7x14 H&H Cargo trailer Toy Hauler conversion

[cornfused]

Well, after looking around in the trailer and thinking about storage space, I once again changed my mind. I ended up putting the slide out potty into the cabinets on the front of the trailer instead of the side one I just finished. It is installed with 500lb working load rated drawer slides and I'm really happy with how it turned out!





Tracks mounted to 2x4's inside the cabinet.




I also did a test this weekend and left the power inverter on all weekend with the fridge plugged in with a case of pop in it and some water in the freezer. I also had the lights on for awhile at night and occasionally opened the fridge up since I was out working on the trailer or in the garage most of the weekend. The batteries did get pulled down from about 12.4 volts to 11.8 and would dip down to 11.5 at the inverter by Sunday night when the compressor would kick on for the fridge.

I also finally got my ramp door seam's done. Most of the stuff I carry in the trailer is in carts on caster wheels and the "seams" of the ramp door like to swallow the wheels sometimes. hopefully this will solve that. They are made out of .1" aluminum tread plate I cut out with a circular saw and took to the local weld shop to have a slight bend put int them to add some stiffness and fit the contour of the ramp. They are attached to the trailer with some strap hinges to fold out of the way to close the door.

[cornfused]

A couple weekends ago we stayed for 3 nights in the trailer at an event. We ended up using a large truck stop nearby for showers which was actually a lot nicer than we thought it would be. It had large individual shower rooms with sink, vanity, toilet and shower in them. Cost a whole $12 for the wife and I to shower and towels were even included.

I will admit that we did run out of battery power and I had to hook the truck up to the batteries with jumper cables and let it charge back up for about an hour (I have a 190 amp alternator on the truck) to keep the fridge going for the last part of the trip because the inverter low voltage alarm was going off. This means I need to make a decision soon as to if I want to spend the money on solar or just make one of the homemade 12v generators out of a small gas motor and a high amp alternator to top the batteries off as needed. I see some pro's and cons to each route and may end up doing a small panel to keep the batteries going and the gas as a back up or to run the AC.

Also since summer is here I made my rear hitch bracket to try towing my 16' fiberglass boat behind the trailer for some camping/boating a little later. It is legal in my state and a couple surrounding states to tow "ball to ball" like this. I was going to add more reinforcement to it, but since it is attached to a 2x4 steel tube and most car receivers are on 2" square tubes I think it will be fine. I also need to add the wiring, but after looking at the wires on the trailer, it will be really easy to splice in a plug with the existing trailer wires.

[Rainier70]

For the best life of your battery, it is best not to discharge it more than 50%. Here is a link to a page that has a chart of voltage readings and what percent of charge they are.

http://www.energymatters.com.au/renewab ... charge.php


I know it is legal, but be really careful towing double. It can get dangerous fast.

[cornfused]

The low voltage alarm on my inverter is at 11.5 volts. Keep in mind that all of those depth of charge graphs are voltage taken with no load on them. If the inverter is shut off and no load is on the batteries the voltage is higher at the batteries.

[cornfused]

Not too much new with the trailer to report, but I did finally get the 2nd tongue box bed-linered and mounted to the trailer.

[OverTheTopCargoTrailer]

1 more day & we will have a big one year Birthday Party for you

[cornfused]

Here are some shots from camping in the trailer this weekend. I lowered one of the beds down so that we could sit on it and it really seemed to open up the inside of the trailer. We kept warm with an electric space heater that has a thermostat on it since we had an electric site at the camp ground.






Also, I was "that guy" waking everyone in the campground up in the morning to the glorious smell of bacon and eggs




In other news, tracking shows that 4 120W solar panels will be on location in the next couple of days

[cornfused]

Well, it's been awhile, but I'm finally getting ready to put the solar on my trailer. So far I have wired the panels up in series/parallel and bolted them all together and to some 2x4" aluminum angle that I purchased. The plan is to bolt the aluminum angle to the roof cross members. This will give me a little over a 2" air gap between the panel frames and the roof of the trailer. Each panel is a 120w panel, for 480 total. I will be using one of the Renology MPPT charge controllers.

[hankaye]

cornfused, Howdy;

Good to see you are still hard at it... Are you planning
to let the air (when traveling), run under the panels or
will you put a deflector in front of them?

hank

[lrrowe]

I too am anxious to see how they are mounted on top.

[cornfused]

cornfused, Howdy;

Good to see you are still hard at it... Are you planning
to let the air (when traveling), run under the panels or
will you put a deflector in front of them?

hank

These panels will sit about a foot behind the rooftop AC unit and roof vent. So for right now I am planning on leaving them open underneath with no deflector. I figure the air up there will be turbulent enough already that it won't matter. Also the width is 2 feet narrower than the width of the roof, and will be centered leaving over a foot from either side of the trailer. I figure if the panels I see in pictures secured to the roofs of RV's with 4 "Z" brackets on the corners survive open, this monstrosity with two of the sides completely secured should ride just fine

Also the solid view of angle from the side will somewhat camouflage the panels up there when viewed from the side. I purposely left the angles long so that I could attach to another roof cross-member also.

[hankaye]

cornfused, Howdy;

Thanks for the answer, very complete, which is a pleasant upgrade from
a yep or nope...
Looking forward to seeing how it comes out.

hank

[cornfused]

I got the panels installed up on the roof this weekend. Still a lot of final wiring and mounting of the charge controller in the trailer, but for right now it is currently charging the batteries in the driveway. I did some experimenting with the panel operation with the panels sitting on the trailer roof and ended up re-wiring them up into a purely parallel setup because it seemed like I still got good low light voltages and it seemed to work better in direct sunlight.

Here's a picture of the temp setup when I was testing the panels out.




And, here are the panels all bolted down to the roof. I kind of wish I could have slid the panels back a little farther from the AC unit, but it worked out better for mounting where it is.

[lrrowe]

Nice. I can see how the wind should not be an issue with this setup.

[OverTheTopCargoTrailer]

I can tell from experience it's easy for your panels to fly back to China
And never under estimate how much heat they give off.