2013 Mirage XPO 6x12- Mt Air Express

[hankaye]

lrrowe, Howdy;

Sorry about the back, hope your doc is one of the good ones.
Looking forward to seeing you posting about your build instead
of sitting on the sidelines, kibitzing ...

hank

[Gonefishin]

Love the floor insulation idea Cindy. Two inches of that foam should be superior to anything and eliminate all outside air. I have just bought foam tiles for the inside of mine. Waiting for a warm day off to get those put down inside. I have the same experience with my uninsulated floor in the spring and fall: Its a cold magnet! If my inside foam doesn't work, I'll be trying your idea. Do you have some kind of jack to get your trailer up and secure, or did you have to just crawl under there to do all the measuring/gluing/drilling/fastening?

[lrrowe]

lrrowe, Howdy;

Sorry about the back, hope your doc is one of the good ones.
Looking forward to seeing you posting about your build instead
of sitting on the sidelines, kibitzing ...

hank

Hank, thanks for the kind words. I have fighting this for 6 + months now, so I have done a lot of sideline sitting and writing. I want to order my CT now as I have everything picked out. But because of all the uncertainties of surgeries, especially the ones near the spine, I do not want to commit to anything until all is well. I do not to leave a mess for my wife to have to manage.

I have also been teaching myself to write a web page, one for my family life, photography hobby and of course my CT build.
I have a ton of links saved for all types of categories that I can refer to. Because of yours and Cindy's previous comment about my ideas, I think I will share that website today in a later post here. Maybe others can benefit from it.

[lrrowe]

Love the floor insulation idea Cindy. Two inches of that foam should be superior to anything and eliminate all outside air. I have just bought foam tiles for the inside of mine. Waiting for a warm day off to get those put down inside. I have the same experience with my uninsulated floor in the spring and fall: Its a cold magnet! If my inside foam doesn't work, I'll be trying your idea. Do you have some kind of jack to get your trailer up and secure, or did you have to just crawl under there to do all the measuring/gluing/drilling/fastening?

Gone fishing and Cindy,
Because of all the experiences of others with cold CT floors and because I did not want to bump my head with the standard heights, I will order my Ct with at least 3", if not 6 extra inches. The I will put sleepers on the floor. Then I will put insulation foam between the sleepers . Depending on the extra heigh ordered, I can visualize 1 1/2"foam and then maybe 1/2 or5/8 floor plywood over all that.

I think for the East Coast,that is all i will need. But i will keep all your efforts in mind if i want more insulation than that

[lrrowe]

Love the floor insulation idea Cindy. Two inches of that foam should be superior to anything and eliminate all outside air. I have just bought foam tiles for the inside of mine. Waiting for a warm day off to get those put down inside. I have the same experience with my uninsulated floor in the spring and fall: Its a cold magnet! If my inside foam doesn't work, I'll be trying your idea. Do you have some kind of jack to get your trailer up and secure, or did you have to just crawl under there to do all the measuring/gluing/drilling/fastening?

Gone fishing and Cindy,
Because of all the experiences of others with cold CT floors and because I did not want to bump my head with the standard heights, I will order my Ct with at least 3", if not 6 extra inches. The I will put sleepers on the floor. Then I will put insulation foam between the sleepers. Depending on the extra heigh ordered, I can visualize 1 1/2"foam and then maybe 1/2 or5/8 floor plywood over all that.

I think for the East Coast,that is all i will need. But i will keep all your efforts in mind if i want more insulation than that

[Rainier70]

Love the floor insulation idea Cindy. Two inches of that foam should be superior to anything and eliminate all outside air. I have just bought foam tiles for the inside of mine. Waiting for a warm day off to get those put down inside. I have the same experience with my uninsulated floor in the spring and fall: Its a cold magnet! If my inside foam doesn't work, I'll be trying your idea. Do you have some kind of jack to get your trailer up and secure, or did you have to just crawl under there to do all the measuring/gluing/drilling/fastening?

I left it on the ground and "tipped" it one direction and then the other for the ends. It got real cozy putting in the one above the axle, but other than that... not too bad. I could have jacked it up and used jackstands, but I didn't. I think I was more concerned with knocking it off the jackstands pounding tight fits in than crawling in the dirt. Since the panels were all cut and ready to go it didn't take very long, just dirty as the wind was blowing like crazy! Not my favorite job!! I would get the small areas that are left done if the weather would warm back up. It is too cold right now for the glue.

I still can't get over the amazement of seeing that ice in my showerpan when the rest of the room was plenty warm! I know that the wind going under the ct had a lot to do with that, as it hadn't done it on other cold but "still" nights.

I bet the foam tiles make a big difference, and you won't have to insulate the underside. Hope so anyway.

[Rainier70]

Gone fishing and Cindy,
Because of all the experiences of others with cold CT floors and because I did not want to bump my head with the standard heights, I will order my Ct with at least 3", if not 6 extra inches. The I will put sleepers on the floor. Then I will put insulation foam between the sleepers. Depending on the extra heigh ordered, I can visualize 1 1/2"foam and then maybe 1/2 or5/8 floor plywood over all that.

I think for the East Coast,that is all I will need. But i will keep all your efforts in mind if I want more insulation than that

I like your idea. Both the pink and the blue foam have very good crush resistance if spread over a large area. I think you could get away with a top floor that is 1/2" or even less. Seems like I remember someone on here or in the Teardrops put down foam and then a fairly thin floor over that. Or I might be in fantasy-land!

[AZ_Desert_Rat]

Hi Irrowe,
I am only 6' tall and I ordered the round-top trailer with with the extra 6" tall ceiling (6-1/2' trailer) and the side door is almost 6'

This is a whole bunch better than the lower opening of somewhere near 5-1/2' on the 6' foot tall trailer ... My buddy's trailer is a 6' Wells Cargo and I did the crash into the top of the door frame several times, as Costner did in Dances with Wolves ... ouch

The extra ceiling height helps to open up a little more storage room and makes the space seem less confining ... I just thought I would throw my 2 cents in ...

Good luck with your build

[AZ_Desert_Rat]

Hi Irrowe,
The extra 6" is not much when you look at towability and getting the trailer down the road or even off the road. My trailer sets on a raised suspension giving me a ground clearance of 2' for off road camping (see my gallery pics)

This gives me a a trailer height difference to TV of near 20"; this requires one to be aware of any clearance issues and did affect towability with the additional wind resistance (soon to be correct with a wind deflector -- I hope)

[lrrowe]

John, I came pretty much to the same conclusion on the height. I am going for the added 6 inches for pretty much the reasons you and I listed (along with the inputs of many others). I finally moved on from the wind resistance/wind drag/increase gas robbing concerns and am now saying, "the heck with it". My mileage is going to be bad anyway, so I am going to just suck it up, accept it and move on. That is what I am telling myself. When I run my Tritoon boat with a 150 Yamaha on the back of it to go fishing and touring, I do not worry (too much that is) about how much gas I use. Well I think about it, but I still go buy more. That is what I wanted and I worked too hard too many years not to try and enjoy it.

If it becomes that much of an issue, I will just use it for hunt camping. No hunter that I am around these days, calculates the cost of a hunt day anymore. Maybe it is just because of the stage of our lives.

If my pre-surgery back will take it, I am driving to NJ ( 8 hours away) in a week for a family event and will stop off near Philadelphia to talk to one of my preferred dealers and talk about my placing my order after surgery. I am getting anxious. And BTW, I will talk to him about ground clearance and all that. Because I will go as much "off road" as one can in these mountains of Virginia (not much), the extra height will be worth considering. Many of the campsites will be a little rough.

And I also anxious to see your wind defector idea and to hear about how well (or not) it performs. Have your read the posts by a member earlier about air tabs. I do not think the verdict is totally in on them, but the poster liked them. I will try and find the post and post a link later. I think I know who it was, but will not post his name until I am sure.

Bob

[Gonefishin]

Prem had the air tabs, and said they worked. I did a cost/benefit analysis, and decided they wouldn't save me enough to deal with the cost and installation..

[lrrowe]

I thought it was Prem, but I wanted to check first.

[AZ_Desert_Rat]

Hi Bob,
I towed my trailer to Minnesota and back to Arizona last fall, and: When running without the trailer, I average about 14 mpg ... with the trailer at 65 - 70 mph, the mileage plummeted to 6 - 8 mpg! If running into a headwind, good luck in making 60 mph

I took care of the power issue by re-gearing the Blazer ... The Blazer was set up with 3.07:1, which is okay for a smaller tire in the 26" - 27" range. However, because I have a standard (3 speed with compound) and am running a larger 33" tire, I decided to go with 4.11:1 gears for towing and a lower range of gearing off-road. Although I have not checked mileage, so far I am loving the change and power increase!

The wind resistance does not feel as bad as it was, but is still noticeable and is like running into a wall at about 60 mph ... you can actually feel the resistance!

Again, I have a 20+ inch wall sticking in the air above the Blazer roof ... the roof rack will go on next week and then I can install an adjustable wind deflector near the back of the rack. With the short tongue on the trailer, the rear of the deflector will be approximately 4' in front of the trailer ... all the wind deflector installs I have read, recommend the deflector to be installed within 6' of the trailer roof. Because I will be doing a lot of traveling with the trailer, I figure that if I can even get a 1 - 2 mpg improvement, it will add up over time (Customer comments for the deflector say that if installed correctly, they are seeing a 1 - 3 mpg improvement when towing and some say as much as 5 mpg improvement). Well, I have read both sides and if one can believe the comments, who knows. I also know that I can feel the wind when towing the trailer and that is resistance...

Note the attached pic ... one can compare the height difference with the 28" side door! The extra 6" of roof is no big thing by itself, but I added about 11" to the trailer height by going with a straight axle, installing the spring above the axle, and going to a larger tire ... If I had stayed with the standard suspension set-up, but added 6" to the ceiling, the height over the Blazer would not have been a big deal ... oh well, there is always a give and take rule ...

[cornfused]

I've thought about making a set of "trailer tails" for mine just to see if it would improve my mpg's a little too... Wouldn't be too hard to make.

Edit: Seems like they clam a 6.6% increase in fuel economy with them.

[lrrowe]

Thanks John,
I am getting about 18-20 mpg on long trips at 70 mph. I run a 2012 TurboBoost F150 and a tonneau cover. Just as the rig stands now, I expect to drop to 13-16 mpg easily with a CT. I ran a 5 x 10 utility trailer loaded with firewood this past week for 100 miles at 55mph and was getting about 15.5 mpg. I am guessing that this trailer loaded was about 2000 lbs, the same as a TA 6 x 14 CT will run when empty. I did not inflate my tires for this short trip and was running brand new Michelins.

I am going to sell my tonneau cover and get either an A.R.E. or Leer full rear cap. And I will inflate the tires to a higher pressure (not sure what psi yet). I expect this to help. But the proof will be in the pudding as "they" say.

Oh, and I will change the brand of gasoline. I used the cheaper grocery store discounted gas and I am convinced it is of lower quality ( no facts to back this up).

BTW, just randomly, I came across this CL link,

http://allentown.craigslist.org/pts/4446840352.html

which I just had to share with you.

Bob