Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

If you are looking for the smallest coilover shock setup, check out old school hot rodders.

Also, why not a strut from today's smaller cars? Front or rear application.

jagular7 wrote:If you are looking for the smallest coilover shock setup, check out old school hot rodders.

Also, why not a strut from today's smaller cars? Front or rear application.

I don't know if I would need the smallest I can find, but I definitely did think about the rodder shocks. Unfortunately, a lot of them are chromed and a little more expensive than other shocks.

Struts would be great for mounting, but I don't know how much they can be triangulated. Most struts I've seen are mounted nearly vertical with just a little offset for triangulation.

My problem is I want my cake and I want to eat it too. I want a trailer that rides very well when towed with only 100-300 pounds of recycling in it, but also sits at the same height and rides well with 2,300 pounds of gear in it...

Leaf springs are 2 fold in the suspension. They carry weight obviously, but also locate the axle. With a link suspension, the link locate the axle and the coils or air bags support the weight. Shocks are an all together different support in the suspension. They minimize the oscillation of the movement of the axle relative to the frame.

With all that, use a single leaf to locate the axle with a shackle as the swing arm rather than a slipper spring. A longer leaf will be beneficial compared to a short leaf. Then add an air bag to carry the weight. An air shock may work just as well, but will have to have the mounts capable of carrying the capacity. However, for up to 2300#s, I really doubt that there is a small air shock that can handle that capacity.

You will need to add a shock to minimize the axle oscillation. With a light weight axle setup (its own weight) and a heavy carrying capacity, you may not be able to find a shock to keep the trailer smooth riding when empty.

With air bags or shocks, you'll need a vehicle source to maintain the weight carrying capacity adjustability.

Tires also play a big part in the smooth ride of the trailer. Get a set of tires that has the capacity to carry your maximum weight. Car tires have a softer sidewall and thus give a better ride compared to trailer tires. Many car tires now have a size comparable to the trailer tires and have the capacity for a trailer.

Saw an interesting small pop-up on Phoenix craigslist, and cheap ($495)! It's a1966 Westholt. The attached photo will be gone soon, I'm sure, it's linked from the ad...

http://phoenix.craigslist.org/evl/rvs/892966285.html

jagular7 wrote:Leaf springs are 2 fold in the suspension. They carry weight obviously, but also locate the axle. With a link suspension, the link locate the axle and the coils or air bags support the weight. Shocks are an all together different support in the suspension. They minimize the oscillation of the movement of the axle relative to the frame.

With all that, use a single leaf to locate the axle with a shackle as the swing arm rather than a slipper spring. A longer leaf will be beneficial compared to a short leaf. Then add an air bag to carry the weight. An air shock may work just as well, but will have to have the mounts capable of carrying the capacity. However, for up to 2300#s, I really doubt that there is a small air shock that can handle that capacity.

You will need to add a shock to minimize the axle oscillation. With a light weight axle setup (its own weight) and a heavy carrying capacity, you may not be able to find a shock to keep the trailer smooth riding when empty.

With air bags or shocks, you'll need a vehicle source to maintain the weight carrying capacity adjustability.

Tires also play a big part in the smooth ride of the trailer. Get a set of tires that has the capacity to carry your maximum weight. Car tires have a softer sidewall and thus give a better ride compared to trailer tires. Many car tires now have a size comparable to the trailer tires and have the capacity for a trailer.

I understand how the suspension works. I wasn't trying to have a small street rod shock carry the weight, the coils or springs would do that. If I did the 4-link I would use coil-overs or the Air Ride airbag/shock combo, but the air bag based suspensions are very expensive. A small 2 gallon tank and 12V compressor aren't hard to incorporate, nor is a manual 3-way valve to raise and lower the ride height of the trailer.

I'd love to go all out and completely custom fab everything around a trailing arm independent suspension with air ride, but budget wise I think the best case is to buy either the torsion axle or step up to a leaf spring axle, dump the springs and go 4-link with progressive coil-over Monroe shocks. The 4-link is $160 and the shocks were about $130 for a pair. IIRC, the leaf spring axle with electric brakes and a 5x4.75 hub was under $350. So that's about $550 on top of the utility trailer unless the manufacture will ship a kit trailer w/o axle and give you about a $150 credit... I'm really tempted to just order the 4-link kit while it's still on special pricing. I don't know how hard it is to add the electric brakes to an existing axle.

navigator wrote:Saw an interesting small pop-up on Phoenix craigslist, and cheap ($495)! It's a1966 Westholt. The attached photo will be gone soon, I'm sure, it's linked from the ad...

http://phoenix.craigslist.org/evl/rvs/892966285.html

Man, that is tempting me to send the guy the money via Paypal and have a LTL truck swing by, pick it up and ship it here!

I saved the HTML page and the pics so I can upload them to photobucket later. Might email the guy about sending me bigger pics too.

If you’re a fan of the Explorer Box design, check out our Sneak Peek announce in the Manufactures section.

Found an interesting design (and only $6,500)...

http://www.madventurecamping.com/index.html

Navigator, Thanks for the link, looks like a stretched Explorer Box for a couple thousand dollars more than I've been doing ready-to-roll Explorer Boxes. Personally I stay away from online companies that don't publish a phone on their web-site. Ok, I stand corrected, now they have a phone number listed.

I've had a number of calls recently that started, are the Explorer Box DIY plans still available, the answer is YES! So I'll dust this post off with a few Explorer Box pictures

Here is a customer example of building an Explorer Box "backwards" with the Kitchen / Galley on the rear.

Here is a recently completed customer Explorer Box