Simple Maryland 5 wide build

[JTROBB]

I managed to paint and pre-wire the trailer this week. Today I welded on the rear stabilizers and loaded the cabin onto the trailer. I probably should have waited for help with the cabin but I don't idle well.

I need to bolt down the cabin, finish the wiring, tongue box, AC, and install fantastick fan under the tear.

Jason

[AlgoDan]

Looking good and making quick progress, wont be long to first camp

[JTROBB]

If it wasn't for the holes in the rear floor for the fantastic fan and the AC tonight would be first camp, in the backyard.


Jason

[JTROBB]

I've gone from daily posts to weekly posts, things really slow down the closer you get to finishing. I wired the teardrop for AC and DC this week. I put a group 27 battery in a harbor freight tongue box along with a 15 amp 3 stage charger and my AC ingress for the trailer.I got the trailer weighed with everything but a spare tire (battery, charger, and AC) and it weighs 1040 LBS. I slept in it last night and found that the AC refused to work. Luckily it was nice enough to not need it. Today I pulled the AC and sure enough it refuses to cool and more than 5 degrees below ambient. I bought a new one and am in the process of getting it fitted.

Jason

[AlgoDan]

Lucky you, you got to sleep in yours. I will have to wait till next weekend. Good luck with the new AC.

[JTROBB]

I did realize I need curtains. I plan to purchase a single panel of blackout curtains cut in half and Velcro them up at the corners. Is this a possibility? Any other ideas as far as hanging curtains?


Jason

[Oldragbaggers]

Jason,
I am using vinyl curtain track. You can get it so that either mounts overhead to the ceiling or vertical on the walls. Very inexpensive and light.

http://www.sailrite.com/Curtain-Track-Vertical-Mount-Vinyl-48

and eyelet style curtain carriers that you just whip stitch onto the curtain panel. Couldn't be easier.

http://www.sailrite.com/Curtain-Carriers-Eyelet-Style

or you can get the carriers presewn into a tape and just sew the tape across the top of the curtain

http://www.sailrite.com/Sew-on-Tab-Tape

I've used this in boats and it's extremely simple to do.

[Kharn]

Becky,
Cool idea, how do you terminate the track so the curtains do not slide off the ends?

[JTROBB]

That is a great Idea!!! Solves the problem of the curtain being in the way when entering and exiting the vehicle. Just make sure there is enough track to push the whole curtain to the rear and out of the way of the door when the curtain is not in use. There is a sewing machine in the house but I have not seen it used in 15 years, I think I might be able to figure it out but I have no idea what a whip stitch is. Or is a whip stitch something I can do by hand with a needle and thread?

Jason

[KCStudly]

IIRC, and my interpretation is correct, a whip stitch is where you wrap the edge of the fabric with hand stitching. In this case you would loop through the fabric edge, through the slide eyelet, then back through the fabric edge.

I am a little rusty on my home-economics training, so you may want to wait until someone else chimes in before taking my word for it.

[JTROBB]

Here is what I found on a Google search. If this is it, it doesn't look too hard


Jason

[Oldragbaggers]

Becky,
Cool idea, how do you terminate the track so the curtains do not slide off the ends?

There are end stops for the curtain track, only 50 cents each.

http://www.sailrite.com/End-Stop-for-Curtain-Track

The track also comes in aluminum if you prefer that look.

All of the curtain track parts are at this link, and if you scroll to the bottom of the page there are several how-to videos you can watch.

http://search.sailrite.com/?freeText=curtain

[JTROBB]

Curtains are done. I just cut down a pair of cheap light blocking curtain panels from Target. I learned to use the sewing machine this week. It took longer to figure out how to thread it than to actually hem the curtains. Note for planning a build, put a solid piece of lumber just above the door to mount your curtain. I didn't and had to mount the curtain up near the roof where i had something substantial to screw to. This made it necessary to curve the track around the front radius to cover the window completely.

Jason

[Kharn]

Threading the machine is always a pain. On mine (my mom's old machine), there's a metal disk sticking out in the thread path. If you go on one side, everything works perfectly, if you go on the wrong side, you spend 20 minutes clearing thread from all sorts of mysterious parts of the machine.

[JTROBB]

loaded up and made a 2300mile trip with no issues other than a generator that was spewing gas while running. Think it may be a stuck float on the generator.