"Sasquatch" The Driveway Built Camping Trailer

[Jmanscotch]

**Trailer is finally done, except some minor finishes, Page 5 for photo dump**




Original Intro:

5 years ago I moved to beautiful Colorado. I met my female and we've begun getting more and more into weekend warriorness and the time has come to outfit ourselves with some comforts "we" feel would make it more enjoyable. We recently purchased a Yakima RTT, slung it up on the bed of the Tacoma and have really enjoyed the comforts and ease it provides. The issue we have been facing is a lack of space, organization and the RTT is too annoying to take on and off the truck when I want to use it as a truck.

I've decided to build a basic off road camping trailer to haul said gear, hopefully in a quasi-weather resistant fashion, and adorn our RTT to so it can be an all in one unit that we store at the house, hook up to and go when the time comes. This build is going to be basic. No onboard water, no fancy solar panels or anything like some of the great builds I see here, so don't get excited. It's just going to be a basic camping setup I can drag comfortably behind the Tacoma for a 1-3 day weekend getaway.

How we've been camping with the RTT: while it's nice to have an all-in-one rig, it sucks that once camp is set up, the truck is out of commission for shenanigans and that's part of what this basic trailer will help fix for us.





The hunt: I've bought 6 trailers in the last 3 months. Some were build platform candidates as I don't weld and thus at least desired a frame to build off of, others were just to flip and make money to help fund this build. When you spend days on end on Craigslist looking at trailers, it's easy to spot a steal of a deal and so I jumped on them, cleaned them up, rewired, repainted some, completed some basic mods (new hitch, jack, wheels/tires) and sold them on. This gave me some insight into what my wants and needs were in a good trailer build candidate and made me about $1,000 so I could begin my build.

Then I found a kinda janky looking white homemade 4'x6' trailer that was cheap and seemed good enough to tear down and use as a solid starting point, so I snagged it for $275.

Here's a picture of how it sat when I bought it:




I dragged it home and tore it down.





I decided to paint it in the mean time while I draw up plans.





I went ahead and replaced the coupler with a basic 2" ball setup for now. The original setup was a outdated and not functioning well. Future plans include a Lock N Roll hitch/coupler but I need to move it around some before that happens so the ball coupler works.




I got new safety chains, replaced the leaf spring hanger bolts with some greasable units from etrailer. Rewired it with a new 4-pin harness, ran through the main center support tube. Ordered some LED tail light bars, a new weld on swivel jack and got some of that installed prematurely...but it was a welcomed break from the endless hours of wire wheeling the old paint off.






I looked into getting new hubs to match the 6x5.5 Tacoma wheels, as the current hubs are 5x4.5 (Jeep pattern). The spindles are pretty jacked up, the grease was contaminated as hell and the wheel bearings pitted from the contamination allowing corrosion to occur.




I measured the spindles and it turns out they're some goofy size, no one seems to carry hubs to fit them, they're likely old (early 1900s?) car/tractor spindles based on what I found similarly sized online. For now I enjoyed the wonderful task of cleaning out years of old grease from each hub assembly and repacking them with some RedLine grease I had laying around. It'll be a temporary solution until I look into a new axle.

The current axle is 59" WMS to WMS. My Tacoma axle is roughly 65" hub-to-hub so I'm thinking I'll get closer to matching the trucks width so I can A) see the trailer behind me better B) make it more stable for the RTT and C) hopefully improve how it tracks behind the truck by better matching the wheel base.

Future plans include replacing the center tongue tube. I don't love the round tube and it's a bit short, so I'm going this week to price 12' of 2.5" receiver tubing as well as the other metal to replace the floor and build the 18" tall sides . I'm going to top the side rails with 1"x3" box tubing to create a nicer ledge to bend over and eventually a good surface to a top to mount/seal against.

I've found a lot of inspiration here. I've yet to learn to weld, but have a friend who can that I'm going to rely on.

More to come....

Jake

 

[bstehle]

Pic didn't work

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[Jmanscotch]

Pic didn't work

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A using Tapatalk

Yeah, I started to type it all up on my phone and it wasn't working out for me, so I switched to the laptop and it should all be fixed now, thanks!

One more picture for now. I don't have CAD skills or even SketchUp skills, so enjoy my Paint sketchup of the basic idea I'm starting with. It's by no means an all inclusive design, but it's what I'm focusing on at the moment.

 

[Martyinco]

Sweet another Colorado trailer build with a Tacoma :wings:

 

[Jmanscotch]

Indeed!

I don't know how I missed your build thread while perusing here. I love the HDPE sides idea and I may steal it. I had considered something similar (more like ABS), but then forgot about it and got fixated on wood vs metal. So thanks, I'm going to revisit that idea as it fits my needs, both in strength/function and fab abilities.

Question for you that I didn't see in your thread just now: with the wheel spacers, what's your overall axle width, hub to hub and do you like how it tows/behaves behind the Tacoma? If able to easily change it, would you go wider or more narrow by chance?

 

[bstehle]

Pics are good now lol. Nice Tacoma setup. I enjoy watching trailer builds and I'm planning one for camping/beach trips to pull behind my E350 powerstroke van. Subscribed!

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[Martyinco]

I don't know how I missed your build thread while perusing here. I love the HDPE sides idea and I may steal it. I had considered something similar (more like ABS), but then forgot about it and got fixated on wood vs metal. So thanks, I'm going to revisit that idea as it fits my needs, both in strength/function and fab abilities.

Just FYI I have a list of reasons not to go with ABS, spoke to many plastic specialists before I made the decision to do HDPE.

Question for you that I didn't see in your thread just now: with the wheel spacers, what's your overall axle width, hub to hub and do you like how it tows/behaves behind the Tacoma? If able to easily change it, would you go wider or more narrow by chance?

I have it written down at home, but I believe I am within an inch or two of the factor width of the Tacoma, it is very close. I love how it tows, I had it loaded down pretty good for hunting last fall and it behaved great. I wouldn't change a thing about the width, my box is wide enough for my wife's 4 wheeler and I am still able to squeeze anywhere the Tacoma can go.

 

[Jmanscotch]

Yeah I saw that in your thread, good info.

Perfect, I'll plan to match or go slightly narrower than the truck as all the reading I've done suggest that's ideal. Thanks for the insight sir!

 

[Jmanscotch]

Small update until my metal order comes in.

Decided on wheels and tires finally.

When it came to tires, I debated BFG KO2s to match my truck tires, as well as GoodYear Durtracs and General Grabber AT2s. Ultimately price and availability (the Grabbers are discontinued?) drove me away from those typical options. So I started chatting up my tire guy. I explained they were for a trailer and thus didn't need to be anything crazy, but I wanted a tough tire that resist sidewall damage and other likely scenarios from bouncing off trail obstacles as that was likely to be it's biggest enemy. He came back with a fair price and a personal recommendation for three Nokian Rotiiva AT tires, sized at 31x10.5 R15s. He'd been running them on his ole Tacoma and said they were good tires. Great traction and in his experience, pretty robust sidewalls, so I purchased a set.

For those whom are questioning what the heck is this Nokian brand tire; if you've ever lived in snow ridden states you would know the Nokian Hakkapeliitta snow tires. The best freaking snow tire in the industry...and that's why I'm fine with trying their all terrain.


When it came to wheels, I didn't want to waste money on anything fancy but also wanted something better than stock Jeep wheels. I went the way of lots of Jeep guys and ending up with some basic matte black steel 15's. Trail Master D-window, matte black power coated, model TM5-5865F. They're 15x8, 3.75" backspacing and a pricey $39.99 each...with free shipping!





Today I went to my buddies shop and mounted and RoadForce balanced them. Weirdly, I really enjoy the process. The tires mounted well, beads were quick to set and the tires and wheels balanced pretty darn well compared to my Tacoma fancy wheels and BFGoodrich K02s. Two took less that 0.50 an ounce and one took 1.75 ounces.





Then back to the house to mate it all up.

First was the task of addressing the trailers suspension. After some serious science and math calculations, I determined 11 leaf springs on the trailer was just going to be too much suspension. I don't want anything fancy and while I might still outfit the trailer with shocks at some point, for now I decided to try to gain some better trailer characteristics by making the suspension lighter and thus hopefully more gentle and smooth. Best eyeball guess said 3 leaf springs each would suffice. Cut apart the old packs, replaced the centering pin and hung it all together with the new axle, new zinc u-bolts and new axle perches (not yet welded on, that'll be finished up when the trailer body is welded up.

Before, with way too heavy duty leaf packs:




After, with 8 fewer leafs on each pack...should be much more paired for the weight this trailer will actually see...or so I'm hoping. Will add leafs back if some test runs show it was too bold of a move.




For the axle, I went with a Dexter Axle 3,500 lb unit. It's 64" hub-to-hub paired with EZ-lube spindles (a great setup). The hubs are 5x4.5 lug. The axle is built to fit brakes, but for now I opted out of going that route. I don't think I'll need brakes on this light of a trailer, atleast not enough to justify cost, and while I considered them for a hand actuated parking brake, ultimately budget won.




Mounted it all up and I like the outcome. It's axle-under-leafs, u-bolts pointing up for ground clearance and also helped retain height so the trailer can hopefully comer out with a good matching height to my truck with a touch of angle down on the tongue.




That's it for now. I placed an order for the first third of the metal for the main trailer body. I'm going to do it in stages to ensure I can make some small tweaks to the design in each stage as I see how it actually comes out. This works with my simple design, changing it mid build should be doable and not just a domino effect of things being effected.

The next update might be slow as the summer projects are pilling up quick. Just did an engine and tranny swap in my 1975 BMW 2002 and will continue getting it back on the road. Also rebuilding an old Yamaha Enduro 100 trail bike, which might need a spot on the trailer so it can come with us camping and that's one of the potential design changes I'm contemplating. All in all, I expect to be done in a month and change, atleast having it to a usable rig.



- Jake

 

[Jmanscotch]

Today I made some progress, thankfully.

I picked up my metal order Friday and made arrangements with a friend to spend part of the day doing some fabrication on the trailer, finally.

I was a little surprised at the metal cost as it's not something I see people talking about in their build threads. Some say they got a deal, had a hookup, used scrap steel they just had laying around the shop. Well, I'm not any of those folks, I instead visited the local metal fab shop and just starting telling them what I wanted, asking for guidance on thicknesses and such along the way. With what I bought, plus a few cut charges (had them sheer the sheet metal floor for me, as well as a few basic other cuts) my total came out to $462. Talking to some friends AFTER that purchase, I've been told that seems about $100 higher then they'd expect looking at my metal list...and I'd have to agree it seems so based on the basic research I did, but the bill was paid and I was on my way home with some metal to get things rolling.






My buddy who's doing the welding is just learning. His father is a long time fabricator and even used to run the weld shop where I work. So while he's way behind the curve on picking up the trade, all things considered, he knows enough to be dangerous and recently bought a nice Miller welder. He's building his grandpas old 51 Ford pickup (LS engine swap, Crown Vic IFS front clip, etc) and he wanted some practice before welding in the whole front end suspension on that project, so we agreed to some friend terms/cost on his work on the trailer and got into it about 8 Saturday morning.

First up was removing the old 2.5" round tube tongue from the trailer.





Next, we worked towards installing the new, 12 foot length of 2.5"x2.5"x0.250" wall tongue on the trailer. I realize 0.250" wall is a bit excessive, it was a bit of a snafu thanks to the weld shop, meant to get 0.120" wall. We cleaned up the cross supports, fixed a few mistakes and squared the new full length tongue in place and welded it up.




Next we welded in the 14 gauge flooring. Basically stitch welded a few inches every 3-4 inches along each cross support and main frame on the bottom side of the trailer.




All that was left was installing the new Lock-N-Roll hitch, the tongue jack and the safety chain loop. The hitch I went with was the bolt on trailer side and the 2" drop/lift receiver on the vehicle side.





For the safety chain loop, I just recycled an axle u-bolt I trimmed down.



Loaded up, sitting pretty level so far, we'll see how it reacts to more weight and dressings. I can already tell I'm going to have to install a few more of the leaf springs back (I'm thinking 2 more, for a total of 5 each side) as they're just too soft for the weight and rebound. I'm going to look into adding shocks to the trailer too as that should dampen the issue.




Working on cutting the sides and top this week, then hopefully more welding next weekend.

- Jake

 

[Martyinco]

Which metal shop did you end up buying from? Depending on what part of town you're in, I would suggest K&K Surplus in Brighton (Highway 76 and 88th just south of the Flea Market) They are in unincorporated Adams county so the tax is only 4.75% and they always have great prices for steel that you really can't beat.

 

[Jmanscotch]

Which metal shop did you end up buying from? Depending on what part of town you're in, I would suggest K&K Surplus in Brighton (Highway 76 and 88th just south of the Flea Market) They are in unincorporated Adams county so the tax is only 4.75% and they always have great prices for steel that you really can't beat.

I went to a shop here in Colorado Springs; Glasser Steel. I've since been recommended Western Steel in the Springs by a few who say they're the best price in the Springs...a little too late for my situation but now I know should I need a few more items or do this again in the future.

 

[Jmanscotch]

Unfortunately my welding connection has been delayed a bit. Like I mentioned early on, he's a brand new father with lots going on. I plan to make all the required cuts early next week thanks to another friend with a proper high end band saw and then tack weld up the next phase of metal. So projected dates have slowed, as expected, but I'm staying positive.

There's a lot of joy in doing something yourself (with the help of friends) so hey...let's finish this!

Jake

 

[btburn]

I buy all my metal through K&K and the have a good scrap selection as well. Good prices and good people there.

 

[btburn]

If you need any metal brackets or pieces cut to shape I have a small CNC Plasma Cutter I run out of my garage. It looks like you've got most everything coming together nicely.