MEP Missouri Escape Pod

[mosportsman]

I built this trailer about 10 years ago and put it in the garage for a major going over this winter. She is now back in the yard and I am hoping to give her a quick shakedown cruise Friday. I will be posting photos I have and explaining the rebuild.

[mosportsman]

The trailer was built with no real plans, I just started putting things together. I started with a basic Carry-On frame trailer. I started by making a 4x8 truck box with a tailgate. I knew I wanted to build the trailer with a roof rack for a canoe so I had the tongue of the trailer extended. I had a steel frame built to fit the top of the box and attach the camper, with just a few screws removed the camper could be removed from the box.....but that has never happened. Designed versatility that was not used. The camper portion was framed with 1X2s and faced inside and out with luan plywood 5mm.

I fiberglassed the roof and front and painted a few coats of epoxy on the sides. This was a mistake. It worked well for the first year or so but this trailer has always had a home out in the weather and the sun and daily temperature changes put hairline cracks in the surface where there was no glass and the rot slowly began. Repainting frequently would probably not keep up with it. Storage under a roof may have helped too.

I have had to rebuild doors and side panels because of the lack of glass cloth. This winter I replaced one large panel in the side and did work on all of the doors. Striping the paint off with a heat gun and vibrating scraper worked pretty well. Tearing off a whole panel is not that big a deal. Just got to be careful of the wires in the walls. Hey, I only had to repair wires in two places.

[mosportsman]

After the exterior work I wanted to solve a problem I have had from the beginning. My galley was nice as far as storage of things but was never really useful to cook on the counter top. Most any stove made would have to be pulled out and set somewhere else to cook.

I wanted to build in a slide out surface that I could put the stove on and cook. I guess one reason the slide out never got done was my thoughts were not positive about a pull out surface. The difficulty of mounting good drawer slides on a board under the existing counter top, how much storage that would take, the uselessness of the space behind the stove when in operation, were all things that had held me back.

Then it hit me. What if I made it swivel out from under the counter. EUREKA! that is the solution. I will just drill a big hole in my counter top and put some spacers and washers and that'll work....well yes but.

I went to the Wally world and bought me a boat seat swivel plate. Problem solved, and it is strong, smooth and did not require any thing visible on the top of the counter.

[mosportsman]

I just did not see much necessity in smoothing things up in the galley.....for a lot of years. Trimmed the edges and sanded it off and gave it a finish of Spar varnish. Happy I finally got around to it. My lighting was originally incandescent but I replaced the bulbs with LED. This little improvement gave me the realization that I had the polarity of the whole system reversed for he trailer's whole life. LEDs don't work if the polarity is wrong.

[mosportsman]

I put a lot of thought into the awning system this year. I bought tent poles and put them together for the outside support. The weekend I had this set up in the yard the wind blew pretty strong. The awnings survived. I had pieces made at the local welding shop that hold the tent poles on the trailer. They slide over the ends of the built in roof rack.

[mosportsman]

[mosportsman]

[mosportsman]

This is the motor mount I designed to carry the motors for the canoe and a spare tire. Handy, not to have to lay down in the truck or camper.