markallenolsen
Oly
I am venturing into a teardrop trailer build this winter and decided to share my build progression with others. I pulled all my ideas for the chassis, body style, materials and accessories from the web, along with helpful advise and tips from other builders. I appreciated all the info and advise from other peoples posts that I wanted to do the same in the hope that my build will help some other trailer build adventurist along the way.
By no means am I a professional at this kind of stuff, and only dabble in home improvement from time to time; but I do have an attitude that if I am going to build something on my own, the end product cant look like it was home made.
Price tags for off road teardrops can range from $10K, pretty basic to $30+K fully loaded with roof top tents, etc. I did a rough estimate on my anticipated project cost with most bells and whistles except the roof top tent and figure it will cost me approx $6,500. My goal is to get the trailer road and camp worthy for about $3,500 to $4K and add some of the luxury creature comforts later. The build will be wired and structurally outfitted to receive the add-ons but the bulk of the costs will surround the chassis, suspension, wheels & tires and doors/windows.
I modeled my build around the Oregon Trail'R due to the fact I liked the rugged look and did not have the complex compound radii on the back hatch as other teardrops do. This is where I recognize my skill set limitations and went with an easier shape, while maintaining most curves in the profile. I did not have access to one of their trailers to get dimensions, so I proportioned many of the features I liked off this photograph. I have very limited CADD skills so I plugged what I could into a drawing and came up with this:
Oregon only makes 8 ft long trailers and I am 6'-1" so I'm making the trailer 5 ft wide X 9 ft long and will actually fit a true Queen size mattress. I will be building the trailer out of my garage in which I have heat which will come in handy in a couple months. One suggestion I got from the web is to build a rolling workbench to help with the build and assembly, Cost $80. Since my workshop is in my basement, I figured this would be a good idea since most of my tools would be moved into the garage.
I purchased the chassis steel pre-cut for the base frame yesterday, I did not purchase the tongue steel as I wanted to make sure I was ordering the correct length with proper angle cuts. The frame steel you see in the picture below is 2 x 2 x 3/16th square tube, Cost $180. I considered 2 X 3 framing material but I am weight conscious and the 2 X 2 saved 40 lbs. I also purchased 3 collared receiver hitch tubes, 24" long at a K-Bid auction for $27. One will be used as part of the tongue for an interchangeable hitch arrangement, the other for the rear to carry a receiver mounted bicycle rack.
I beveled all the tubing ends with a grinder so I was assured I could get a full penetration weld throughout for the off road stress introduced to the frame. (tack welded for initial assembly).
Other advice I got online was to make sure the frame is completely level for welding, don't lay on the garage floor as that surface is most likely uneven. I used jack stands to support the work while I squared up and leveled the outside frame rails.
That's it for today.
By no means am I a professional at this kind of stuff, and only dabble in home improvement from time to time; but I do have an attitude that if I am going to build something on my own, the end product cant look like it was home made.
Price tags for off road teardrops can range from $10K, pretty basic to $30+K fully loaded with roof top tents, etc. I did a rough estimate on my anticipated project cost with most bells and whistles except the roof top tent and figure it will cost me approx $6,500. My goal is to get the trailer road and camp worthy for about $3,500 to $4K and add some of the luxury creature comforts later. The build will be wired and structurally outfitted to receive the add-ons but the bulk of the costs will surround the chassis, suspension, wheels & tires and doors/windows.
I modeled my build around the Oregon Trail'R due to the fact I liked the rugged look and did not have the complex compound radii on the back hatch as other teardrops do. This is where I recognize my skill set limitations and went with an easier shape, while maintaining most curves in the profile. I did not have access to one of their trailers to get dimensions, so I proportioned many of the features I liked off this photograph. I have very limited CADD skills so I plugged what I could into a drawing and came up with this:
Oregon only makes 8 ft long trailers and I am 6'-1" so I'm making the trailer 5 ft wide X 9 ft long and will actually fit a true Queen size mattress. I will be building the trailer out of my garage in which I have heat which will come in handy in a couple months. One suggestion I got from the web is to build a rolling workbench to help with the build and assembly, Cost $80. Since my workshop is in my basement, I figured this would be a good idea since most of my tools would be moved into the garage.
I purchased the chassis steel pre-cut for the base frame yesterday, I did not purchase the tongue steel as I wanted to make sure I was ordering the correct length with proper angle cuts. The frame steel you see in the picture below is 2 x 2 x 3/16th square tube, Cost $180. I considered 2 X 3 framing material but I am weight conscious and the 2 X 2 saved 40 lbs. I also purchased 3 collared receiver hitch tubes, 24" long at a K-Bid auction for $27. One will be used as part of the tongue for an interchangeable hitch arrangement, the other for the rear to carry a receiver mounted bicycle rack.
I beveled all the tubing ends with a grinder so I was assured I could get a full penetration weld throughout for the off road stress introduced to the frame. (tack welded for initial assembly).
Other advice I got online was to make sure the frame is completely level for welding, don't lay on the garage floor as that surface is most likely uneven. I used jack stands to support the work while I squared up and leveled the outside frame rails.
That's it for today.
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