G’day

[Cuppa]

G’day to all you ‘Mericans & fellow Aussies.
Have just found this forum & will likely lurk for a while, soaking up information until I’m ready to start building. This will have to wait because we currently have our property up for sale, & it makes sense to wait until we are settled somewhere new. However reading (& possibly asking questions as they arise) will keep the motivation going.

I have a rough idea of what I want to build, but at this time have little idea about how I might go about it....... that’s why I’m here.

I’m not new to putting stuff together. I fitted out a small (7 metre/21 foot) bus as a motorhome which my wife & I spent 18 months travelling around Australia in 4 years ago (see my travel blog here ). There are a couple of blogs on my web site detailing the process of converting the bus too if interested.
Since returning home from that trip one thing has remained certain, we want to undertake a lot more long term travel! Over the past few years we have tried to work toward making that goal happen. Selling our home & buying a more easily manageable one is another step along the way.
The bus was great & took us to many places, we are keeping it, but we also want to be able to get to more remote areas where only a 4wd will take us. To this end I have spent a deal of time constructing our ‘remote area camper’ over the past couple of years. I was slack though, I didn’t ‘blog’ it, however if anyone is interested you can check out the build on another forum here & a short video here

As you might see, the vehicle has all we need inside a rear canopy, but with the sleeping accommodation on top in the form of a rooftop tent. This works pretty well, & I will retain it for trips over particularly difficult terrain, but more & more I’ve been thinking that a non canvas bedroom would be highly desirable, particularly in wet & windy weather. We intend to live in the vehicle for months at a time. So I am now thinking about building an ultra light, high clearance, towable bedroom, with independant suspension. So no need for all the stuff that teardrops & tiny travel trailers have in them, because we already have all that in the tow vehicle. Just a bedroom, with an awning attached to the side.

I dream of finding remote paradises & setting up camp for as long as our supplies will last. Water will be the limiting factor - if no nearby supply of freshwater we can last for two weeks at a time. It’s possible that a bit more water carrying capacity could be built into the trailer.

I know of one or two people who have constructed their 4wd expedition vehicles using fibreglass sandwich (composite) panel for the body, all held together with sikaflex adhesives, & no frame or fasteners. These have proven themselves over many thousands of kilometres of rough terrain, so I rather like the idea of using this for my little trailer, although at this stage have little idea of how to go about it. Any one here used this material? I found a build here using Monopan, but I think the fibreglass sandwich panel I’m thinking of is different.

Anyway as I said, I expect I’ll lurk for a while, unless any specific questions come to mind.

regards to all,

Cuppa

[pchast]

Welcome.

[mezmo]

Hi Cuppa,

Welcome to the forum. Australia has some outstanding off road
campers and caravans, which can be of great inspiration for you.

As you basicaly want just an enclosed 'bed chamber'. here are a
few pics of a homebuilt AU off road mini c'van I saw on AU ebay
last year. Maybe a smaller version could work for you. I think the
almost full-wall sized side "door" or 'side hatch' would be very
usefull. [I'd add a regular TD style door within that to use when the
larger one is closed, for more versitility.] This one also has a shower
set-up on the road side. Click on pics the for a larger view.






Alternatively, maybe you could find a good second-hand traytop,
like you modified already, and mount that on a chassis. That'd save
a goodly amount of work, as opposed to starting from scratch.
Here's a link to a basic one I came across recently, for illustration
purposes.
http://traytopcampers.com/

Here are some links to some other AU tray/slide-on camper builders
that offer a trailer option/version of their tray/slide-on campers.
These are much fancier/fully equipped than you want, but they'll
give you and idea of the tray-on-trailer set-up.
http://www.highrise.com.au/trailer.html

http://innovan.com.au/index.php
http://innovan.com.au/exterior.htm
http://innovan.com.au/xc-off-road-caravan.htm

http://www.trayon.com/
http://www.trayon.com/which-trayon/tmo-trailer/

Cheers,
Norm/mezmo

[Cuppa]

Thanks Pete & Norm.

The second hand tray top on a trailer is not a bad idea which I’ll explore, although I suspect it would still be far more expensive than building something myself, although buying some sort of trailer just for a chassis to modify might make sense. I think my metal fabrication skills would be up to cutting & altering an existing chassis, but I’m not sure how square I’d be able to keep things if starting from scratch. I may pay a local trailer manufacturer to build me one though, either with coils & shocks, or possibly the Timbren axle-less rubber torsion set up. The trailer will see many thousands of trailer killing corrugated miles, so the suspension is something which needs to be ‘right’. As does ground clearance - there s an awful lot of sand in Australia, & driving over it frequently means driving in existing wheel ruts & trailer axles tend to act as ’sand ploughs’.
I hadn’t seen that ‘highrise’ one before, although I had considered the idea of building something which could extend in height, but decided that keeping things simpler & basic would not only be easier to design & build, but would be less likely to let dust in & to leak during creek crossings. So I think basically a box the size of the double mattress, enough height to sit up in & a door on each side so we don’t have to crawl over each other for those night time calls of nature will probably be the go. The hard thing will be not getting tempted to add more. I’m already thinking space for extra water storage & portable (chemical) toilet would be handy, & if I put a TV in it then somewhere to carry the satellite dish & tripod. These are ‘luxuries’ we have in the bus, but decided to go without in the camper because of space & weight restraints.
Must resist, must resist! The camper has a marine calorifier to provide us with hot water & showers, is self sufficient for 12v power (plus has an inverter) & runs a separate fridge & freezer. It has all the storage we need for food, clothing, tools & spares etc etc. It also carries a second ground based tent ..... so even without the rooftop tent it would still be self contained, albeit without a permanently made up bed. The trailer would give us that, as well as the flexibility to leave the trailer & ‘rough it’ depending upon where we were going. There are some desert tracks, for example, where trailers are unwise, or even banned. I rather like something of this sort of style.

Explorer-trailerv002rightfrontquarter.jpeg (98.61 KiB) Viewed 280 times

, but possibly with a longer drawbar & a smaller ‘box’.

Cuppa