Building on Lotus 7 principles

[Iain Hall]

Its been a STRUGGLE to get the teardrop to the stage where Nicole can use the tear to go to the Woodford Folk festival and camp in it but she has just driven off, admittedly she is a bit nervous having never towed a trailer of any sort before but she assured me that she would be going slowly and taking it very easy. Of course there are many things that still need to be done, for instance I have not hooked up power to the TV or the stereo, The stove needed a longer hose to the gas bottle so Nicole will be using her single burner stove although I did hook up all if the interior lights and the extractor fan and the all important solar panel.
As it turns out my hatch skin is entirely screwed on rather than being riveted because of time constraints and the struts that I have are not Up to holding it up so I have Jerry rigged a prop made out of a golf club with its head cut off but those are things I shall fix after Nicole brings it back home in a weeks time

I do wish that I could have got everything sorted but after working all day Christmas eve and most of Christmas day there really was just no time to do everything even so My galley looks pretty good even if the water and gas are not hooked up!

If you look closely you can see the there round LED panels that provide my Galley lighting they will eventually be put under the same sort of Glass and chrome fittings I used inside but that needs rubbers that I have to order from the UK

I have one external light above the LHS door

My teardrop fits very nicely in the shadow of our Pickup and I'm guessing that we won't even notice that its there most of the time


This window pane is a nice snug fit bit I made the other one just a touch too small and I will be replacing it with another one that I will cut today

[Iain Hall]

Well my teardrop has now seen six days of use at the Woodford folk festival that my wife attends each year Given my mad rush to get it finished in time its not surprising that there were a couple of minor issues, Firstly I had backed off the adjuster on the tow coupler and more importantly I have discovered that he u-bolts that hold the axle to the springs need locking nuts to stop them coming loose. This one is of course top of my list of things that need to be done,
Apart form that it seemed to work well enough even though my wife did complain about the amount airflow through the the windows but that is more and artifact of the record temperatures we have had over the last week. I will have to get stronger gas struts to hold up the hatch because the golf club prop though adequate is not really elegant enough.
Over all I call the project a success but I will be getting back into it today by replacing all of the screws on the hatch with rivets because I really don't like the look of all of those screws.

[pchast]

Glad it worked out so well. You got the highest seal of approval
there is.

You may want to get another ball mount to raise the height
when towing with the truck and so level the trailer. Have
you tried it with the car yet?

[Iain Hall]

At present the tow bar of the trailer has about a 5 degree slope upwards and that does not seem like too much to me and I got to follow it while it was being towed yesterday and it seems to track and tow rather well even though the Ubolts needed a bit of tightening on the axles our other car does not have a towbar so as long as it works fine with our pickup all will be well

[Sheddie]

Hi Iain and Happy New Year from across the ditch.
Nice looking little teardrop and the Series E wheels really set it off nicely.
Good on your wife for taking it on its maiden voyage, especially having never towed before. I bet she made a lot of new friends where ever she stopped.
You will have to show us some more photos of the Morris project. I have a "37 Morris 8 S2.

I will have to get stronger gas struts to hold up the hatch because the golf club prop though adequate is not really elegant enough.

Before you start looking at stronger struts, l would suggest that you look at moving the mounting position for the strut on the hatch further back, away from the hinge. As well as reducing the amount of push needed from the struts it will also reduce the strain on the hinges.

[Iain Hall]

Thanks for the kind words Frank But the problem with moving the mounting points is that to do would would require a major change as the mounting points are welded to the frame and to change it I would have to strip either the lining or the skin off. Anyway I have already bought some that are much stronger ( 700n instead of 350n) and as I have a steel frame and steel hinges I am not really worried about the strength of the hinges.

Top marks for recognizing the wheels are off a Morris 8 the idea is to make the trailer a match for my as yet unfinished roadster based very loosely on a Morris Z chassis with a hand built by me body its engine is out of a Morris minor with a 4 speed gearbox