Frame and Body Together or Seperate? Body siding thickness?

[Tagdog]

I am hoping to get started on a build mid September or early October. Still working things out. I would love to hear opinions on building the body and frame together versus seperate. I am leaning toward seperate. Also, when siding the body portion of the trailer I was thinking .08 gauge aluminum. I am curious of what others have used.

thanks!

 

[kzam]

I used .032 sheets of 5052 Aluminum. It's plenty thick for siding (thicker than the stuff on most RVs) and still thin enough to bend if you need to.

After a bit of searching, I was able to find sheets 5 ft. x 12 ft. That allowed me to use a single piece on my front and wrap it continuously over my entire roof section without any seams.

I then took that sheet to a HVAC shop and had them use their press brake to make it fit the angles of my trailer. It fit my front profile perfectly.

My cost was about $140 for a local pick-up of the following:

1 sheet 60" x 144" (front and top)
2 sheets 48" x 96" (sides)
1 sheet 48" x 120" (cut it half to skin my rear hatch)

Are you thinking of using painted aluminum? I went with a plain mill finish and it smudges pretty easily. Even with clean, non-greasy hands, you'll still get fingerprints all over it that don't come off unless you use rubbing alcohol.

EDIT

I should also mention I didn't weld my aluminum skin to my frame. I used 1/2" exterior-grade plywood to give my walls the strength they needed. If you're welding an aluminum skin to an aluminum frame, yeah, you're going to need something thicker than what I used.

 

[NMBruce]

A friend build me an M416 frame, based on his M416.
I build a wood box that looks like a M416 body (selling the box, changing things up) and I had stake pockets put on the frame.
My trailer has about 30k miles on it, going to Alaska and back, mid west, Texas, and a lot of off road camping. I have added air bags to let me adjust the suspension.
Yesterday I had to go to Home Depot for stuff, the trailer haul 30 bags of mulch for me, tomorrow I am going to get a stove, so the stake sides are on, giving me something to strap the oven to.

Since I don't have a pickup, this trailer in its current form, let's me do so much more than I could if the box was build as part of the frame.

I can post pictures if you want to see, don't have them on my iPad