Building my expedition trailer with raised RTT

[jays0n]

I believe I've seen the one you were looking at I have 12 gallons of water under the floor, 2 marine batteries in the tongue box and really heavy 33" tires and figured it would be heavy enough but it wasn't, still super unstable on off camber terrain. I'm using actuators from Windy Nation, they are rated for 225 lbs each and were cheap. After a few years they've held up fine. As for the solar panel, the slides are made up from 80/20 parts and I don't have a parts list but can say that it's the heavy wall 15 series and uses a total of 4 linear bearings to create the sliding action. I've put 3000-4000 miles on the trailer so far and after the initial rebuild that included lowering the rack, adding shocks and electric brakes the thing is rock solid now. We just returned from a 4 day trip in Oregon that covered 240 miles of ROUGH roads and trails and other than being filthy it's just fine. My full build thread is over on the dinoot forum if you want to take a look for more detail on that slide and the actuators

 

[piecemeal]

I believe I've seen the one you were looking at I have 12 gallons of water under the floor, 2 marine batteries in the tongue box and really heavy 33" tires and figured it would be heavy enough but it wasn't, still super unstable on off camber terrain. I'm using actuators from Windy Nation, they are rated for 225 lbs each and were cheap. After a few years they've held up fine. As for the solar panel, the slides are made up from 80/20 parts and I don't have a parts list but can say that it's the heavy wall 15 series and uses a total of 4 linear bearings to create the sliding action. I've put 3000-4000 miles on the trailer so far and after the initial rebuild that included lowering the rack, adding shocks and electric brakes the thing is rock solid now. We just returned from a 4 day trip in Oregon that covered 240 miles of ROUGH roads and trails and other than being filthy it's just fine. My full build thread is over on the dinoot forum if you want to take a look for more detail on that slide and the actuators

How much juice do those actuators need to go up and down? I mean I know they're 12 volts, but can you put them up and down a few times without charging the batteries?

 

[jays0n]

I can’t say for sure how many but I’ve ran it up and down a dozen or more times without a charge and didn’t notice any issues.


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[piecemeal]

I can’t say for sure how many but I’ve ran it up and down a dozen or more times without a charge and didn’t notice any issues.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nice. Can you bolt them on rather than weld? What brand or type of the uhmw tape did you use? Also, I bet our setup is pretty close to being the same, but it just looks like my platform is higher when it's down the whole way bc when mine is fully up its 6' 6" from the ground and the sides on my tub aren't near as deep as yours are.

 

[jays0n]

You could bolt them but with telescoping tubing any bolts would get in the way of the inside tubing as it slides by. The UHMW tape came from TapeCase and was kinda pricey, like $60 a roll pricey! I have tons of it left so I could make you a deal on some if you want. On mine some of it has ripped off but I think it's an alignment issue and I could fix it, but haven't bothered to. Sounds like they are pretty close, my annex requires about 6' 2" if I remember correctly.

 

[piecemeal]

You could bolt them but with telescoping tubing any bolts would get in the way of the inside tubing as it slides by. The UHMW tape came from TapeCase and was kinda pricey, like $60 a roll pricey! I have tons of it left so I could make you a deal on some if you want. On mine some of it has ripped off but I think it's an alignment issue and I could fix it, but haven't bothered to. Sounds like they are pretty close, my annex requires about 6' 2" if I remember correctly.

Oh ok. I see. I was trying to avoid having to weld as I would need to take it back out to my welder guy. But maybe I could have some local do it pretty quick (looks like it'd be pretty easy). I might be interested in some tape. I'll take some measurements when I get back in town and see how much I might need.