Yet another n00b, this one from Melbourne, Australia

[A Green Cow]

Hi Everyone,
I've been lurking on and off on this forum for about 18 months now, and I realised in that time I still haven't started my teardrop. Time to get things happening.

I'll start with a disclaimer. I went to school at the time Australia changed from imperial to metric, as such I tend to use a mix of both. For weights I 99% of the time use kilograms, and for measurements I tend to use feet and inches when talking generally, but millimetres when talking specifics. Sorry for the confusion if any is caused, but you will all be happy to know I can do the conversions between the two pretty easily.

Anyway, the build I was looking at doing was a 9 foot long, 5 foot wide, four foot high design, basically a Benroy, but with my own styling. My father was a plumber and all his kids had to learn how to weld. As such, I'm more comfortable working with steel than I am with wood. Because of this I've been working on my design being a basic steel skeleton, with 2-3mm ply internal wall, and aluminium outer walls. There will be styrofoam between these two walls to help with insulation.

My car is a Hyundai Getz, which has a towing capacity of 450kg (unbraked), 700kg (braked) and a ball weight of 50kg max. I'm hoping to be able to get total weight to under 400kg, and with doing a rough calculation on material weights, I'm getting a total of around 300kg, before fit out. I did toy with the idea of an all aluminium build, but the total weight saving is only about 10%, so not really worth the extra issues in dealing with aluminium.

This will be a long term project, as funds are limited, so it will be a case of build more when I have the funding, but a project well worth doing. My doctor has recently retired me from competitive sports, due to my fourth knee reco and I'm too young to have replacements done, so it's time to get another interest up and running.

Thanks for reading,
HooRoo,
Rebecca

[Weirdnerd]

welcome ( I am new too), it will be nice to follow your progress, and please post a lot of pics!

[PaulC]

Hi Everyone,
I've been lurking on and off on this forum for about 18 months now, and I realised in that time I still haven't started my teardrop. Time to get things happening.

I'll start with a disclaimer. I went to school at the time Australia changed from imperial to metric, as such I tend to use a mix of both. For weights I 99% of the time use kilograms, and for measurements I tend to use feet and inches when talking generally, but millimetres when talking specifics. Sorry for the confusion if any is caused, but you will all be happy to know I can do the conversions between the two pretty easily.

Anyway, the build I was looking at doing was a 9 foot long, 5 foot wide, four foot high design, basically a Benroy, but with my own styling. My father was a plumber and all his kids had to learn how to weld. As such, I'm more comfortable working with steel than I am with wood. Because of this I've been working on my design being a basic steel skeleton, with 2-3mm ply internal wall, and aluminium outer walls. There will be styrofoam between these two walls to help with insulation.

My car is a Hyundai Getz, which has a towing capacity of 450kg (unbraked), 700kg (braked) and a ball weight of 50kg max. I'm hoping to be able to get total weight to under 400kg, and with doing a rough calculation on material weights, I'm getting a total of around 300kg, before fit out. I did toy with the idea of an all aluminium build, but the total weight saving is only about 10%, so not really worth the extra issues in dealing with aluminium.

This will be a long term project, as funds are limited, so it will be a case of build more when I have the funding, but a project well worth doing. My doctor has recently retired me from competitive sports, due to my fourth knee reco and I'm too young to have replacements done, so it's time to get another interest up and running.

Thanks for reading,
HooRoo,
Rebecca

And just what do you think you are doing here, young Lady
Cheers
Paul

[A Green Cow]

And just what do you think you are doing here, young Lady
Cheers
Paul

Just trying to show you oldies a thing or two Paul.
Thanks for the welcome.

[PaulC]

And just what do you think you are doing here, young Lady
Cheers
Paul

Just trying to show you oldies a thing or two Paul.
Thanks for the welcome.

You'd have to be up early to do that Bec

Cheers
Paul