Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Hello wise internet folk! I've been lurking here for awhile, but I'm happy to say we have started our conversion.

We ended up with a fiberglass trailer, which we have taken the side walls and floor out (some rot going on).

Neither myself of my husband have much building experience, so any/all advice welcome. We are certainly learning a lot so far.

Onto the pics!


Day we brought it home








I thought it was going to be like the metal trailers, with this fiberglass glued onto plywood which would be screwed into metal studs, but NO! It was just a big sandwich board with this composite stuff in the middle and fiberglass on either side. There were lots of ants living in wood.


Side walls and floor are out! Now onto painting the frame.

-Jesse

Greetings. It looks like you are going along well getting the "bugs worked out"..... Sorry.

You have a great opportunity to build it your way! I think for starters, I would have some more steel uprights welded in on 16" or 24" centers. Reinforcements for doors. Then, you have choices. One option would be aluminum paneling like most cargo trailers. Its a good, cheap solution. Another option would be to build composite walls (plywood-foam-plywood) like many of our teardrop bretheren use. Once in, you could sheet the whole exterior with sheet aluminum, go fancy, do rivets, or something. By doing composite wall structures, you might get away with not having to install as many steel posts. There is an outfit near me in Nampa, ID that builds cargo trailers with a sort of composite with very few steel supports, except at the back to support the heavy doors/ramps. They tell me that this has been very successful for them with few if any warranty claims on the structure.

One thing I would suggest first, though, if you havent already done it, get some paint on that fiberglass roof. It looks like the mildew has probably eaten whatever coating it formerly had on it. Polyester resin (used in fiberglass laminates) is very unforgiving of UV, and will break down. You might consider sanding off all the old coating, then lay on a layer of epoxy followed by a good UV resistant paint that is compatible with epoxy.

Exciting, aint' it? Best of luck.

After looking at the second photo, you really need to make some decisions about that roof. The second photo seems to show a lot of "corrosion" of the fiberglass structure. Options I would consider are slathering the whole thing in epoxy resin, then lay on a layer or two of light fiberglass cloth, topped by more epoxy and paint.

Another option would be to "spot repair" areas that are breaking down with epoxy and maybe some sections of FG cloth, and then apply paint over the whole roof. Much less work and it might work well if you are careful.

If you are interested, here is a link to "the epoxy book" published by System Three Epoxy. I have used their products to build two plywood/epoxy boats. Great stuff! The book is basically a bible of getting started in use of epoxy. http://www.systemthree.com/reslibrary/l ... y_Book.pdf
Pages 24 and following of that book might be helpful to you.


A less time consuming method might be to look into buying rubber roof membrane and cover the existing roof. I would still get the old surface off before you did that to stop the mildew, however. I have no experience with that material, but it might work.


just my $.02... I'll be interested to see how you proceed with the project!

Thanks for all the info/suggestions crumvoc.

I was thinking of doing the teardrop-esqe plywood-foam-plywood composite for the walls, as I have a bit of a handle on how that works after reading so many build threads here.

And yes, the roof has been invaded by what appears to be lichen. I'll try to get some better pictures of the roof and I'll look into the epoxy book as well!