Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Wow!!! That's long tongue ...

GPW wrote:Wow!!! That's long tongue ...

The original tongue was 4 feet. This one is 8 feet.
I’m going to shorten it once I have the floor laid out on it so I can see how much to take off.

GPW wrote:Wow!!! That's long tongue ...

I set the floor on for size (the front curve isn’t finished) and to decide how much to take off the tongue. I’m thinking one to two feet. Thoughts?

After skeletonizing the bottom layer I got it down about 20 pounds. In thinking about it, I’m not too concerned because that floor and frame will act as a good low center of gravity for the whole trailer.

At present I’m trying to decide how far back to set the floor to move the center of gravity a bit rearward towards the axle to lessen the tongue weight.

Turning radius.
What's your framing lay out/ spacing?

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JasenC wrote:Turning radius.
What's your framing lay out/ spacing?

There’s not as much limitation on turning radius when pulling with a motorcycle/ maxi scooter. Someone pointed out however that if for whatever reason the trailer needs to be towed behind a car, to maintain a long enough tongue to make that possible.

The floor has 1 1/2” longitudinal framing about every 12” on average, more to the sides because of the way I had to join the panels together.

I have three frame pieces supporting it perpendicular to those. The front one is the original tongue and the rear two are 2x4s, with about 30” between them. The front and rear of the floor extends past the 2x4 framing pieces about 10” on each end.

After taking a break for a couple weeks, I finally got back to working on the trailer. The cross pieces were bolted to the frame, and floor is completely finished and bolted onto the cross pieces. The diy Heims swivel hitch is assembled and mounted into the 2” box steel tongue, and the trailer wiring is all finished.

The side walls go from 18” tall in the front to 5’4” tall at the rear. I made the slant up towards the rear a little more than I had originally planned and I think lowering the front wall from an original plan of 24” to 18” will (?) make it a little more aerodynamic while keeping the side profile lower overall.

I cut out the first arched piece of xps foam for the front of the trailer and pieced together the first side and did a test fit.

The front piece is 18” tall at the sides and arched towards the tongue, but it also had to be arched up in the middle to meet the arched roof panels. Marking that arch and making the cut turned out to be simpler and easier than I feared. I’m using my saber saw with a long sharp and smoothly serrated Bosch blade made for cutting rigid foam and it cuts cleanly and smoothly through the xps as well as the cotton fabric I have on the inside of the arch as the first layer of pmf.

The side wall wasn’t cut down to length yet when I test fitted it and took these photos.