Building the Generic ET

[mikeschn]

If there was any discussion on a hot tub, that was quickly ruled out.



Meanwhile the height was still a delicate balancing act, because it has to fit in the carport, and yet, I need to be able to stand up in it.

The first one was too tall, and wouldn't fit in the carport, and Chell veto'ed it...

And because the axle was welded on rather than bolted on, moving it was going to be a royal pain. I'll show you more about that in the next post.



P.S. Never build a body until you have your trailer.

[mikeschn]

Okay, so we got the trailer in a really big box...



And a few smaller boxes too...



We assembled it per the directions...


Then we sat back and thought about it a bit...

It was too high, we were going to have to lower it.

The axle was too far forward, we were going to have to move it.

The chassis didn't fit the torsion axle we had bought, we were going to have to make it narrower.

No room for a dropped floor. We were going to have to remove a cross member somewhere.

I would have been better off building a custom frame for the ET.

[mikeschn]

We gotta salvage this somehow...

So lets start by putting the axle above the springs.

We notched out the frame to improve the axle clearance


Bolted up the axle... notice the tire size... (it doesn't look too small for this size trailer)


Cut off a cross member


Lowered the tongue by adding welding some 2x2 tubing inbetween the tongue and the frame.


Now our trailer looked like this, and we await Pepper's approval!!!

[mikeschn]

With the inspector's approval secured, we were able to proceed to the next step, the floor. We thought we would try 1/2" plywood for the floor this time, even though we were going to be walking on parts of it. The logic being that a 3/4" floor would weigh 225# and the 1/2" floor would weigh 150#.

Sure seemed pretty flimsy in this state though.


Alright, it's a little better now, not quite as flimsy... those are mostly 2x2s for support, and to drive screws into


I let Chell finish up the roofing tar, just so she knows...


Flipped it over and added a dropped floor...


And put some poly on it.


It's now July 27, and we are in the hottest part of the summer.

[mikeschn]

We didn't do any more work until Sept 8th. Meanwhile, I was working on CAD trying to come up with a design that would use the wheel placement, as welded. I finally settled on the design that I did in MOI. Yes, I'll place the CAD model for you here later.

We used 1/2" plywood for the walls too. 6 sheets of 1/2" plywood is 300#. 6 sheets of 3/4" plywood is 450#.

Since we had some help this weekend, we put up the walls (without glue - just in case.) We will glue the walls in place next weekend if everything goes well.



Simple cleats held the walls together...


And laying out the AC. In my mind the whole design revolved around the ac. We would later find out that the AC shelf was too low, and it would limit seating in the trailer to 2 people, or 4 in a squeeze. We will have to revisit the placement of the ac someday.


The other important feature is the bathroom, and you can see us working on it here...

[mikeschn]

Well, so much for the fun stuff... now the work starts...
building the wheel wells


building the benches


building and framing in the bathroom


building the ac shelf


Oh yea, testing out Pepper's home away from home.

[mikeschn]

The roof structure was a biggie... and although I had seen it many times in 3D cad, I was looking forward to seeing it in real life. So here it is...





It's not entirely done. It still needs some more spacer blocks in between the spars.

[mikeschn]

In this post I am doing the inside skinning. I learned a lot more about skinning. The radius on the bottom was too sharp, and the staples kept pulling out of the spars. So while the glue was dripping wet, I had to come up with a backup solution. This was it. I made some strips of wood, with big clearance holes, and then drove those screws into the spars. Sort of a homemade clamp. It worked out okay, and I figure I'll go back later and fill in the holes with putty.

[mikeschn]

Now it's time to use that window that Joanne sent me. Let's see, how to we do this? The window was designed for a 3/16" thick body panel....

Hmmmm, okay, cut a hole... use a router on it to make it 3/16" thick, and then hope everything works.








Hey that turned out pretty good. Now that I know how easy it is, maybe Pepper can have a window too. I need to order that flexible molding stuff...

[mikeschn]

Thinking about the galley...


more skinning


working on the electrical


modeling so you guys can see the relative size of the teardrop. I'm 5' 7" tall.


and the bathroom is nice and big and comfortable. Lots of room for your feet, your elbows, etc

[mikeschn]

Finally, we close it in completely



the bathroom storage area becomes a wiring closet, and a location for the heaters, meaning we'll never use it for showers. This may have been a wrong turn for a true evac trailer. If we didn't have to deal with Pepper's cage, we could have put all the electrical and the heaters under the inside counter.



we put in the windows we got from Grant.




and finally hung the door hardware

[mikeschn]

IT's now November 2nd, and I am racing to get r done, but I don't think I will before the cold weather comes, and takes all the fun out of building...


The days are getting shorter too, and I find myself working in the dark... here I am installing the antenna


Mounted the door step


and the stabilizers

[mikeschn]

The table in the up position, with our WWAN connection waiting...


The table in the down position



the solar panel will end up on the roof too


started on the hatch


and finally, the inevitable, stopped by the weather...


I guess it's time to go in and compute! It's time to work on an optimized tiny travel trailer that pops up, again. Gary, are you going to help? How about you Andrew?

Let's start something over here:
http://tnttt.com/viewto ... 800#282800

[toypusher]

WOW, Mike,

You been busy over night!! Looks better than I remembered it from the original posts.

Hey, you should cut a few decreasing diameter holes in the side of the roof for the AC and make it look like a trolly top. Somebody has to give Doug some competition, ya know!!!

[depatty]

Hey Mike,

Looking good!

And looks like you pulled an all nighter on getting this stuff back online!

Later,
dave