Phat man and little boi build

[popper]

My boy and I want to build a travel trailer, and we have a couple of frames. One is an fat old 8' wide boat trailer, and the other your typical little 4x8. Resemblance of the two frames' shapes to the two builders' shapes is completely incidental btw. We keep changing our minds but for now we are thinking.. pop-up pmf vee nose on fatty. Ply lower foam upper, under floor storage, bath and bed layout. Maybe if that one goes well, later on a carawhale riff-op on the skinny frame. Using what we will presumably learn. Still on stage zero where we are gathering material and ideas. And buying tools. But I will post here as(if?) things progress.

[twisted lines]

Wide one should be on the water
Pop up would be kinda nice there too

[popper]

Nah you want a nice slim long hull to move through the water. I think you are right about the pop up on the water!

On the wide guy I am thinking I want a 'crawlspace' under the floor as I've seen others do. Not sure how tall to build it to but thinking 10" high to make it usable for real storage space. Would be nice for wiring and plumbing too. Not sure getting into this kind of thing is a good idea for a newb though. Maybe I should start off with a basic box..

This is a K.I.S.S. pop top system I might use on on the phat trailer attached. Something about a free floating top disagrees with me. With this dual pivot design you would only ever be lifting one end at a time. Lift the back end, pin it in, then unpin the front end, lift the front end, pin it in. Anybody see any glaring oversights?

I guess the front lower pivot point would have to be outside the bottom box, under and in front of the lower front corner. When lifting a PMF foam based top section I think its no problem for a single person to do if they are lifting only half at a time. Even plywood might be possible for one person since you are tilting it up rather than picking up the whole thing.

Despite my car being rated to tow plenty of weight, it has not much more than a hundred horses to work with.. which is the reason I am thinking about a popper up. So it will tow it at fifty five reasonably well.