1974(ish) Apache Eagle - Off Road Build

[highwest]

This thread will document the build and maybe some adventures of what I think is a 1974 Apache Eagle tent trailer.

My wife and I are avid campers. We prefer the simplicity of sleeping on a platform under a topper in the back of our truck. Before the the platform/topper, we tent camped. With the birth of our son, we knew sleeping in the back of the truck wasn’t going to be an option for a while. We tried breaking out the tent again, and while the space was so much larger than the back of the truck, getting in an out of a ground tent with a 4 month old was a 2 person job.

I started talking about pop up trailers with a friend who was trying to brainstorm ideas to make it easier to camp with his 3 young boys and I guess the bug bit me... I knew the plywood and staple construction of most pop ups wasn’t going to work with many of the places we like to travel, so I began looking at alternatives.

I found the Eagle for sale locally, but thought the original chassis would not be up to the task so I also set out to find a utility trailer that I could throw the body of the Eagle onto.

This utility trailer was homemade about 30 years ago by the gentleman I bought it from. I knew I wanted the trailer wheels to match my truck so we could have more options for spares and this trailer had the right hubs. In the long run, that didn’t end up helping us at all, but the trailer was the right size to put the Eagle onto and it had a massive axle on it so it came home with us.


The Eagle came home a few days later.


And so it began in the first week of Nov 2019...

 

[highwest]

I got both trailers into the garage to figure how the Eagle was going to mate with the utility trailer.


I took apart most of the Eagle and junked the particle board furniture inside. I also found out that after 45 years of love, the plywood floor of had almost totally disintegrated behind the wheels. This is not good because the plywood floor is the only thing that connects the chassis to the aluminum body of the trailer.


I then removed the aluminum body and chassis from the rotting floor and started to use the old floor to mock up the fit.

 

[highwest]

It was then that I learned that I don’t know how to measure well and the utility trailer would need some modification.


I had a friend that knows how to weld come over to help me build a simple subframe on the Eagle’s chassis so I could easily U bolt the Eagle to the utility trailer.


For clarity, the X part is the original chassis and the subframe’s on top. The whole thing is upside down from how it will run.

Here is the old floor of the Eagle mocked up on the utility trailer.

 

[highwest]

Anyone know how to rotate the images uploaded from a phone?

 

[highwest]

After I was comfortable with the old floor’s position, I used the shape to build a new floor. After seeing how the old floor disintegrated, I knew I wanted something a little more robust. The floor ended up being 3/4” ply (same as original) laminated to 18G galvanized sheet metal on the bottom and finished off with fiberglass sheet on top. This pic is just before the glass layer was added to the top (you can only see a few mistakes, don’t look too close).


The documentation gets a little more spartan after this point because I was scrambling to finish up the trailer for a shakedown cruise over Thanksgiving. The utility trailer got an axle flip and some huge 2.25” spacers to run Tacoma wheels.


After a big push and some help from friends, we made it out for a cold and wet Thanksgiving weekend.

 

[highwest]

With a successful trip in the trailer on the books, it was time for a little more work. The Eagle went back under the knife to get a little more prepared for our trip to Mexico over Christmas.


Lacking good documentation through this part again... I had planned to paint the Eagle the same color as the truck, but when I started stripping off the previous owner’s bed liner paint job, I found so many small imperfections that it made sense to just leave it raw aluminum and not stress about future nicks/scratches. I painted the utility trailer gloss black, added a strap down for a spare, LED side markers, new mattresses, and a 10 gallon water tank.

And we we’re headed south!

 

[Deleted member 9101]

Love it!!

I had one about 12 years ago. I put it on a Harbor Freight trailer and really enjoyed it.

 

[highwest]

We got down to Baja a few days before Christmas and spent a couple nights in San Felipe. On Christmas Day, we headed a few hours further south to spend the holiday on a beautiful Sea of Cortez beach.



We were leaving the beach the day after Christmas, down a wonderful Mexican dirt road, spirits were high...


Now, as I was working on the trailer in Dec, I heard what I thought was the brake pads dragging on the drums. We weren’t using the brakes, so I didn’t think much of it and I didn’t notice any play in the trailer’s wheels... but apparently that sound was the bearings.


After a very fortuitous meeting with an amazingly generous traveler and 6hrs of driving for parts, we were back on the road, headed north again.

 

[highwest]

Love it!!

I had one about 12 years ago. I put it on a Harbor Freight trailer and really enjoyed it.

I’m glad to hear that. I took inspiration from a few builds here on ExPo that did similarly. I was afraid that the VW crowd, who really like saving these lightweight trailers, may be upset that I molested this particular Eagle... but I’d like to think that I saved it from a landfill!

 

[Deleted member 9101]

I’m glad to hear that. I took inspiration from a few builds here on ExPo that did similarly. I was afraid that the VW crowd, who really like saving these lightweight trailers, may be upset that I molested this particular Eagle... but I’d like to think that I saved it from a landfill!

Mine started with a rusted out frame and rotted floor. Paid 100.00 for it and spent about 4 months tinkering with it.

I ended up finding a smoking deal on a Jumping Jack trailer, so I sold the Eagle to recoup some of my money spent on the Jumping Jack.

 

[highwest]

Anyone know how to rotate the images uploaded from a phone?

Fixed.

 

[WU7X]

What a great story! Very impressed with your problem solving ability and how you have keep up such a positive spirit. Hope to run into some day in the mountains.

Dale

 

[highwest]

What a great story! Very impressed with your problem solving ability and how you have keep up such a positive spirit. Hope to run into some day in the mountains.

Dale

Hey Dale!

Thank you for the kind words. It’s really easy to be optimistic about being broken down on a Mexican dirt road when you’re staring into the face of a pandemic! Blown bearings are peanuts compared to the ******t Planet Earth is seeing today. This build/adventure thread is part of my (boredom) coping mechanism! Thanks for tuning in.

One MAJOR stress mitigator at the time - I previously mentioned meeting another amazing traveler... That event was an entirely lucky/karmic crossing of paths at a Pemex on Hwy 5. If he was not there, I could’ve fumbled my way through the bearing replacement, but it would’ve taken a few extra hours and we probably would’ve spent the night on that dirt road. This guy drove 20mins to our crash site, advised on parts/repair, then came back after we went to get parts (5hrs later), AND he patiently instructed me through the correct/robust way to do the repair, all while telling jokes and stories about racing in Baja, King of Hammers, and the Rubicon.

It was an experience my wife and I will not forget. I wish my son, who was just under 6mo at the time, was old enough to understand the kindness and generosity this individual shared with us.

 

[highwest]

As we were buttoning up the bearing replacement and saying goodbye to our new friend, the sun was going down and it was raining. By the time we made back up to San Felipe, we had driven Hwy 5 three times that day. We were ready for tacos and a rest, so we pulled into a hotel, instead of setting up camp, and went out for dinner. It rained all night, but we woke up to blue skies and sunshine.

We got gas and onto the highway heading north, but quickly ducked off, aired down, and enjoyed some dirt roads... somewhat... I have lost any attraction I had to the whooped-out race tracks around San Felipe. Nonetheless, it’s a beautiful desert.


We were looking forward to getting to a dry lakebed where we could put a few miles behind us at a quicker pace. Remember that it had rained throughout the night before?


Bad idea. Lakebeds are mud pits after it rains (duh) and trailers are boat anchors in the mud. We spent a few hours getting out of that one. After getting the trailer out, we obviously elected to abandon the lakebed and make for a highway, but we could find no safe way. It was getting late, we were tired and hungry and decided to throw in the towel, setup camp, and have some dinner. An unplanned evening in the Mexican desert is still amazing.

(this pic is actually from the morning, with the rains a day earlier and the cold night, you can see how much water came out of the ground overnight - that was a dry road the night before)

Where the trailer got stuck was only a hundred feet or so from a road that would’ve got us back to the highway. While we were making dinner, we heard someone come in on that road from the highway, get stuck in the mud, floor it a few times, and finally call it quits. So in hindsight, we were lucky that the trailer stopped us early and the truck could still get to a position to pull the trailer out and we didn’t get any further into the lakebed.

We woke up very early and backtracked to place where we were pretty certain we’d make it back to the highway, which worked. Then we took the (very) long way around to where we planned to be the night before.


After the previous few days this was relaxing place to do absolutely nothing for a few days before making our way back home.

I don’t have any more pics, but on the way to the border we ended up getting snuck up on by the Federales (who are pretty much always polite, but tote big rifles) while airing up the tires, getting shaken down by the Mexicali Police (don’t carry pocket knives in MX, you lose all bargaining power with cops when they try to shake you down), and waited in a 4hr border line. But, hey, US CBP didn’t take us in for secondary inspection, so that’s a big plus!

 

[operator john]

Awesome build !! Love those Apaches & Thanks for posting . Time to start looking for one .