My version of a teardrop

[SonofT@B]

VERY nice work...congratulations! Enjoy camping now.

[jdarkoregon]

Nice build, thanks for the great sequence of images. You tell a great story.

John

[rmclarke]

Bravo!!
Wow...in 6 months...I wish I had your focus (mine's going on more like 30 months, in fact, it's my day off and I should be out there working on it right now)
but congratulations on a great job....and thanks for all the great pics!

Richard

[atahoekid]

Well done. I just bought a trailer frame from an old pop up tent trailer this weekend, so I was very interested in your build. Can you tell me where you bought your fender wells? Did you keep the stock wheel size or did you size up?

I'm glad to hear you finished the build in 6 months. I hope to complete mine in about the same amount of time. Did you happen to have a count of actual hours that you spent on it?

Enjoy your new trailer. Ya did good! Time to celebrate

[Weirdnerd]

The fender wells came with the old popup camper, they are ABS plastic I believe, I have seen them also on truck stops, and as for the time it took to build, my wife gave me an ultimatum...she wanted camping by memorial day weekend. Period.....( it helped that barely snowed last winter, and temperatures were quite mild too.)

PD, I kept the wheel size, as I didn't want to introduce a new set of expenses...the wheels are really old style, 4 bolts on a "cross", and if I changed the wheels, I needed to change the axle hubs, and then start from there.

[Miriam C.]

Very nice. Great ideas for a family for sure! And what a nice way to get to buy a truck... You have done all the things I wish I had done on mine, including burying those wheels...

[Weirdnerd]

The wheel cover was pre planned ( when I got the trailer) to be a bunk bed for my daughter, the storage space left was an unintended bonus, but after watching some amazing builds over here, I am thinking about making a shelf above the window, to be able to put sweaters,and small stuff....you never have enough storage room in a teardrop, that is the way they are

PS, the truck was also an unintended result of building the teardrop...hehehe

[Weirdnerd]

So here are some more details that I forgot to mention...

I found out that vinyl for advertising works really well to cover the piano hinges on the hatch...cheap, but it will have to be replaced with something a little more durable in the next couple of years...



Also found out that the old style window latches work really good to hold windows shut....



and some carbon fiber shims make the windows " fall proof"....



Two doors make introducing large items easy.....



also I found out that door latches work really good to keep one of the doors closed...



a handy shelf for a heater, or a DVD player...





garage door latch, slightly modified for my purposes....



an old stainless steel microwave was the donor for the stove heat shield....



Storm screen locks work incredibly good keeping doors and drawers shut....



Closet LED lights have the beauty that they don't require wiring, and they work even if the battery is dead....



Homemade power station/ inverter....



and some wally Martinez wire spice racks make it easy in the kitchen....

[ajaversa]

Muy bueno tu trabajo y las fotos las voy a tener en cuenta para mi experiencia propia, Gracias por tu ayuda

un saludo argentino


_____________________________________________________________
Google Traslate

Very good your work and the photos I'm going to consider for my own experience, Thanks for your help

Argentinian greetings

[es009d7705]

Hi weardnerd, Evan here looked at your build thread and am glad to see that there are others as daft as me on the forum. I also started my build in the winter if you dont count the time it took to build my lean to first. I used some fence panels that my Daughter was leaving at her old house and put a perspex roof on it much to the annoyance of my wife. My welding also drove her crazy as it kept setting of the circuit breaker and intterupting her TV watching. I was laughing at your description of you trying to fit your sides on your own as it reminded me of my own attempt, I still have the marks on my shins where I kept walking into the base. I love your build especially your use of recycled materials. Congratulations on your build and (Aw ra best fur ra Noo Year), Evan. Ma pc keeps trying to revert to Scottish so a huvtah keep goin back and correcting the spelling.

[Weirdnerd]

Many thanks..hehehe..saw your picture of " haggis", where I grew up, those little guys are a culinary staple ( I never ate one tough)...

[YuGun]

very good vork,
congrations,

[wax]

Nice build, thanks for the great sequence of images. You tell a great story.

John

my thoughts exactly, caravan looks pretty good, and altho youre having trouble with your 'clam shell' i must say i highly regret not curving my galley hatch and opting for a straight bit of ply, reason being, what bit of ply stays straight?

[djsrtr]

NICE

[Imanoone2u]

Shame none of the pictures are here anymore..:-((

It all started on a trip to lake McConaughy in Nebraska, we were lured by a friend who had a sailboat with the promise of a nice lake, with sandy beaches, crystal clear water, and a nice camping.....everything was true but the wind, the frogs, the huge biting flies, and a massive category five thunderstorm that soaked us inside the tent, my wife said she had it with the tent and unless I find something else to camp, she was out.

Enter internet, I needed something like a popup camper, but my Honda was limited to 400 kg...humm...search search..wait...what was that?...a teardrop camper...humm, looks cool, a little small... I can make it a little different, for the three of us...I may be able to pull that with the honda......here is the story....

First, with my helpful neighbour ( he is a veteran of Craigslist) we found a dilapidated popup camper, the thing towed nice, but ( caveat emptor) when I removed the siding to inspect, it just fell apart like a deck of cards, that made it easy, tear the whole thing apart and sell the metal to fund some of the new material...







then I started building the floor..... but first , I sanded the whole frame and put a couple of coats of rust stop primer, and a coat of black oil based spray paint...also removed the bumper, that was about one foot longer than what I needed..








then the vinyl flooring, was on sale at Big lots, 10 bucks a box..only four boxes needed...





attached the floor to the frame with 10 1/2 inch diameter hardened steel bolts, that is going nowhere...




then I got creative with the cardboard, make a template for the walls....that was something actually funny....







With the templates I made the walls, my wife was almost in tears about the amount of sawdust it generated.....hence " tear drop".









attaching the walls by myself was worth a comedy video, finally I stuck a couple of screws to the walls, to set them up, measured several times to make sure they were parallel, and at the same location on the frame...fell a couple of times in the ice, and scraped my elbows sort of bad..., another 10 3/8 inch diameter hardened bolts there....







after that, I started the internal skins, lots of glue and brass nails ( like the ones they use for boats).


















After that, I painted the whole bulkhead interiors with elastomeric roofing paint, to prevent dry rot.... ( the floor got the same treatment, all inside and outside)





then...insulation, 1.5 inch styrofoam, set with silicone on the edges, to prevent rubbing and squeaky noises....







Then the exterior plywood ( Luan,) 1/4 inch thick....





after that, I set to build the clam shell....












The interior bunk...on top of the wheel wells...





the window...it's 3/8 of an inch thick on a 3/4 birch plywood frame, routed to fit the window flush...



after that I started to build the cabinets, with some nice pine obtained from "Alley mart"...somebody was dumping a water bed, and the wooden frame was excellent for my purposes....









the sink is a stainless steel kitchen bowl, from wally martinez, 7 bucks flat, beats having to pay 120 dollars for an RV sink...a dremel tool was good enough to trim the hole for the drain...



Then played a little to install the shock struts...




and coated liberally with several coats of Exterior polyurethane, to seal the whole thing up, after that, my neigbor let me use his garage to pait the exterior with marine paint, color chosen by my wife ( I wanted white)









had to install one of those fancy " make a breeze" fans, they work nice....



Recycled airplane reading lights...



custom made switch plate for the lights and the fan...



Power inverter and 12/110 v outlets...



Finished the kitchen...



The interior...

sleeps 3, and it's something very comfortable, even my wife is surprised ( she is my resident QA)



on my first move, I banged my hand quite painfully between the trailer hitch and a tree...



I went to weigh it...surprise!..1740 lbs...almost 1000 pounds more than I was thinking....( In my defense, I just winged it, no plans whatsoever, so my imaginary weight didn't stand a chance against real world weights...)

so I had to buy a truck that could pull it...



and search for a tow hitch on a junk yard...



took me a couple of hours to make the pig tail and wire the truck for the trailer lights...

and that weekend we went camping....everything was like " test for problems"...but everything worked as advertised













and the first coffee from the kitchen tasted like accomplishment!..



so far we have gone five times camping with it, and I am feeling quite happy of having decided to build the teardrop....I may have to build another in the future....I have learned a lot during this adventure.