The Aero-Ham

[gww25]

I retired a few years ago and sold off all of my tools in order to put a little cash into my traveling stash. I figured that I'd be spending all of my time tent camping up in the mountains but old age caught up with me and sleeping on the ground was getting pretty old, pretty fast so I started looking for alternatives to the old tent. That's when I ran into this site.
A small trailer seemed like a good idea for my particular situation but being on a fixed income buying something off the showroom wasn't going to be in the cards for me so building a mobile shack seemed to be the way to go.
What follows is my solution to my particular situation but what I'm proposing to build is only possible because of the information I've found here at this discussion board so I extend a big 'thank you' in advance to all of the people who have posted their building information here. I draw upon the information on a daily basis and seeing what others are doing keeps me going on what sometimes seems like an endless project.

[gww25]

When I first started out I figured that I'd just buy a manufactured trailer from one of big box store outlets and then just whack together a plywood box on top of the chassis something akin to the following sketch.
[img]http://www.tnttt.com/gallery/image.php?image_id=81301
[/img]
Well that doesn't seem to be working to well so I'll go back and figure out how to post pictures.
http://tnttt.com/album_ ... c_id=81301
Well that isn't working much better so I'll go back and figure what I'm doing wrong before going much further.

[aggie79]

Let me see if I can get your picture to come up:



There are a couple of ways to get pictures to show. First is to copy the picture location as you did. Then you could type in [img]in%20front%20of%20the%20location%20and[/img] after. It looks like below except do not put in the spaces.



The easiest way is to add the picture location, click the location to highlight it, then click the img button. It will add the tags for you.

[gww25]

Thanks Aggie, I appreciate the help.
What I needed was basically a small rolling motel room around 10-feet long by 6.5-feet wide and just a little over 6-feet high inside. I typically 'camp' for 3-months at a time and wanted a rig I could leave at a central site and use as a base camp during the summer while I went on day trips in the truck doing some gold prospecting. Unfortunately the preliminary weight estimates on the 'box' design came in around 2600 pounds so I decided to chop off areas where I didn't need the head or elbow room. The next iteration of the plans looked like this:


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[gww25]

Chopping off the corners actually dropped the initial weight estimate down to around 2200 pounds but the thought of cutting all of those angles seemed to far to complicated. I decided that I probably wasn't a very good designer so I started looking around for some plans or ideas I could copy. There were literally dozens of trailers on this site that came close to meeting my requirements. The image below shows just a few of the designs that inspired me.

In the end I found two designs that came very close to fullfilling my requirements. One was the old Terra-Cruiser in the classic plans section and the other was the Widget. Unfortunately the Cruiser was to large and the Widget was just a tad to small.

[gww25]

I finally decided to take my original design and blend it together with both the Cruiser and Widget to come up with the more or less final concept as seen in the profile sketch below.

[/img]

[bonnie]

I like that profile! It's fun to watch the designs come together.

[gww25]

I forgot to add that since I'm now living on a fixed income my budget for the project is around $200 a month and I'm trying to keep the cost of the project under $2500 excluding appliances.

[gww25]

Thanks Bonnie. It's been an enjoyable experience so far. The design is still being refined and tweaked but I think it's about 90% there. I seriously considered reducing the height and adding a dropped floor but I travel on some pretty rough trails so I need the ground clearance. Besides I don't have any room in the garage for a trailer to begin with as you can see:

[/img]

[wagondude]

Very nice design. If you build it out of foam (check out the Foamie section here) you could easily meet your weight goals and keep the cost down. Just a thought.

Bill

[gww25]

Thanks for the tip Bill. I'm pretty familiar with foam structures as I've built quite a few boats but I'm also fairly good with conventional structures so at this point I'm still under my weight estimates for the various components. I did consider some of the new prelaminated foam cored panel products for the floor assembly and sidewalls but cost became an issue. On another build I might give that a try as the weight savings is significant.

[gww25]

Here's a shot of the floor framing under way. I had originally planned on using 2x2's but couldn't find any good quality material so went this route. It ended up being 15 pounds heavier which I hope to make up for elsewhere

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[gww25]

Here's a later snapshot of the floor framing assembly about 90% finished.
At this stage of the game all I had for a saw was an old manual miter saw so all of the cuts were actually extremely accurate. The weight of the unit is 65 pounds as shown here. Despite my best efforts the frame is just a tad less than 1/16-inch out of square at one corner but I think I can fix it with a plane.
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[gww25]

Here's the wheel tubs. These took way to long to build so next time I'll just laminate some semi-cylindrical tubs which will be far easier, lighter and stronger. I sealed these per member suggestions in other threads. The wheel openings aren't cut yet so I left the exterior side long for the time being.
[/img]

[DMcCam]

Hi Gww25, That's a very cute profile you have there! Really appealing design. I'm looking forward to following your build.

Cheers,

Dave