Great pics, great quick inputs regarding your experience (humor and summary right up alley). BUT.....you're not getting off that easy :sombrero::
1. Did you go with a Harbor Freight frame or with the pre-fab'd one from Dinoot?
2. What's the breakdown of the fab you alluded to above? Welding, painting, wiring, etc. all yourself or was this shuttled out to others?
3. Hindsight - what would you do different? Any "gotchas" or "doh!!!" moments you care to share?
4. How long did it take?
Come on man, you know everyone loves build details - it helps motivate the rest of us to get off the couch and possibly join the ranks.
Your finished trailer looks fantastic, thanks for sharing!
OK, this is the short version (now you'll understand why I didn't document the build)
Bought Dinoot frame plans and a friend and I built the frame. When I say we, I mean I bought and cut the materials, ran errands and made sure his steak was medium rare and drink was cold when all the welding was finished.
With the overall and tongue length being so short, we sweat the squareness of frame itself and especially the suspension squareness to the frame. He did a heck of a job, no more than a millimeter out of square in any measurement, literally. I bought the springs, axle, spring hangers and hardware and coupler through Dinoot. Could have sourced locally, but wanted Dinoots backing in providing the correct parts. Unsure if this had anything to do with access to Scott with Dinoot or not, but having him walk me through bottlenecks throughout the build was invaluable (and I filled his inbox more than a couple times through the build. He always responded within 24 hours and usually less). The extra $$ spent sourcing through him was worth every penny.
Other than welding the frame/bumper and final top coat/clear coat for the tub, I assembled the balance. Painted the frame/suspension/axle (2 coats POR 15 rust preventative primer/2 coats UV resistant chassis black top coats - highly recommend both products), built the floor from marine grade plywood (could only source through a marine restoration wholesaler - expensive and heavy - think MDF weight - exterior grade construction plywood this isn't), assembled/disassembled tub too many times to count, installed flares, ran/connected all wiring/lights (all wiring is loomed/splices are soldered and crimped and heat shrink tubed - each light is individually ground to the frame - I despise chasing wiring issues after the fact). All fasteners are stainless, all nuts are either nyloc or blue loctited [red for all suspension/axle components].
The "DOH" file. I'll attempt not to overwhelm, but a medium bucket of popcorn might not be a bad idea before you start reading......
While assuring the frame was square, tongue was dead centered and suspension square to frame, I somehow missed making sure the frame was flat. Ended up with a 1/2" to 5/8" hump in the three cross members tying the frame sides together. The marine plywood floor is built up to 1 1/2" thicknesses above all the frame tubing and was heavy enough to lay nearly flat when laid on the frame. Problem became apparent when it was time to bolt the fiberglass body to the floor after the floor was bolted to the frame. The fiberglass front and back panels aren't going to bend to conform to the hump. Once determined the issue, it was a matter of shimming between the floor and frame to assure the floor was pancake flat. Not a big issue, but a lot of time chasing the problem/disassembly/reassembly.
I decided to go with stainless t-nuts in the floor for attachment points between the floor and the body. The majority of the attachment points are located directly above the frame rails. Discovered the provided button head screws were 1/4" too long, so screw would contact the frame rail before tightening the body to the floor. Couldn't source shorter screws locally, McMaster-Carr is now on speed dial. Great folks there.
Bumper in pictures is the third version. First version was too narrow (side to side) as it was fabricated using the frame as point of reference and and not the body. Second version was too narrow top to bottom. Third version works, but just. Also related to bumper, the bottom of the rear body panel is 1/4" above the top of the bumper, providing a perfect sight line to gauge if the body is square to the bumper side to side. This was unintentional and it wasn't in line (I'm a general contractor/trim carpenter and know better than narrow sight lines. 1/8" difference in a 3" reveal no one notices. 1/8" difference in a 1/4" reveal everybody notices). It wasn't corrected the second or third attempt either, It is now, but my 6 year old grandson learned a few new words during the process. Grandma was not impressed. His mother less so.
There were other minor hiccups that took a day or so to work through. Multiply several hiccups times a few hours each to resolve and it adds up.
The biggest DOH was a last minute decision to go to the soft tonneau cover and Thule crossbars to support the RTT instead of a hardtop. Decision was prompted by the nagging thought of having to raise the top every time I needed to get into the trailer. The Thule bars/soft tonneau provide enough clearance that I can get inside the trailer without disturbing the tent. The trailer body is chopped fiberglass/resin, which I wasn't sure would provide enough structural support to support the 180 lb. Tepui Ruggedized version of their Kukenam bouncing down a trail or setting statically with my wife and I inside the tent. Ended up having 4 - 12 gauge steel brackets fabricated that served multiple purposes. Backers for where the load bars bolt through the fiberglass body. Transfer the load from the trailer body sides down to the floor and keep the load bars from wanting to push the sidewalls outward. Also, I needed the brackets to have cutouts to clear all the previously installed wiring as I didn't want to have to cut into/re-wire anything. The second bracket design resolved all of the above. Additional problem was that frame cross members were in the way of being able to bolt the support brackets through the 1 1/2" floor. Eventually was resolved by installing dual threaded insets into the floor (inserts threaded on outside to screw into hole in plywood floor, inside threads to screw button head screws into) and epoxying into the floor. Finally, three days before departure, decided to add a third Thule cross bar to further help support tent. Which required two additional steel structural backers for the fiberglass body as well as an additional Thule tower/crossbar and another set of tent mounting brackets from Tepui. Folks all around (Tepui - local bike shop - steel shop) went out of their way to see I had everything needed in a hurry as if I missed my departure date by more than a day, trip would be put off until winter.
The build took too long, due almost exclusively to my ignorance. Started frame in early March. Trailer was 99% completed on May 9th. Some weeks worked on it 20+ hours, some not more than a few. Tent arrived at local REI on the 10th. Left on trip on the 12th.
edit - tell me how to insert paragraph breaks. Shows in reply, not in post. Thanks.
