Craig's Offroad Teardrop Build

[dusty122]

We did a couple camping adventures last week. We got the trailer up to Yosemite and it worked out very well. The trailer is light enough that I can just drop it almost anywhere and push and rotate into almost any site. The following weekend the trailer finally some dirt. We did a 4x trip out to Calico in the Mojave Desert and camped near Kramer arch. The trailer did Great and I finally got some offroad trailer experience in a not so difficult location.
Yosemite

Our camp site. My Jeep has a Hannibal awning with sides on it. I eventually want to mount it to the trailer. It deploys super easy and it doesn't have a need for polls or tie downs. Parking it like this allows us to get a small private room that we can stand up in and change which is a nice luxury.

Our Camp Site at Kramer Arch near Calico. We had a good laugh with our buddy in the Ford Pickup with his shanty town shelter but it survived the wind so i guess it worked out.

Camping on Mars

Finally Dirt

 

[Darkrider]

Def a cool trailer man! Great progress on making it your own at the same time!

 

[406expo]

I really like those tear drop trailers, very sharp. Seems like a practical space, after I'm done with my 416 rtt build I may do a tear drop to pull behind out full size truck.

 

[VanIsle_Greg]

Nice trailer... love the WK too (I have an 05).

:coffeedrink:

 

[dusty122]

hopefully i will have some new pictures this weekend. I put in some new gas struts and relocated the mounting points slightly on the galley door so i get about 6 more inches of head height. Its now above concussion height for me. Im almost done with the onboard air setup and I'm just trying to fix small leaks.

 

[PDragon]

Great trailer and love the green WK... can't wait for more trip reports. Cheers!!! :sombrero:

 

[dusty122]

Finally some updates. finishing up a bunch of projects all at once and getting ready for overland expo west

previously i had a highly customized car that I have since parted but I had a lot of stuff i never got around to selling so I figured i re-use it. One of the main complaints about the offroad teardrop is that the kitchen is way too tall for my 5'-4" girlfriend and even a little tall for me (6'-4") The trailer was built with adjustable airbags and I just happen to have a complete airride kit from my previous car. I installed the aircompressor 3 gallon tank on the front of the tongue box. I also added a full set of electric valves as well as connections for air tools. The small cabinet on the front houses the compressor switch as well as the valve control switches and some accessory switches I may use in the future. I am able to drop the trailer a little over a foot which makes the kitchen the perfect height. I need to cleanup the connections a bit and it has about every random fitting I had to make it work (fittings are $$$$ so i tried to make use of the extras i had)

The original airbags have schrader valves on them to filling them up and removing air. No matter how good i've gotten with the airride stuff I always have small leaks. I decided to put these schrader to NPT valves as close to the airbag as possible so that i minimize the risk of an airride blowout while driving.

I then went a little crazy with power. (maybe a lot crazy) I added a 2kw xantrex freedom 458 converter which will both do battery charging and inverting. Its pretty awesome and now that its finally setup its super nice to never really worry about power. I really want to be able to run for multiple days without needing to pull out the generator or most likely leave the generator at home. I also added a second bank of 6 volt golf cart batteries. I had a lot of left over stuff from the previous car including battery terminals and some crazy power cables so i used um. Everything just barely fits with only about 1/2" on each side.

with all this stuff jam packed in there i figured i should add some venting all around.

still need to some final touches and cleanup but here are power ports. the black door on the bottom left of the box lets me access some deadspace in the tool box where I can store an extension cord

remote control and monitoring system inside on the headboard

did a quick trip out to lake cachuma and stayed at the basic campground there
But we did do some exploring and found some sites a little furthur down the road in this valley so we are going to try them out this weekend as long as it doesnt rain and close the dirt road

I've got 2 projects left before overland expo. My wheel adapters just came in so I can swap those on and swap out the toyota wheels with some JK wheels and tires that are the same thats on the tow vehicle. I dont own a toyota spare so I figured this was important before leaving on a 2 week road trip. My other goal is to clean up and re-paint the underside of the trailer.

 

[dusty122]

New wheels are on! We tested everything out at Middle Santa Ynez campground near Santa Barbara.

 

[VanIsle_Greg]

Sweet!

 

[fireball]

Hi Craig,

A few quick questions and maybe I missed the answers above:

what is the total height of the trailer from ground to top of cabin?
What size tires?
what is the height of the cabin itself?
does it have brakes?

I'm surprised that at 1800+# you can easily maneuver it by hand around campsites. That is good to hear!

 

[dusty122]

The tires are 32" they are the same wheels and tires that are on the jeep. With it fully aired up for driving it's at just at 7 feet. Slightly taller than the jeep. It has brakes but I don't have a brake controller yet to actually use them. It's on the short list of immediate purchases. It's something I would want for more serious trails. It's not the easiest thing to move around and I have a hard rubber wheel up front but it's doable. I tried a pneumatic one but I kept blowing the tire on it.

Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk

 

[dusty122]

My newest projects have been organizational stuff. Im trying to pack as manythings on the trailer that id normally put in the jeep to free up space in the jeep and make it easier to just load up some food and beers in the trailer and go with minimal packing. Ive tried a group of different table options and in gneral if its going in the back of the jeep its going to suck. It either has to be packed first or it rattles all over the back. Front runner was having a sale over laborday so i picked up one of their tables. Its pricey but is pretty dang solid and came with a free mounting kit to mount them under their roof rack. I modified the kit and put it under the trailer so its easy to grab and stow and most importantly keeps it out of my car and my garage.

The next mod is more utilitarian. The doors are big so they have long curtains. Our contant problem is that wed accidentally pull on the curtains while trying to grab soemthing in the trailer or climb in. on our 2 week adventure we must have bent the curtain rods 20 times. My solution was to replace the rods with black bunjee material. It works great and the curtain slides on bunjee pretty well. Im trying to come up with an idea to cover the ends with some rossets or some sort of cover so it looks a little more finished.

 

[dusty122]

also found some pictures from snowverland expo. We were way in the back corner in the deepest mud. We didnt get too many visitors out that far. When leaving on sunday was a bit of a struggle conneting up to the lock n roll hitch but several people pitched in and helped me out. once hooked up I needed a push from a few people but we made it out without needing a tow.

 

[VanIsle_Greg]

Liking this trailer...good stuff. I dig the table storage as well. I too have a Jeep WK, but use it to tow our 23' travel trailer. The XJ gets to haul around the Offroad Trailer.

so far. heh

 

[Sharpie]

Do you have any more info or pics of the suspension? The trailer is coming together nicely. Excellent job!