fit up there.)


The longer tongue allows about 85º.


I have barely any experience with towing a trailer, and even less with designing one. Do you think the 70º will be sufficient? That and a bit of practice backing.

I'm glad you brought up that window. I think I've talked my wife out of it. It was a fun challenge to draw though.

AT the shop we see leaks around skylights and big Windows is because people don't take into consideration they have removed a bunch of structural. so it will Flex around your opening so take that into consideration
epoxy and foam or not your only choice you can also do polyester and foam with the right cheap foam from home depo
That angle in front eats a lot of real estate

Nice design. At first I was wondering about that angle in the front profile but then I see it provides for a nice interior shelf under the front window. To Tony's point about "greenhouse effect" you may want to give some thought about how a pull down (or up) shade may work for your design. It's nice having that angle the way you've designed it but I suppose having a track for a shade to slide easily around the sharp angle might be a trick. Maybe 2 shades? Or more of a curve in place of the sharp angle?? Maybe the "curve" is just incorporated into the track and the window itself is still a sharp angle as you've designed?
One other window comment.... figure out what gasket you'll be using. Not sure how a rubber gasket will handle a sharp angle like that (as I've been researching this, myself, for my project).

John

Thank you for your comments, John. I've had the pleasure of following along with your exceptional build. Top-notch concept and workmanship. Well done! And I see you've come to the point where you're working on your own window. I have no doubt you will nail it.

As far as the giant stargazer window in my design, it was the Vistabule, your build and Jeff Creber's work here, https://www.tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=68013 that initially inspired me to add it.

I'm leaning towards abandoning the idea though. It just doesn't lend itself well to the shape of my camper. And of course will almost assuredly be a nightmare to build.

Now I'm playing with the idea of a smaller front window with a travel cover/awning, or switching everything up to a more traditional teardrop design.

I also looked at Jeff and Zanita's build. I'm pretty sure he cold bent his window. This required the aluminum moldings and mechanical fastening of the plastic.
I did like your window design.... I think it would just require some further thought on how to do it.

One thing I wanted to mention regarding your folding bed platform. You may want to consider using an additional panel attached to the fourth panel (I had used 5 panels). It would be a panel that's only about 6 inches in width and it gets fixed to the platform your bed platform sits on top of. I found it prevents the whole platform from sliding around and helps in the folding action (by fixing the point you're going to be pushing or pulling against). I'd be happy to send you a picture of my CAD or photo of the platform panels in my trailer, if you're interested. Just my 2 cents.

John

Thanks John. I will give more thought to that front window. Can't wait to see yours completed.

I am 100% interested in any additional information you can provide about the folding bed platform. Looks like it could become finicky in use if not engineered correctly. I appreciate your experienced advice.

Also have you selected a mattress for yours? I was originally thinking of using a tri-fold mattress, but now I'm thinking that will not work. Currently I'm looking at using a 4" Japanese futon mattress, but I do have concerns with comfort, weight and foldability.

Mikel46516 wrote:Thanks John. I will give more thought to that front window. Can't wait to see yours completed.

You and me both!

I've attached some pictures which hopefully will be helpful and show you how I configured my platform. You may wind up doing something differently.... but this is how I did it.

There's an oak rail on each side of the cabin. The 2nd section of plywood is cut in such a way to have "tabs" on each side that 1) ride along the rails and 2) lock into the notches created in the delrin blocks. There are also delrin sliders (3 of them) that help the sliding action. You'll notice there's also 2 heavy extension springs to help in moving the panels. I may wind up putting some small wheels, embedded somewhere, to help the sliding action. But all in all, the sliding action works well. As previously mentioned, I used 5 panels. You'll see the 5th panel, under the birch ply, is fixed to the floor. This anchors the entire bed platform and keeps things from sliding around. When the platform is in the couch position there was a lot of movement in the platform your back rests against, as it wants to push up against the cabinetry in back of that panel. But once your mattress is installed, you'll find you need that space back there for the portion of the mattress that folds over... it needs somewhere to reside, so it fills that space nicely.

We just purchased our mattress recently. We had looked into getting a specially made mattress (which would have cost probably 800-$1000). We tried a mattress from Ikea to see how it would work and that cost $150. Figured if it didn't work and had to get the custom mattress, we'd be out only $150, so worth the try. The Ikea mattress (actually it's a futon with a split in it) worked great. It's 4 inches thick. I wish it were 5 but still it works fine. My wife and I sat on it in the bed position and we don't really feel the door edge in any negative way. It folds up great.

Hope this all helps

John

Thanks for posting those images, John. There's a lot more to the bed/couch platform than I was counting on. I figured it could just be muscled into couch mode, but I see now that the spring is probably needed.