Its been awhile since I posted, no pictures to post today but figure some sort of update is necessary. So the road trip was a complete success! 2750 miles by Streets and Trips which I consider to be really accurate. Been decompressing for the last four days. I did the road trip in six days - left North Vancouver last Wednesday morning, slept in the trailer Thursday, stayed at a friends in Winnipeg on Friday, slept on the road in Ontario for Saturday and Sunday, and made the final trek from Northern Ontario to Toronto on Monday.
Weather was cold at night, temperatures were around freezing most nights in the trailer, but I am used to sleeping with no heat and had two mummy sleeping bags, so no biggie. Each night had to repack some stuff in the trailer by hanging it from ratchet straps 'hammock' style, so as to sleep on the mattress which was on top of two layers of the insulation. I was snug as a bug in a rug.
I was waay heavy for this trip. Reluctant to admit this, but facts are facts. Waaay overweight. About 550lbs of cargo stuffed into the car, and about 600lbs of cargo in the trailer. The trailer weighed about 1376lbs. Sooo, the car was pulling around 2000lbs more than normal (shh don't tell anyone a 5spd 1.6L can do such madness). She made it through the Coquihalla pass, Rogers pass, and Kicking Horse pass with no problems, except having to push the motor to its limits - like I said the motor had to
work for this job. Only a few times did I have to drop to third gear, most grades were doable in 4th gear, and the coolant temps didn't budge a bit! I honestly can't believe it - the car was pulling a
ton of extra weight after all. Even this heavy it brakes way better/faster than a fully loaded semi (80,000lbs), can easily smoke them on the hill climbs and off the line, and only gives them the lead on the straights, where they can do 65-70. Wonderful.
Cruising speeds were 55mph to 65mph, with no wind or tail winds 5th gear could get up to 65 miles an hour, but with any cross winds or head winds it could only do 55 in 5th gear. On two days strong head/cross winds of 20-25mph were encountered and I had to drop to 4th gear to maintain 55, but this only lasted several hours total on the whole trip.
I saved all my fill-up receipts, and did a spreadsheet to get the mileage for each leg of the journey, by correcting the odometer by the amount Streets and Trips calculated. Using this 'realistic method' the car averaged 20 USMpg for the entire trip. I was hoping for 23-25, but given the fact that the combo was so heavy I think I need to do another realistic road trip with an appropriate amount of cargo to see if the mileage improves a bit. My gut says it would improve a bit but who knows, maybe the drag force out-competes pulling all that weight up the hills. In any case 20mpg is reasonable I just don't know what other folks are getting with their setups. My trailer is really tall, I'm sure if I towed a conventional tear drop I could get 25mpg maybe even 28-30, so there's a sacrifice in mileage deciding to go with the 'standi' or 'standrop' as I see some call it.
Ok, on to the setup - remember when I joked about watching aluminum welds fail? Well, still have to do a deep inspection of the trailer once I unload the cabin but the only thing I saw was the welds right at the front of the tongue where the A frame beams were tied together. Because I was soooo heavy, the tongue had a lot of repetitive strain put on it and all those bumps caused the top parts of the welds to crack right at the start of the journey. Fortunately I was heading to a shop to show off my setup and my friend there introduced me to a trailer guru who had a shop next door. He inspected my whole setup over a period of half an hour, gave it a clean bill of health, and he showed me how to temporarily brace those tongue welds using two sections of threaded rod, and how to 'box the whole tongue in' after the road trip to properly fix that weak area. Boxing in the tongue means welding a plate across the bottom and top (two plates on top in my case) of the A beams, so that's on the to do list. When he didn't tell me to abandon the road trip but rather do a quick fix, that was re-assuring as I also felt that those cracking welds weren't a deal breaker just something to monitor. The threaded rod fix ensured that even if all 8 welds failed in that area, the threaded rod would still hold everything together allowing one to limp to a shop and weld it up (couldn't weld it then because the wiring inside the tubes would melt).
Another note - when I got close to Winnipeg I noticed that the fender clearance was getting smaller and smaller, probably because the torsion rubber gets worked in a bit, but also because the half axles were overloaded by 200lbs. Now thankfully, these axles had adjustable splines, so in Winnipeg I pulled off the trailing arms and rotated them two teeth on the splines and re-attached. This provided over 2" of fender clearance with the load, and only took an hour to do the first time, its really easy I could do it in half an hour now with a hydraulic jack.
All in all the trailer handled really well, it truly is a solid setup, even with the stripped down frame.. it was my first build after all, a prototype. Not a single speed wobble, in fact the faster you go, the more stable it feels. On the last day on the hwy 400 I drove it at 65mph most of the way because I felt so confident in its handling.
It must be mentioned that without beefier h&r lowering springs, beefier munroe shocks, and firestone coil-rite air bags, there is no way this tow setup could be attempted. With the airbags, I was able to fine tune the psi to 17psi which
caused the rear suspension to bounce in phase and at the same frequency as the trailer suspension. Then the tongue weight was dialed in by moving cargo back and forth to fine tune the setup. What this means is that when hitting those hundreds, thousands of frost cracks in the highway, the car and trailer bounced 'in sync' with each other and this is very important to mention because it smooths out the ride hugely and minimized the stress put on the tongue. To all who tow without airbags - get some they only cost like 150 bucks, and they are easy to install, especially the coil-rite ones. One can't dial in the bouncing frequency of the car and trailer without adjustable pre-load on the rear suspension. Its also important to mention that each cruising speed has its own unique setting for the airbags. The faster you go, the faster the interval between the bump hitting the rear suspension and then the trailer, so you have to up the psi, the faster you go. I tuned my setup for 55mph, because the airbags aren't hooked up to a compressor and a bleed valve (yet).
Sooo its a long post but I'm sure many following my thread have been wondering how things were going. I'm visiting relatives now, so when I get back home I'll do a followup to this post with some pictures of the road trip, the failing welds on the tongue and the 'just for now' fix on the tongue using threaded rod.
So, friends of the Teardrop, I describe year two as a great success! Its so rewarding to finally sleep in the trailer and be on a truly fantastic adventure/road trip. I look forward to learning more on this forum about the finishing of a trailer and please don't be afraid to comment - remember waay back at the start of this build thread, I did admit that I was the guinea pig foolish, er audacious enough to tackle this concept, and I am pleased to report back to you all that the dog will hunt.
by ssuuki19 » Wed Oct 04, 2017 9:14 pm 
(in the works but not until this one expires). And that top speed test was in 4th gear, car can't sustain 70mph in 5th, but it can sustain 50-63 mph in fifth gear, and I will be targeting 55mph for the 2700 mile road trip because I want to track and post the mileage for this forum. Airbags are running 11psi now, a bit stiff for the empty trailer, but great for when its loaded, as it tows much better and smoother loaded up.
