Meanwhile in the Netherlands,...

[noseoil]

Kees, I agree with KC, very nicely done. Glad you caught the problem with the nose wheel at this point. Nothing worse than having to re-do things once you've started. I think you will find that the design is a good one, a classic teardrop is coming soon!

[smeerkees]

Hello everybody,

Wow that has been some time ago sinds my last message here.

Sinds then my "workspace" has been moved twice, has my old computer crashed spectecularly losing a lot of foto's of the build, and has the build been staying still for 1 year...

Luckily sinds augustus 2018 i have a new "workspace" in an old stable!, and it has been going great.


I also have made some changes in the design of the trailer.


The original drawing is based on the grumman 2, 8x5 ft.

However by recalculation of the hight, i found the trailerhight inside to low.


So i raised the hight by 4 inches.

That made the build a lot easier because the front is now a partial circle with a radius of 30 inch instead of 2 partial elipthoids.

i agree that the 2 partial eliptoids are more beautiful, but i needed the space, and since i build the trailer the old fashion way with steel ribs, and aluminium skin it saved me a lot of work.


(Ok, i have resize my pictures because they are to big to upload here. Now how do i do that......)


Ihope a little quicker than my last message here.


Greets for now, smeerkees.

[smeerkees]

So here i am again, with some new foto´s of my upgradet drawing. to give you an idea.

So the front is changed by hightening the body by 4 inches.
So from 2 partial eliptoids to part of a circle with the radius of 30 inch.

That made bending the tubes a lot easier, although not nesseceraly more beautiful..


This foto i made again (june 2019), in a much smaller format for uploadig here on the site....

[smeerkees]

Ok ok, i will give you a huge spoileralert about what i have done since my last building foto´s.

These foto´s were made in june of 2019.
Foto made again in a smaller format for the site...
To give you an idea.

[smeerkees]

and one foto of the backside.
Again made in a smaller format for the site here.

So you see my wheels are under the the side walls instead of outside.

I also made room for the roofwindow and vent.
It will be FIAMMA turbo 28 (inch) vent.
Because of the round form of the roof this was the best option for me witch had to be smaller than the standard 40 inch roof vents.


In the next periode in try to upload some of the older foto´s i have.

[smeerkees]

Ok for my first try with older foto´s made smaller....

Yes it worked!!!!!

In this periode i widened, and lengthened the frame, made mud guards, and made a system to carry the spare wheel, which can be detached by the same size wrench as the wheelnuts, and the caravan legs. (Yes its well thought over.....).
Oh jeah, you see the tubes down on the back of the frame, they are for mounting some bumperparts, and the large one is for the possibility to mount a hitch.
This for carrying a bicycle carrier.

[smeerkees]

Ok,

first of all i show you a picture of my trusty ringroller.
You need a good ringroller for this type of job.


Rolling a part of a circle is not that difficult.
With a ringroller you bend your material a very little bit at a time when rolling at through the machine.


( Edit) The material i use for the ribs in this build is 25mm x 25 mm x 2 mm wallthickness. square tubing.


When you need to bend multiple pieces of square tube the same bend (radius) i would recommend to bend your pieces at the same time.

So bend all your pieces before tightening the bender for the next round of rolling.
You will see that all of your pieces will be remarkable the same.
However when your material is from differend batches from the manufacturer there can bee some minor differrences.


Now for bending part of eliptical bends is a complete differend story.

First of all be sure that your material is from the same batch of the factory. (minor differences in your material for instance wallthicknes or little temerature differences in the manufacturing proces can give small differences in bending results. Oh and i made sure that the welded side of the square tube was Always on the same side for the same reson and result. Personally i used the welded side always on the inside of the bends.

For this job you really need to bend your pieces of material at the same time each time.
Then scribe the exact place on all of your work pieces by stacking up the tubes and scribe your measurements, and tighten the ringroller for the next round. Each time a little bit of smaller radius.

Rolling one piece of tube at a later time and exactly the same as the other ones in an elypthoid radius with a hand ringroller is very difficult, and close to impossible.

Especcially when your radius spec. on for instance a 4 ft. long eliptical piece of bend is less than 1\ 20 of an inch. Everywhere on the complete radius bend.

Why so tight on specs, well when you want to use aluminum plate as skin for your teardrop trailer the slightest difference in radius of your bended ribs is noticeable in the end result.


So you have to get used to work with your rolbender. and know some basic rules.

For instance when you bend 2 pieces of square tube. 1 piece you tighten your rollbender 1\2 turn, and the other 2x 1\4 turns, your end results are not the same. Sounds strange,
but by every (partial) turn you make on the rolbender your material has a little bit of elastical bending before plastical reforming your material.
So when you tighten your ringbender 1\2 turn and roll your material through the bender, the end result will be a little bit differend then when you tighten your bender 1\4 turn, roll your material, and then turn your rollbender 1\4 turn tighter again and roll your material again.


So the bends on the back part of the teardroptrailer as in my pictures are way more difficult to make than the front radius.


Also when u use a ringbender or rollbender,, your square tube material will not be exactly square anymore. Yes the bends are beautiful, but remember that the rest of the excess material has to go somewhere. I quess that when i would make a ridge in the middle of the benderwheel in the middle the tubes would be more square in the end, but at the cost of having a big ridge inwards on the insides of the bends. And that would be more difficult fitting for welding wize. So there is Always a trade off.


I guess you had no idea if i didn`t tell you.

[noseoil]

Nice job on the metal. Is it 25mm square steel tubing? I like the ring roller, good tool for a proper job.

[smeerkees]

A, yes i forgot to tell, it is 25 mm square tube with a wallthickness of 2 mm. I will put it in the story above. Thanks.

[smeerkees]

So last winter i began to assemble the pre bended pieces of the teardroptrailer.


You have to know that both of the bended ribs were bend and than plugged and welded in 2 differend pieces.

And between both pieces there is a small part of about 10 inches of straight tube between the 2 bends (bows?)


Building the 2 bows in one piece each is way to big to put in the ringroller.


Now you know where i used my fishing rods used for.... don't tell anybody.


Oh yeah the difference in measurements in the two complete bow's is about 2mm, so about 1\12 of an inch.


For indication i asked my steel supplyer and metal construction builder what would be an ok. spec when i would let build his company those complete bows.
He told me a difference in spec of about 5 mm (so about 1\5 of an inch) would be conciddered in spec.

Hmm, so not bad i think with only a bare minimum of tools and standard hand measurement tools.

However i won't tell you how much time i needed for this job.
Well no biggie, i wanted to see how close i could get specs. wise building this manually.

The time factor i don't count.

[smeerkees]

Hello everybody,

Last time i showed you a little bit of the bending proces and the beginning of the build of the side ribs.

But before that proces i builded the complete floor plan.
Why that so early, well i want to fit my floor between the wallsections, instead of the wallsections on the floor.
Oh yeah, and i wanted some tings else too....

[smeerkees]

So in the foto above you can see the subfloor i made.

( This is also one of the reasons why i wanted more headspace in the teardrop design.)

The slots are made for guiding al kinds of cable . I dont want the cables hanging under the frame beams, so this way i can tuk them between the floorbeams, and the topfloor.
I made a cable routing plan including extra slots for possible future accessories. This because i want as to run as few as possible cables through the outside walls.

And then i designed and build the subfloor bagagespace.
Maybe you would say that it would not be the most easy way to design a subfloor storage space, but keep in mind that i want to build the complete trailer like a lego kind of system, so i can remove the bagage space, and or if nesseccary the complete floor without tearing the complete trailer apart.


(note that the lenghth on the front, and the back of the floor in the picture are still not the definitive ones. By using the subfloor the floor length will increase a little bit because of the little bit of higher position of the topfloor. This because of the front and back curvature of the teardrop.)


Oh yeah, you see you see the square welded inward pieces in the front corners of the box, they are for making room for the stabilising leggs in the up (drive) position of the trailer.
You see, i used as much as possible of the existing framebeams for supporting the bagage box. So the floor box would as little hang as little as possible on a piece of unsupported floorboard alone.

[smeerkees]

So this would be about the endresult.
I still have to cut the top floor lid in 2 sections, for easier storage exess, and drill some "finger" holes for taking the floorlid off.

I want to make the matrass in sections too so i can open the subfloor storagespace much more easily.

Oh jeah, the small circle at the end of the floorplate is to access and unbolt the spare wheel carrier system.
So as you can see it`can be unscrewed from the inside of the back storage space.

[smeerkees]

Hello again everybody, today a little update since last june.
Where did we end last time. Oh Yeah about here.

[smeerkees]

IMG_1905 verkleind voor tnttt.JPG (47.42 KiB) Viewed 3211 times

So where from here.

Well, the spacing of the door. By that i mean espessially the hight of the door.
One of the reasons why i re designed the hight of the teardrop trailer.

In the Original design the top door radius was 40 inch. that radius was to flat to me, so i made it the same as the front radius of the teardrop that is 30 inch.
In the last foto i have clamped the top door radius to the front radius of the teardrop trailer for comparisson. This way i gained a little more hight, and were both of my radius (the top of the doors, and the front of the teardrop) more a like.