The Poet Creek Express - Foamie Hybrid

[Wolffarmer]

I guess you are to young.



Grandpa Jones Bio

The 2nd paragraph in "Career". About his regular skit in Hee Haw.

Randy

[KCStudly]

Ah, now I remember! It's not that I am too young, it's that I am just old enough to have forgotten!!!

Funny the things we remember from our youth, and how each of us remembers different things that have "struck a chord".

During a recent family gathering my mother, sister and I were trying to recall the details of our original Poet Creek camping adventures and it was quite interesting the different things that we each were able to recall or help each other recall.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a Google inside our own brains; just think of something and have all of your own related memories come back for you to pick and choose from!

[Facemeltingly Epic]

Your Easter dinner sounds quite tasty, not to mention elaborate. Mine was simpler: pork loin roasted over a bed of carrots and sliced potatoes with a side of steamed vegetables. Had a nice Sierra Foothills merlot to wash it all down.

Back to the topic at hand.... sounds you're into the PCE for not a whole lot more than I have in the Track Shack. OTOH, the Track Shack is substantially complete (it still needs a few finishing touches, but it's campable as is), and like you I don't even bother taking the value of my labor into account.

I sure wish I had access to the kind of tools you do!

[KCStudly]

Thanks for checking out TPCE, Scott. I watched your build and was impressed by what you were able to accomplish given your self imposed time schedule (IIRC, you were trying to beat your racing schedule?).

Like I said in the beginning, TPCE was never intended to be thrifty, just less than if I had bought an equivalent end result outright. The main problem being that what I envisioned would likely never be found "out there".

In the beginning I had an idea that a dual purpose camper/utility trailer would be ideal. When I switched from my small P/U to the Escape I figured I would need a small utility trailer for hauling dirty or heavy stuff that I would rather not put in the nice carpeted back of the Ford. The wife and I drove out to Cape Cod to look at a fairly decent WAZAT. For those that are not familiar with the WAZAT they are a very light weight aluminum framed cabin that can be removed by two people from a light weight aluminum utility trailer frame. IIRC it was a 4 wide, no galley just a shelf style hatch in the rear with a small under counter storage bin. The guy had added some LED running and interior lights, and had hacked thru aluminum on the deck top sides to get to the axle bolts to add some spacer blocks to raise the ride height a tad. It was still ridiculously low to the ground on the little marshmallow tires. Guy was asking $5k. Wasn't exactly what I was looking for (too low), but was in fairly decent shape, had nice side doors with integrated screen doors, so I offered what it was worth to me $2800 cash. He didn't bite but countered with his minimum $3500 or $3800 (I forget).

Other nice homemade and commercially built teardrops were all being listed (and presumably sold) in the $6-8k and up range. The prices for halfway descent pop ups seemed high to me considering that they would be just about worthless in a couple of years after leaks set in (lots of junky old pop ups on the market).

Well that was the basis for my budget. If I could build exactly what I wanted (5 wide, high clearance, nice but not over the top finish) for somewhere in the $3-5k range, then I figured that I would still be ahead financially. Somewhere along the way, after reading about other people's experiences, I decided that it would be inconvenient to have to remove the cabin to use the utility.

So here we are. Babble, babble, babble, and off to bed.

[Corwin C]

For those who don't remember...

[eaglesdare]

For those who don't remember...

yup, i can totally see that.

[KCStudly]

Had some productive time in the shop tonight. Karl had cleared out the big expansion joint jobs and now has several bundles of 2 inch pipe to run thru the saw for a Zamboni thawing heat exchanger that he will be building for local Conn College. That freed up the main bay and welder for me to use (yeah!!!).

After helping me get the trailer frame down from it's resting place against the wall and up on to the saw horse I started laying out the suspension hangers. Karl nipped off a couple of pieces from some 3/8 thick bar stock on the band saw and I set to welding them to the sides of the front spring hangers. Note the old shackle bolt being used for fit up. New grade 8 hardware will be used at final assembly.



Note the offset to the rear shackle hanger. This is to avoid having the spring hangers sticking out from the side of the wall/frame rail like a big wart. My walls are flush to the outside of the frame rails and hangers are an inch wider than the frame rails. So everything is offset 1/2 inch inboard.



Now, in the computer model I made the springs to the specs for arc and eye to eye specified on the website (sdtrucksprings.com), and based the hanger locations off of my desired axle centerline and these spring dimensions. Once I had clamped the hangers to the frame and spent a great deal of time tapping them into position with a small ball peen hammer, checking square, offset, side to side distance from rear, over and over, I did a dumb idiot check by holding a leaf spring over the mounts and checking them. The shackle mount seemed like it was too far behind the rear spring eye, and I knew that I wanted the shackle to always be trailing the shackle hanger. Now this was with no load on the spring. We had previously measured the spring to have a rate of about 160 lbs/inch of deflection. So I did a little math and we squeezed the leaf spring down to something close to 90/ct of my anticipated dry weight and double checked the eye to eye dimensions.


Here's the free spring next to the compressed spring for comparison.




Based on this I made a minor adjustment to the front hanger location, moving them back 3/8 inch before tack welding the hangers down.
Here they are all located and clamped into position after lots of careful measurement, checking three or four times in many different aspects.


Here you can see the offset with the inside of the hanger flush to the outside of the frame.



Once I flip the frame over again I will add a couple of small gusset tabs to support the inboard portion of each front hanger.

The foot print of the shackle hangers is much smaller so no additional gussets will be required here.


Here's a long shot showing both hangers in a line.


After going around and tack welding all four corners of each hanger I welded one of the front hangers up on the front and rear edges then moved back to the shackle hanger on that same side. I had been wondering if I needed to add a vent hole to the frame rails (since they are fully capped) and when I started to weld this hanger I got my answer.

The air inside the frame was heating up and pressurizing the tube, so when I softened the tube with the weld it allowed it to blow out leaving a little crater and splattering metal onto the tungsten electrode. Had to drill a couple of vent holes to give the pressure an escape path.


These will be welded up once all welding is complete and the rails have had a chance to cool.

That took care of it and here are all of the bottom side welds.




The bottle of shield gas was on it's last legs and I did get a little porosity on the back weld of the street side shackle hanger, so that weld was ground out completely and redone; the final weld is shown above.

Karl will be on the saw for the rest of the week and away this weekend, and though I will miss having him here for advice and support, I am looking forward to getting a lot done over the next several days. And we didn't even have to put the frame away for the night.

[KCStudly]

Here I got all excited that I would be able to string a bunch of build evenings and days together, then I remembered that I have to kick out the tax returns this weekend (Argghh! I always put it off until the last minute).

I did manage to order the bolts and hardware for the suspension, plus a gallon of 3M Fastbond 30NF Green contact adhesive...adding another $50 or so to the chassis tally, and $113+shpg to the cabin list.

I tried shopping around for the 30NF but the local 3M distributors didn't have it in stock and wanted to sell it by the case (4 gal jugs) or more costly quarts. McMaster-Carr had it with no hassle and the order should be here tomorrow shipping from NJ.

Grand total chassis + windows + nutserts for the floor + adhesive = $2180... so far.

I suppose it might be considered poor form to share budget info, but it's all part of the build process and I think it must be useful to some who might be considering a similar style build.

What are your thoughts? Keep the tally going or keep it to myself?

[GPW]

Inquiring minds want to know ... Add the labor in too (hours/rate) ... The True cost !!! Custom Fab is sooo NICE, but Pricy !!! And we can all see why !!!

[Wolffarmer]

Keep the tally

And do my taxes

Randy

[KCStudly]

Well, I did our federal this eveneing and it didn't go too badly. Then tomorrow evening I will do Rhode Island Non-Resident (where my wife works), then CT. Plus I have put off doing my Dad's estate taxes for far too long (he will owe nothing), so I think I will have my share of taxes this year.

[Facemeltingly Epic]

Go ahead and keep the running tally of your costs. I didn't publish mine while I was updating my build thread actively, but I did keep track of it on an Excel spreadsheet.

I have my taxes done; all I need to do is file them (and that won't happen until the 17th, because I owe on both federal and state).

[GPW]

Now if we only had a sharp accountant that could make the Trailers a “deduction” ... Why Not , the 1% do it all the time ...

[eaglesdare]

put a phone and computer inside one and turn it into a home office? travel expenses?

[GPW]

You know , that would work ... probably get mileage too...