Ambitious Build: Fallout New Vegas

[Turtleslaw]

I suppose I will place my build thread here, for easy access, in case anyone else is as crazy as I am! As a little background: my husband is a former Boy Scout troop leader, and my middle son is a former Boy Scout. My son aged out last year, but the other troop leaders became good friends, as did the other boys alongside my son. They all still go out hiking and camping every month, even though none are in Scouts anymore. My son and his friends have expressed interest in putting off a semester of school to travel around in a camper together, and have a little fun. My husband thought it would be a terrific idea if I built said camper and got some experience in building something unusual (as I have some weird ideas that people tell me can't be done) and I could then apply what I've learned when I build my skoolie, which is something I've wanted to do since I was a child.

I will link to my gallery (that I just put up this morning) of what's been happening so far. Which honestly, isn't much. We purchased an old popup camper from Facebook Marketplace for $200 at the end of February 2024. The original idea was to buy a trailer from Tractor Supply or Home Depot (or even Harbor Freight) and build atop that. I have no welding skills (yet), and I wasn't happy with the sizes and prices I would get from buying a new trailer. My husband wasn't happy using something that's meant for yard work, and is just bolted together. So when I found this cheap old camper, he liked the idea of tearing it down to the frame and using that, since it was built to be a camper in the first place. He also liked the price!

So the point we are at now is my son and I have completely torn down the popup camper (and after seeing how these things are put together, I'm VERY glad we decided to build instead of buy one of these. Holy cow.) It's now down to the frame, which needs cleaning and rustproofing, We also got a couple bonuses on the tear-down: the "popup" mechanism is in great shape, so we're going to reuse that. The water tanks appear (so far) to also be in good shape, so I need to clean them out well and actually test to see if they are usable.

It's been super-cold and windy up here in New England for the past week - too cold to do the initial power wash I want to do on the frame as the first "cleaning" step. So I've spent this week drawing up build plans. We've also gone to a couple of RV/camper trade shows the past few months, and I gleaned a few ideas to steal from there. We also got a feel for how the insides will feel and what layouts my son liked. The end result we've landed on is underfloor storage, a HUGE bed that will sleep 4 adults (and will convert to two bench seats and a table for during the day). My son and his friends LOVE the game "Fallout: New Vegas", so I'm going to take inspiration from the trailers you find scattered in the game, all the way down to a Sunset Sarsaparilla spare-tire cover.

I need to keep it under 1500 pounds (fully loaded) as they plan to use my car as a towing vehicle - it's a Honda CRV and that's its towing limit. (If I can, I really want to keep it under 750 unloaded, but we'll see!) I figure the only way I'll be able to pull that off is by building a foamie. (Speaking of which, has anyone heard of Nømad on YouTube? And AstroLander? They seem to have some pretty good ideas!) I also do 3D printing as a hobby and have printed some useful stuff - I'm hoping to get a new printer for my birthday - one that can print ABS so I can print some custom items for this build.

Anyway, that's it! It's slow-going, but it's going :) Thanks for coming along for the ride!

[QueticoBill]

You seem to be off to a great start. Congrats! I look forward to progress pictures.

[Captain Monkeyshines]

Building a trailer inspired by Fallout? You've got my attention.

Sent from my SM-G986U1 using Tapatalk

[QueticoBill]

You seem to be off to a great start. Congrats! I look forward to progress pictures.

[S. Heisley]

Welcome! Enjoy your building! We'll be watching!

[OP827]

Welcome to the forum! 1500lbs loaded weight is ambitious, but not impossible. I have built with XPS foam on a long tent trailer frame too.

[KCStudly]

Welcome neighbor, sounds like a great build. My only question is, while your son and friend are off scooting around with your car, what will you be driving?

[Turtleslaw]

while your son and friend are off scooting around with your car, what will you be driving?

My truck :D

[Turtleslaw]

Okay, an update. If you're anywhere around New England, you probably know the weather has been atrocious over the last few weeks. Since we haven't been able to be outside to work on the trailer much (save to repair the twine that keep snapping, causing our tarp to blow off every other day - which we finally fixed by using sisal rope. No more snapping ties - just in time for the rain/sleet/ice/snow that's happened in the last 24 hours). So I've spent that time getting frustrated with Fusion 360 while I do my best to make a render of our plan.

I have to say, doing a 3D model - as frustrating as the learning curve is - has been a spectacular idea. There were ideas in my head that, when I saw them in the render, I discovered there was no way it could work. So I finally think I've got it nailed down. I'm updating now, while it's fresh in my head, because Fusion doesn't let you put notes into your renders, and this'll be a good thing to refresh my memory of what my thinking was in the decisions I've made. Because I know I'll forget later, and ask myself "Why the hell did I do THAT‽?" (thank you ADHD) This'll be a long one, and truly it's mostly so I don't forget what I'm doing (i.e. selfishly for me), so you don't have to read the whole thing if you don't want to.

1. Storage area

So the idea is that once we clean off the trailer frame, get it rustproofed and all, we will "sandwich" the frame above and below with ¼" of material. Not 100% sure what material we will use yet - we're thinking the undercarriage could be that corrugated sign material, or even just a big sheet of plastic or something lightweight. We plan to foam between the frame supports, so the floor will actually have a good 4" of insulation. In the photo, you see truss supports, which I plan to make from 2x2 balsam wood (if we can find it). Each support is directly atop a steel beam of the trailer frame. The water tank is between the wheel wells - the idea is, if the kids decide to ...I dunno, visit Alaska or Colorado, the water tank will be insulated and won't freeze. These truss supports will be the floor supports for the cabin area, as also act as "inner walls" for underfloor storage. The voids just in front of the wheel wells will house pull-out stairs to get in and out of the cabin. You'll also note they only go so far back - that's where the kitchen will be (I'll explain more in a moment). The truss idea keeps the floor "joists" lightweight (they're essentially holey 2x10s), and because they are "holey" there's plenty of space to run electric and water lines without drilling into anything.

2. "Framing"

Here you see the framing, as well as the addition of the cabin subfloor above the truss supports. Because this was originally a popup camper, I'm keeping the popup mechanism so it'll travel low, but be pretty tall when camped. But since the actual cabin floor won't be directly atop the frame anymore, we're going to use supported PVC pipe to run the cables through so they go where they need to go without ever getting tangled up in something in storage. I've decided to also put some dowels in the 2x2 extensions supports to help hold the walls in place. Connecticut requires trailers to have doors attached to actual framing material, so I've added that, as well.

3. Cabin Walls

Here is the foam we're attaching to the framing. there's a 1.5" layer on the inside, and a ½" layer on the outside (to cover the trailer frame. What you don't see are the holes I'm cutting to access the stairs under the door and storage area, but there will be doors so you can open them up and access all of that.

4. Outer Shell

This is the outer shell. It's made of 1" foam, and will be attached to the extensions so it can "pop up".This photo is what it looks like when traveling. Of course the door isn't there - we're still deciding what the best thing for the door will be like. We've got it boiled down to two ideas: either it'll be a sliding thing (that slides up and down with the outer shell); or it'll fold in half and we use the pins from the door hinge to hold it up in place. We keep going back and forth on which is the better option. We'll figure it out, though.

5. Kitchen

This is from the back side, with the outer shell popped up. The back is a hatch that will open to the kitchen. This is actually the part that has taken me the better part of 2 weeks to figure out! The kitchen hatch will use the upper cabinets to rest on and stay open. Before we PMF the foam, we're planning on embedding strong magnets into the foam at the top edge of the hatch. Then when the camper is popped open, you can roll down a piece of waterproof fabric that will magnetically attach to the edge of the hatch to keep rain from getting inside through the top (when it's closed).

The inside back wall, the thing with the little circles running up the center? That's a bit complicated. It's a wall that slides up and down to separate the cabin from the outside. But because it has to be inside when traveling, the walls are about 2.5" too short on either side (and bugs can get in). So instead of having a rooftop fan for air circulation, I'm going to buy three 200mm computer fans and line them up in a frame. I'll sandwich them with window screen, as well. The strip will just be inside the cabin while traveling, but when camping, you can push the walls to either side to close up those holes, and slip the fan strip in the middle to lock them in place. Plug it in, and insta-ventilation. This will also free up the entire roof for solar panels (and we're planning to try out a couple of 3D printed wind-catchers, as well).

6. Electrical equipment and propane

So this is from the front, and I haven't rendered the wall that goes here, but there IS a wall that goes here. It's going to be split in half. The lower half will house the propane tank(s). My husband insists that this lower area be well-separated from the cabin, and the front of it will have ventilation in case of any leaks, and it will be accessed from the outside. The upper half will actually be accessed from the inside, and house all of the electrical stuff and batteries for the solar/wind array.

What's not pictured is the collapsible table and bench seats on the inside. The table will actually be a foldable type that can be taken outside to sit around, or stored underneath. There will be two bench seats that will raise into 2 bunk beds so it will sleep 4 adults comfortably, and have a nice, wide area in the center for getting dressed or getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom without waking everyone else up. I'm also debating on making a composting toilet and a collapsible shower - but my son in insisted neither is necessary. I just want to make them anyway to see if I can. We'll see how it goes!

And that's it - that's the plan. The thing is 12.5' long and 84" wide. When collapsed, it's roughly the same height as my CR-V - about 5 feet tall (give or take), and just a little bit wider. When the popup is...popped up, the interior cabin height is ~8' (which was by accident, not design, but I'm not gonna fault it as my son and his friends are tall anyway, and they did ay they wanted to be able to stand up in it) When the kitchen hatch is open, the cook has about 6.5' of vertical space to move around in...provided they park on level ground. I'm trying to keep as much weight as I can atop the axle towards the front, so I'm DIYing the fridge (I know - I said I was trying crazy stuff!), and they want a pull-out kitchen drawer with a camp stove built into it (that they can attach the propane tank to). Possibly a toaster oven. But they're not looking for a pro-level kitchen or anything - just something they can make coffee on, maybe grill cheese sandwiches or heat up some soup, and maybe bake up some bagel bites.

[tony.latham]

Make sure you have room in the wheel wells to change a flat.

Ambitious? It is.

Tony

[chopperwalker]

That is really creative. Definitely ambitious. I really like the storage idea in the floor. You might consider those "drawers" to be not covered by the pop-top so they are accessible normally. They could be flush with the top portion, too.

[Turtleslaw]

Make sure you have room in the wheel wells to change a flat.

The lower edge of the cabin matches what the lower edge was for the original camper. I changed nothing re: the size of the wheel wells, or how low to the ground the camper is. :) The bottom edge is actually the bottom of the frame. I figured if it was good enough to work on the original camper, then it's a good enough edge for me!

[tony.latham]

then it's a good enough edge for me!

You're definitely thinking this beast through.

Tony

[OP827]

It is an ambitious build with many cool features and it is a great idea to build the model and the plan before buying building materials and actually start building.

Now some questions:

The hinged kitchen cover height looks low to me, but maybe it's because I do not know how high the roof is?

If you target to be under 1500lbs, can your 3D model be loaded with materials weight to see how heavy the build gets?

Are you considering the re-use of pop-up trailer lifters? What kind do you have? My popup lifters were old and not a good design, cables got jammed inside lifters. But I did re-use the main thread rod with ball bearing and made an aircraft cable and pulleys' system to lift the shell from the lower walls.

[working on it]

...If you target to be under 1500lbs, can your 3D model be loaded with materials weight to see how heavy the build gets?....

During my build, and subsequent modifications to it (probably 100 versions over 10+ years), I used Andrew Gibbs' "Trailer Balance Worksheet" to

• 1) keep track of how much the trailer weighs (not having to go to a scale weekly is a plus),
• 2) where was the added weight to be added, for better balance,
• 3) how each item added or subtracted affected overall tongue-to-total weight ratios

all in my quest to transform my formerly badly-balanced trailer into a better-balnced (safer to tow) version of itself.

Let me explain: when I started, I used a junk motorcycle trailer (50"W x 60"L) as the base, then welded-on steel tubing, keeping the same width 50", but elongating the front by 12", and the rear by 24", leaving the axle in it's original position. That was a mistake, I should've reversed tha extensions, because I had too much weight behind the axle (especially since my galley/storage area was loaded up, from the beginning, with the A/C, an onboard generator, cooler (or Aquatainer, depending on the state of revisions), coleman lantern, stove, & fuel, which made the initial tongue weight 40 lbs (only after I moved the battery + tools into a small metal toolbox on the tongue, while looking for a real tonguebox at the time). Another drawback to the wrong axle placement, was that the doors were forced to be too close to the fenders, limiting their width and thus ease of access.

As I stated, I used the "Trailer Balance Worksheet" from this site to calculate how every weight change would also change the balance. After the initial (after the road-ready status was achieved) weighing at a certified scale, I used a good bathroom scale and a tape measure to add actual piece-weight at the proper location to the worksheet (after I added more lines of calculations to Andrew's basic .xls format worksheet). That's how I arrived at my current figures (weight, balance, even a center of gravity figure, that I lost along the way).

I used a laptop that died to make my calculations up to August '14, and thought the hardrive (containing all my data) was fried. It may be, but I later found flash drives with partial data, that I have recently tried to open, though I don't have .xls or .xlsx Excel program installed on my Win 10 PC. I made an offline copy of both the basic balance calculator and the last full modified one from August '14, on Google Sheets, using Drive. Perhaps they might be of use to you? You can enter your data where the figures are in "red".

the original, as it first appeared on TnTTT

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EA73Ht3JZEpWF-ZaDTz-GANB_kjvwha3sVZwCt7ALR8/edit#gid=2053960721

and my modified version, with more lines added to add data

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1odv9GXlx8bMAJ7FAgxZWeHoRHuWGHGIY6NN0lLMy7ZQ/edit#gid=932898034

Since I lost these copies for years, I'd used another late version stored on a SD card, to arrive at the current weight and balance of my 4'x8' squareback, but I laid it on my desktop, and it got lost (or eaten by a housecat). It's a good thing, too, because I have made my final modification to my trailer, having achieved the balance I sought, and the storage capacity I had needed to add. No need to use the worksheet, now, but I could start over at a certified scale....