Collapsible Covered Wagon

[stcyrwm]

That looks awesome. Can't wait to see the rest of it come together for you. Is that on a 4 x 8 trailer (sorry if I missed this somewhere - read through twice and couldn't find the length)?

Thanks, Bill

[schwick]

That looks awesome. Can't wait to see the rest of it come together for you. Is that on a 4 x 8 trailer (sorry if I missed this somewhere - read through twice and couldn't find the length)?

Thanks, Bill

Yes, it's on the 4x8 harbor freight trailer rated to 1700lbs

[schwick]

Just in case anyone needed closure on this, I thought I'd give a quick update:

I ended up finishing it enough to be able to camp in. We had some friends who wanted to go camp in the desert.

We took the camper, and there just so happened to be 30mph winds. That didn't go very well for us, so I ended up scraping the idea.


Here's a picture of what it looked like when finished. The design is cool and was a great idea for reducing wind drag but still having headroom for taller individuals. However, I would caution other's who go for something like this to be sure they're going to only be camping with very little wind and basically only when it's warm.




Currently in the process of building a more traditional foamie teardrop, and will try to get on and upload some pictures one of these days.

[WizardOfOdds]

We took the camper, and there just so happened to be 30mph winds. That didn't go very well for us, so I ended up scraping the idea.

Did you decide to never use it again, or just at that location?

However, I would caution other's who go for something like this to be sure they're going to only be camping with very little wind and basically only when it's warm.

Could you be a bit more specific as to what problems you experienced? In particular, could you divide wind concerns between those encountered during setup versus those after erection was complete.

Also, why 'only when it's warm'? I would have thought heat to be the bigger problem, because an uninsulated fabric top (just like a tent) can trap a lot of heat in the sun. Or was air infiltration and keeping warm at night your concern.

Sharing your findings would be very valuable to many of us - there are not many covered wagon builds to study. Yours was particularly interesting, we loved the pictures! The advantages of the collapsible top that you pointed out are just too good to forget.