Could this be the end of Teardrops and home builds ???

[Spardo]

I just looked at the other pictures on http://s649.photobucket.com/user/Spardo ... 8b.jpg.htm and have to say I am very much not impressed. I would also push for a new frame and notify what ever your equivalent of highway safety, it was an accident waiting to happen.

All under way SC, but the wheels of lawyers grind slowly. I am itching to give the locals the go ahead to transfer to a new chassis but if I jump the gun I might compromise the case and end up paying for it myself.

They have already offered a new frame and transport of the completed job back to France. But would you want another chassis from these clowns? I sure as hell don't. As I said earlier, their solution would cost them around £5,000 more than mine, they are surely running scared.

[jackdaw]

That looks really poor .... I know Martin TwoShowers sold the business a little while ago, and it's been taken over and been redesigned from the original spec.
Am I right in thinking the new chassis is stainless steel ? I was under the impression stainless is more brittle than mild steel and maybe not as suitable....but that's just my thoughts.
I really hope you get your trailer sorted quickly. without too much messing around.

[Roly Nelson]

Hi Gus, welcome to the forum, and i am sorry about your disasterous welding problems. However, being a rescue dog lover, want to commend you for your efforts to find our fur-covered friends, new homes. Here in the States, many animals are needlessly put down, simply because caring folks don't know where to look or how easy it is to find those helpless little animals that need loving, caring homes. I visit our local shelter once a week, constantly on the look-out for the perfect dog, that would be a fine companion for my well-mannered pomeranian, that I adopted about a year ago. So many helpless stray animals are available, and so many folks don't even know about it. All animals from our local shelter are altered, to eliminate further countless deaths, due to uncaring owners, who refuse to alter their animals, which ultimately may be done away with.

Good luck on your legal efforts to resolve your present problem with the faulty welds. I am afraid if you don't have deep pockets, you may have a hard time getting any satisfaction from the builder or welder of you trailer. Hope all goes well, and your efforts are not in vain. However, I encourage you to continue to rescue our 4 legged friends, they will surely warm many hearts.
Roly, the So Calif woody guy

[Spardo]

That looks really poor .... I know Martin TwoShowers sold the business a little while ago, and it's been taken over and been redesigned from the original spec.
Am I right in thinking the new chassis is stainless steel ? I was under the impression stainless is more brittle than mild steel and maybe not as suitable....but that's just my thoughts.
I really hope you get your trailer sorted quickly. without too much messing around.

Yes, Jackdaw, the chassis is stainless, I wondered if that was a factor. Certainly brittleness, encouraged by poor workmanship, seems to be a major factor in this.

Are you saying that it is Martin's business that was sold to AVi, the owners of Teardrop UK, the makers of my caravan? I did wonder when I saw his post saying that he produced The Sleeper, which is the name of this model from Leicester.

If so, he will be less than pleased with his unwitting association with this event. Is he still around on here?

And to Roly. Thanks for your comments (apart from renaming this David as Gus of course). I love the dogs and in all the hundreds I have tranported over the last 2 or 3 years have never yet come across one which worried me, and that includes many Dobermanns, my first Rottweiler a couple of weeks ago and a Great Dane, so strong that it took me 10 minutes with my foot braced next to the clutch pedal to push him back (hands against his forehead and chest, he had no collar) as he tried to join me in front. Even then he showed no animosity or threat towards me.

As to deep pockets. Depends what you mean by satisfaction. All I want is my van back on the road on a trustworthy chassis. If they would agree, this could be done here at a cost of less than €1,800 ($2,340). If they resist too long I am prepared to pay that myself, but obviously I am giving the lawyers (not paid by me, here in France such representation is automatically included in insurance) a chance to screw it out of them first. So I will get satisfaction in the sense of getting it back on the road on my terms with a known possible outlay at the very least.

[Shadow Catcher]

In one of the pictures I see what looks like rust around some of the welds which lead me to think it was galvanized. Stainless steel has to be TIG or MIG welded. The appearance is of badly done MIG with a socket or butt weld that was incomplete and or has lack of fusion.
You have my sympathy, I had our aluminum frame reinforced after I heard the first one made by the manufacture failed in a similar fashion to yours. I do a periodic inspection to check for failing welds and look for cracking.

[Two Showers]

This is NOT one of my builds I hasten to add. We did not use this type of chassis. I take it this is the new manufacturer's design ????

[Spardo]

This is NOT one of my builds I hasten to add. We did not use this type of chassis. I take it this is the new manufacturer's design ????

Yes, I know you sold the business some years ago. This one came newly constructed on the 22 of April this year from Teardrop UK, at Oadby, Leicester, part of the AVInnovate group. Is that who you sold the business to? Not your fault at all of course but must sadden you to see what is being turned out by them now bearing the name of your inspiration.

Shadow Catcher, I am not an engineer so have little knowledge of what you are saying. Was there any known cause of the one you heard had failed? Was it new? Had it been subjected to any excessive strain, overloading for instance? Could this damage have possibly been done by a jockey wheel dropping to the ground?

[Shadow Catcher]

We were the first owner of Mega Mini #1 the first one built by Eye4Design and it was more or less a copy of a Grasshopper design. It had an all aluminum frame and I was concerned because there was a good bit of frame flex in the tongue. They asked for suggestions for improvements which we gave them, and they listened and all of the subsequent incorporated those changes i.e two doors, single galley hatch... We asked what would it take to make those changes to ours and they offered to build a new one and #1 was traded in for #7 the last one they built.
I found #1 for sale on Ebay by the second owner and prominent was the repair done to the frame and I wrote and asked for details. They had been traveling at slow speed in a small town and the frame broke at about 25 MPH on a back street. The found some one in the town that could do repairs adding fish plates and TIG welding them in place.
Our tear, #7, has a longer tongue to accommodate a large tongue box and I was concerned about that tongue flex. MM #1 had the tongue fail the same place yours did where it went under the trailer, but the frame failed not a joint. I now have four reinforcing channels TIG welded reinforcing the frame.

MM#1

#7

[philh24]

This is NOT one of my builds I hasten to add. We did not use this type of chassis. I take it this is the new manufacturer's design ????

Yes, I know you sold the business some years ago. This one came newly constructed on the 22 of April this year from Teardrop UK, at Oadby, Leicester, part of the AVInnovate group. Is that who you sold the business to? Not your fault at all of course but must sadden you to see what is being turned out by them now bearing the name of your inspiration.

Shadow Catcher, I am not an engineer so have little knowledge of what you are saying. Was there any known cause of the one you heard had failed? Was it new? Had it been subjected to any excessive strain, overloading for instance? Could this damage have possibly been done by a jockey wheel dropping to the ground?

I must admit this was the last thing I wanted to see on here about avi's sleeper. I have the same model as you and picked it up last week from Leicester.

[Spardo]

Shadow Catcher, that is most interesting. I notice that #1, at least, has the drawbar members travelling under the chassis and correctly welded to it at the point of contact. Mine, as you know was severely weakened by passing it through the chassis cutting and slotting both members then compounding the error by very poor blobs of weld.

The thing that strikes me about American chassis in general, and yours in particular, is how far back you place the axles. This makes for greater stability I know but must surely mean that you have to pay very good attention to the strength of the drawbar.

Phil, hardly my place to welcome you aboard because I have only been here 5 minutes myself, but I am pleased to see you.
Before you do another mile my advice would be to pay very close attention to that the junction of the A-frame and the chassis and, if you find that it is the same cut and slot method that you see on mine, get onto them immediately and demand modifications. Let them know that you have seen this on a worldwide forum, it won't do your or my case any harm at all to let them know how widely this is now publicised. If they do agree to mods my advice to you would be to trailer it back to them rather than tow it. Mine went almost without warning, approximately 2 minutes of a slight banging noise (and I only heard that because the radio wasn't on) and then the crash.

Please keep us up to date on their response.

Just as a matter of interest, what date did you collect yours? I picked mine up on the 22nd of April and it snapped in two on the 9th of May. They were informed by me when I got back home on the 11th of May.

[Shadow Catcher]

Yes the frame on both tears is continuous under the tear, this does point out the finite elastic nature of aluminum. The axle is too far back and the tongue weight is too high, particularly with the extended platform for the tongue box. The water tank and gray water tank are aft of the axle as is the weight of the galley.

[philh24]

[quote="Spardo"]Shadow Catcher, that is most interesting. I notice that #1, at least, has the drawbar members travelling under the chassis and correctly welded to it at the point of contact. Mine, as you know was severely weakened by passing it through the chassis cutting and slotting both members then compounding the error by very poor blobs of weld.

The thing that strikes me about American chassis in general, and yours in particular, is how far back you place the axles. This makes for greater stability I know but must surely mean that you have to pay very good attention to the strength of the drawbar.

Phil, hardly my place to welcome you aboard because I have only been here 5 minutes myself, but I am pleased to see you.
Before you do another mile my advice would be to pay very close attention to that the junction of the A-frame and the chassis and, if you find that it is the same cut and slot method that you see on mine, get onto them immediately and demand modifications. Let them know that you have seen this on a worldwide forum, it won't do your or my case any harm at all to let them know how widely this is now publicised. If they do agree to mods my advice to you would be to trailer it back to them rather than tow it. Mine went almost without warning, approximately 2 minutes of a slight banging noise (and I only heard that because the radio wasn't on) and then the crash.

Please keep us up to date on their response.

Just as a matter of interest, what date did you collect yours? I picked mine up on the 22nd of April and it snapped in two on the 9th of May. They were informed by me when I got back home on the 11th of May.[/quote
I should have picked it up the week after you informed them but there was a delay perhaps now I no the reason.I actually picked it up on Monday the 20th may. They are still using the slot design by the looks of it but mine is welded all the way around on both sides aswell as behind the cross member where it goes through. There is also a plate behind the cross member which stretches from one side to the other the a frame is also welded to this.
After seeing what happened to you and some good advice from the forum I took it today to have it inspected at a local steel fabricator. He said the welds are all ok and that if anything it had weld overkill for the size of the trailer and weight it was carrying.
I think after you had your problem they must have reviewed there setup,or yours was just not inspected properly by them before you picked it up. The worrying thing is that I ordered mine about 5 weeks before I picked it up and they were flat out making them. Simon told me that there were 2 going out that week and the following week one of which must have been yours. I wonder if there is a recall on the previous sleepers they have done. Mine seems to be ok thanks partly I think to you acting immediately like you did. Did you send them the same photos that are on here.

[alaska teardrop]

They are still using the slot design by the looks of it but mine is welded all the way around on both sides aswell as behind the cross member where it goes through. There is also a plate behind the cross member which stretches from one side to the other the a frame is also welded to this.

Phil, Could you post pictures of this new modification? Welding across the top or down the sides of a channel, tube or angle can create potential fatigue at the critical junction where the tongue meets the front cabin floor/wall.

See this old thread that discusses this issue: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=8851

Fred

[philh24]

They are still using the slot design by the looks of it but mine is welded all the way around on both sides aswell as behind the cross member where it goes through. There is also a plate behind the cross member which stretches from one side to the other the a frame is also welded to this.

Phil, Could you post pictures of this new modification? Welding across the top or down the sides of a channel, tube or angle can create potential fatigue at the critical junction where the tongue meets the front cabin floor/wall.

See this old thread that discusses this issue: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=8851

Fred

No problem Fred il do it over the weekend.

[Spardo]

Sounds like I sent alarm bells ringing in Leicester then Phil. Yes, all the photos that are on here were sent to them as soon as I took them. That 's what sent them into a spin.

I am looking forward to seeing your photos of their modifications, it will take something really special to persuade me to trust them again though. I am still pressing ahead with legal pressure to try to get them to let me get it sorted here.