First things first. As of this writing, 50,000-plus views of the build journal! Thank you all very much for your interest, comments and support. I hope you enjoyed this journal and that it has inspired your build, given you some good ideas and steered you away from some bad ones.
I didn't give the trailer a name at first because I couldn't think of a meaningful one and I wanted it to tell me its name. Wierd, huh? While traveling through northern Canada, summer 2017, I kept seeing signs along the road for local bed and breakfasts. Well, that seemed to fit pretty good. Coffee and breakfast in the morning to ease into the day, and a place to sleep at night. Lunch and dinner could be home cooking, a restaurant or fast food. But always AM coffee and breakfast. At last, the Bed and Breakfast had told me its name. Glad I didn't name it "Two Out of Three Necessities" or something equally cumbersome. Okay, I'll confess. I have often described it to the tourists as two out of three necessities. But that is not the B&B's name.
This October was the 4th anniversary of the B&B's maiden voyage. It has followed me from coast to coast and to Alaska and back. 37 states and 3 Canadian provinces. I've seen new sights, made new friends and met many kindred spirits from the TnTTT forum. Travel by teardrop is a great way to escape the Texas summer heat and a whole lot of fun.
What worked well
================
The hatch
---------
You may recall the considerable time and effort spent developing the hinge design for the hatch. That work has paid off handsomely. The hatch doesn't leak to this day. The B&B has been towed through and camped in plenty of rain and mud, and there has been no water intrusion into the galley. From above or below. The only complaint comes from the side gutters working as designed and splashing rainwater on one's feet while sitting in back under the easy-up. I'd also give the aluminum skin a bigger drip edge on the sides, just for peace of mind.
After all the work that went into it, I keep the B&B garaged, even though the hatch works fine. The hatch isn't the only place where water can try to enter. Plus, the B&B uusually goes into "drydock" after a trip, for some attention to details.
Lighting
--------
It's dark out there. Ain't skeered, just cain't see. In the galley I have two separate led strips: white for food (and beverage) prep after dark and red for campfire time. This setup works really well. Porch lights are switched from the galley and the cabin. You just have to switch off at the same place you switched on.
Something I added later on was a switch for the running lights. This makes it MUCH easier to find the trailer when you're returning from the "3rd necessity" in the dark.
In the cabin, I replaced the original dome light, which was white only. I found a two bulb dome light with individual switches, and did white and red again, just like in the galley. The red light won't wake your sweetie when you have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the 3rd necessity.
Things that needed improving
================================
Gas struts for the hatch
------------------------
That hatch lid is kinda heavy, to be charitable. I had fits trying to get strut geometry right, and finally punted. Get yours figured out before you start making sawdust.
Front porch light
-----------------
I didn't originally plan for a porch light on the front of the B&B, and didn't realize how handy one would be until I needed it. I was able to wire a switched version into the hot circuit for the reading lights. Unfortunately, rain got to the switch and it works intermittently. The switch doesn't fail intermittently, it fails reliably. You have to fiddle with the switch until it's just right if you want light in front. The afterthought nature of the installation led to an annoying inside drip on my face when it rained. Extra caulking goop finally fixed that problem.
Rubber mats on the fenders
--------------------------
I stuck down and riveted a piece of rubber mat to the top of the fenders to protect the paint. That was fine for preventing coffee cup rings on the top of the fenders, but did nothing to prevent sand blasting of the front of them. Other teardroppers I've talked to have the same sandblast problem. Consider that before you spend the extra bucks for those cool but expensive retro fenders. Diamond plate seems to work the best here.
Wind got under the mats and eventually the mats failed. Fortunately, black Gorilla Tape matched the black fender close enought for jazz, but how tacky looking. I eventually started over and covered the whole fender with the mat. So far, so good.
Fantastic Fan
-------------
My beef with the FanFan is that if it's windy, the cover blows around and rattles like mad. So I lay there in the dark trying to imagine how I could modify the damn thing so it won't rattle in the wind, instead of getting a good night's sleep. Has anyone solved this problem? I'd sure like to know how.
OTOH, I've come up with a suitable but simple method of slowing the fan down to a suitable teardrop speed. Get one of those 6-ohm 50-watt resistors that they sell to fool your TV into thinking a led tail light is an incandescent so the turn signal doesn't go nuts. Wire it in series with the fan and your good to go at a teardrop-appropriate fan speed. If it's too slow now, parallel 2 resistors and wire them in series as above. If that's too simple and you want to do a technological overkill PWM module controlled by a microcontroller with temperature sensors, you go right ahead. I don't want to hear it cuz I don't have that problem any more. Harrumph.
Tambour Doors
-------------
This is only a mild annoyance. The tambours in the cabin frequently sneak open when no one's looking, and dump the inside cabinet contents on the bed. My theory is that road vibrations combined with braking moves things forward and catch the doors, causing the doors to creep up and let the contents out. A magnetic catch might solve the problem, but I haven't got a round tuit. Actually, I think I do have a round tuit somewhere in all my stuff, I just don't care to spend any time looking for it.
What didn't work so good at all
=================================
Weight
------
I thought it was going to turn out a lot lighter. At 1820 pounds, ready to go, the B&B is a bit hard to get over a mountain pass. It took first gear and getting passed by semi trucks to get over the 10,500-foot Aspen summit on I-70. nearly had to get out and push. It turned out that the Taco needed a little work that improved performance considerably. Even so, I wisht the B&B was quite a bit lighter. If there's a second build, I'll be going down a thickness on all plywood and there will be less steel in the trailer frame. Less solid oak on the hatch. Maybe even adopt a few Foamie tricks.
Water tank
----------
While we're on the subject of weight, any future teardrop build will NOT have an on board water tank. First, there is the issue of keeping the water in the tank from turning green. Who wants to use bleach water for their morning coffee? Anyone? Can I see a show of hands? Beuler? I thought so. Bottled water comes in handy 1-, and 2-1/2 gallon sizes. I've been using the gallon (3-liter?) size as the galley supply, refilling from the larger ones. Works fine, makes great coffee, saves trailer weight. Carrying water must be why God invented tow vehicles.
Factory doors
-------------
I didn't want to go down the door-building rabbit hole on this build. I'll do it "next time". My main gripe is that on the doors I bought, the windows open on the bottom half of the door. So to get some fresh air in the rain, you have to open the window so much the mattress gets wet. Makes for an unhappy camper. A window that opens from the top would do the job nicely.
Last summer I had the good fortune to meet up with Brian Woods (Vedette) and see the work in progress that is Kermit. Besides other awesomness, Kermit is going to have *power windows*, just like on a car. I wanna do something like that!!!
Timbren axle
------------
This one is all on me. I didn't do a good job of wheel alignment. Tire wear isn't so good. When I back the B&B into a campsite (or the garage), the wheels splay out at the bottom, like this: "/---\". Going down the road they look fine, like "|---|". The first set of cheap Chinee bias ply trailer tires that came on the wheels lasted about 10,000 miles and were showing cord when they got replaced. The second set, radial passenger car tires, went about 25,000 miles. When one of the tires in the second set started leaking air, I got the third set.
I shouldn't have listened to the local sales guy when he said "the 3500# set is the same price as the 2000# set. Might as well go for the 3500's." It would have been cheaper to get the same result by having a solid suspension with no give at all. Fortunately, it was easy and not too expensive to change out the rubber parts and de-rate the suspension to 2000#. See my thread in the Towing and Tow Vehicles section. I still seem to get most of the cushioning from the tires' sidewall flex. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of suspension travel.
Charge while towing
-------------------
The DC-AC-DC method doesn't scale up very well. I added a dual voltage refrigerator and needed more watts for the fridge and a larger charger. The low voltage alarm on the inverter keeps going off and then the inverter quits. The solution is probably to put the inverter in the tow vehicle and run an extension cord to the trailer. Still looking for that round Tuit.
New stuff
=========
Tongue box
----------
Inspiration from KC Studly's fiberglass-epoxy adventures led to this masterpiece:
What's next
===========
Standy with 3 out of 3 necessities.
by capnTelescope » Mon Aug 10, 2015 10:03 pm 
Something must have been made to the wrong drawing. 
Well, I'll just make the part to as-assembled dimensions.
It's gonna be my wind chime. 
