Is a teardrop right for us?

Septu

Explorer
Septu - thanks for the feedback, much appreciated. What size is your Little Guy? I see your sig line says 5'...what is the length? And is that 5' body plus ~12"w tires so total fender to fender width of ~84"?

I'd likely rate myself an intermediate off road driver, certainly not an expert! So would be very nervous of towing the truck and trailer down anything too tight or technical. And have no experience towing an off road trailer down technical terrain. It's a lot of time, money and gear to muck something up! So this goes back to my original debate of where all I'd like to be able to take it, and then selecting a trailer that will make it down those trails.

With a nice RTT and a galley as designed/shown above, I believe our setup/tear down time would be super low! That part alone would make us super happy campers, and allow us a lot more freedom to plan our travel days/stops accordingly.

My LG is a 5 wide (body) so 80" is what LG spec's. It has almost the exact same track as my JK. LG says the overall length is 12 feet. I figure my tongue weight to be around 250-300 lbs (with the battery and the loaded box in front of the cabin).

As for offroad... I wouldn't consider myself an expert by any means... and I've only ever once hauled my trailer (m101) down the trail. But it was a trail I'd never been on before, and I went with a large group. And my m101 is a fairly light trailer that's very well balanced... so I knew that it could be hand balmed if needed.

I'm not saying don't hit the trail with your TD (assuming you get one)... just that you'd either want to know the trail before hand (I'd watched a lot of video of the one I did), or have a very good idea of what you're getting into... and have plenty of options (bypasses, other vehicles (recovery), turn around, etc). It's just slow going (I was always a LOT slower than the other vehicles) due to how the lite trailer will handle a mid size bump vs a heavy jeep, and over anything off camber or tight I was significantly slower due to having to figure out what my JK was doing, as well as watching the trailer. I knew I was going slow over things... but didn't quite realise how slow until I watched video after the fact.

Once I get a better galley setup (or sell this TD and buy one with a better setup), I figure my setup/take down time would only be a few minutes - as that's all that's really slowing me down.
 

Louisd75

Adventurer
Not to throw too much of a wrench into your plans, but have you thought about a raindrop style front end for the trailer?

580.jpg


It adds a bit of length to the trailer, 10' body length vs 8' body length, but it gives you a couple feet of extra space in the front. The Camp Inn 560 model uses the extra space for kid's bunk beds that convert into a couch. More pictures on their website: http://tinycamper.com/raindrop560ultra.htm

I'm currently building one similar to the 560 model. I looked into having one built by Camp Inn, but they're limited in what they can do "custom" and it just wasn't going to work out.
 

sblanken

New member
This is exactly what my husband and I have in mind for our family (two boys and two small-mid sized dogs), once we can afford it. I'd love to see the finished product eventually! Very exciting.
 

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