My cargo teardrop build

[znelson]

As far as no windows or vents, how is your dog to breathe? Here in Arizona, you could cook a turkey in an hour in an unvented trailer.

Ah yeah, I may have worded that awkwardly. The dog'll be in the car with the people, and the junk will be in the trailer.

[Cliffmeister2000]

As far as no windows or vents, how is your dog to breathe? Here in Arizona, you could cook a turkey in an hour in an unvented trailer.

Ah yeah, I may have worded that awkwardly. The dog'll be in the car with the people, and the junk will be in the trailer.

Ah!

[znelson]

As for the router bit - yeah I had that problem too.

I had the same problem with 2 of those Freud bits.

Veeery interesting... Seems they ought to be able to come up with a less user hostile design when they're charging $20+ per bit.

I was able to continue by stacking 2 bearings on the shank and pushing them up against the collet so they couldn't walk around on the shank.

Smart idea! Next time I have to use this bit I will give that a shot!

[Ron Dickey]

You are moving so fast you should be almost done..... how is the build coming?

[znelson]

Oof, things got busy lately. Got so into working on this thing that I frequently forgot to actually take photos of the progress.

I decided that interior dome lights would be a good thing. Also, having the dome lights when the car wasn't attached would be pretty convenient for packing and unpacking. So I got a breakaway kit (battery + charger + breakaway switch) and used the charger + battery to provide power for the interior dome lights. This added a tiny bit of complication to the wiring but I think the long term utility will be well worth it. And it was much easier to do as I was building than after the fact.



I soldered and heat shrinked (heat shrunk?) all of the wiring. I picked up a "helping hand" from HF for $2.99 and it was a lifesaver while soldering. Each of the connections I soldered were 3 directions (y-split, basically), so I did one wire coming in one side of the heat shrink and two coming out the other.





My wife helped with the soldering, too! We're both happy to be able to say that "we" built this trailer.



I hung the spare tire under the trailer with a CE Smith Offset Spare Tire Carrier. I was little worried about the clearance to the road, but it's within about 1" of the axle so going to see how it goes.

[znelson]

Here's the "forgot to take pictures" part...

I attached the floor to the trailer frame with bolts and PL adhesive.

Walls are up and spars are in place. The wiring for the side lights and dome lights are all in place on the frame and the walls have routered paths through through to their destinations.




I put small wire loom around the wires and held them in place with nylon wire clamps.



This side goes up to the roof for the dome lights, but the other side only has the two side marker light wires.




With help holding the plywood, I passed the wires through pre-drilled holes in the outer wall sheet, glued and screwed it into place.




Time to go buy some 1/8" birch plywood and materials for the hatch!

[znelson]

Well, I built the hatch. Actually, I built two hatches: one that was close to the shape of the trailer, but not close enough, and another that fits great.

When I first started building the hatch, I just had the pieces sitting in place on the back of the trailer. I held things in place by hand as I screwed it all together. After getting the four corners together, things were already going downhill. The edges were crooked from the trailer by at least an inch between the top of the hatch and the bottom. I don't have any pictures of this, unfortunately. Probably the biggest cause of the problems I saw was the fact that I cut out the hatch ribs with a jigsaw. For the second attempt I cut out one as a template with a jigsaw, then carbon copied the template with a flush cut router bit. That worked MUCH better.

The routered ribs:



The outside edges of the hatch are doubled up 3/4" plywood, and there are two additional ribs in the middle of the hatch that are single 3/4" plywood. To ensure that the second hatch fit as I was building it I installed the hinge temporarily and attached the top of the hatch to the hinge. I clamped the bottom edges square before gluing and screwing everything together.




I got a few sheets of 1/8" bending birch plywood and I'm going to start skinning soon!

[znelson]

Put on the inside skin!






Before I put on the outside skin, I'm going to cut holes for and wire the interior lights. I also need to put in a couple of vertical pieces on the lower section below the hatch in the rear for the tail lights to attach to.

[znelson]

Cut holes for and wired the interior lights:






I love how the lights came out!

[znelson]

Glued, screwed, and routered the outside skin: