Fiberglass M416/M100 Military-style Trailer Tub Kit

[jscherb]

You Sir have tremendous talent.....thank you for sharing these projects!

Sent from my Roof Top Tent

Thanks! Glad you enjoy the projects .

 

[screwball48]

You know this soft top design may lead to a revival of soft topped expedition trailers.


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[jscherb]

The fabric I'm probably going to go with is called Cordura. It's 100% nylon and I'd use the urethane coated variant, which is pretty much waterproof. Cordura is often used for backpacks and soft sided luggage, and in high-end textile motorcycle jackets and pants because of its high abrasion resistance. Cordura fabrics have been used by the military for about 50 years for heavy-duty clothing and packs. I think it'll serve well in the covered wagon application.

I've found ACU, Woodland/BDU and Multicam patterns in coated Cordura. It sells for about $12-$15 per yard at many fabric web sites, and at the moment the Woodland and ACU patterns are available for about $7 per yard on eBay. Here's a shot of what happens when water gets on it:

 

[jscherb]

I've been working a little more on the patterning of the covered wagon top with the directionality of the camo prints in mind. It turns out that most camo prints are intended to be horizontally oriented and some are more horizontal than others - for example Multicam is very horizontal, ACU is also horizontal but doesn't look too bad in a vertical orientation. It also turns out that the patterns are printed horizontally across the fabric roll, which is typically 60" wide, so if you needed a wider piece, say for the roll-up side flaps on this 6' trailer, you need to seam two pieces together to end up with that width. Same for the roof, multiple pieces need to be joined to get long enough panels with the camo print running the right direction.

None of this is a big deal, just a few more seams required, but if I don't plan for it in advance it could be a big deal - it turns out that instead of 7 yards which would be needed if the camo print ran lengthwise on the fabric, 9 yards would be required to get the direction correct.

Here's an updated pattern layout, it's got more pieces than the last one because large panels need to be made up from smaller pieces to get the orientation correct.

It pays to plan before ordering the fabric .

I haven't decided on the camo pattern yet, but by doing layouts like the one above I can make sure I order the right amount of fabric for whatever I choose. I've ordered two yards of ACU camo to see what it looks like in person, and the see how it's directionality looks. If I don't end up doing the covered wagon in ACU, I can always make something else cool from the two yards of fabric.

 

[100acrehuphalump]

I'd choose woodland over ACU any day. ACU= gravel vomit.

 

[jscherb]

I'd choose woodland over ACU any day. ACU= gravel vomit.

I like Woodland a lot, but there are a few things I don't really like about it in this application - most of them are fairly dark, at least in the fabric types I'm considering, and when I did the mockup with the cheapo HF tarp a few weeks ago I though that tarp was too dark to look good with the trailer. While it's not a real Woodland pattern, it's fairly dark like the fabrics I've seen, so maybe a reasonable simulation of how a dark Woodland would look. But maybe I'm wrong about that - maybe a fabric version of the pattern wouldn't look as dark as the plastic tarp version.

The other thing I don't like is that the pattern width and height is fairly small, so it repeats often, and the pattern elements are large. What that means is that on the side panels, which are 72" long, the 60"-max-width Woodland pattern on the fabric would have to repeat, and since the elements are large, the repeat would be pretty obvious, and that would bother me. I'm thinking the repeat on ACU would be much less noticeable because the pattern elements are much smaller, but we'll see how that looks when the 2-yard sample of ACU I ordered shows up. I'll test how the repeat looks with ACU, and I'll test to see how ACU looks in mixed orientations - a vertical orientation butted up to a horizontal orientation at a seam. I'll post photos of all of that and people can comment. I'm looking forward to seeing how the sample looks and hearing what people think of it.

Here's a photo of some Woodland fabric that shows the obvious repeat. Fine on smaller stuff like clothing and backpacks, maybe not so nice looking on a large expanse like the covered wagon?

The HF Woodland-like tarp mockup, actually a repeat on this pattern wouldn't be as bad as a repeat on true Woodland:

 

[screwball48]

I agree that two panels sxs of woodland would show a very noticeable repeat.


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[jscherb]

You know this soft top design may lead to a revival of soft topped expedition trailers.

You might be on to something there... today the cover of the May 1954 issue caught my eye:

It's a two part article with plans and instructions for building the fold-out camper pictured on the cover. Seems to me it's a good design to put on top of a small offroad trailer, so I did that (digitally). Here it is on my Jeep-tub trailer - it's not the most elegant photo-hack I've ever done, but it gets the concept across:

On a 6'6" Dinoot Extended trailer, you could easily get a sleeping platform that's as big as a king-sized bed if you did a minimal single platform across the tub, or two sleeping platforms if you did beds on either side of the tub.

It could also be done on a military trailer, here it is on mine.

The complete May and June 1954 issues of Popular Mechanics are online in Google books, and with the complete plans and instructions there it wouldn't take much work to change a few dimensions and make this idea work on one of these trailers.

 

[Kmrtnsn]

I'm working on finding just the right fabric for the covered wagon project. My criteria include: a camo pattern/color that looks good on the trailer, mostly synthetic (polyester/nylon/acrylic), heavy military "canvas" look and feel, and coated fabric for waterproofing. I want to use something fairly heavy because I'm designing this to be well behaved at freeway speeds and I think heavier fabrics will fare better at speed.

Two camo patterns are very common in fabrics that meet these criteria - something called "Woodland" camo (at right below, similar to military BDU camo), and ACU ("Army Combat Uniform") camo, below left are some samples from a fabric supplier's web site:

A larger view of a typical Woodland camo pattern:

The color isn't very accurate on the web site, here's an actual sample of the ACU camo photographed against the trailer:

I'm leaning towards something like the ACU camo because the colors look good with the color of the trailer, even though it isn't "period correct" for a military trailer like this and the pattern is kind of small. The Woodland pattern just doesn't seem military enough to me, I don't think the military ever used a pattern like that. On the other hand, I don't think the ACU pattern is used on real military vehicles, but I could be wrong about that. Input welcome!

I've got a little time to decide which fabric to use, between other projects I'm working on that have actual deadlines, some mold-making I'm doing for my JK Safari cab project, and a road trip to Utah for Easter Jeep Safari, I won't be able to start sewing for a bit.

I would avoid the ACU pattern. Number one, it has proven to be an awful camouflage pattern in use and for that reason the Army is dumping it for a tweaked version of Crye Precision's Multicam. You may be able to source ACU cheap, while manufacturers work to rid their warehouses of it but once it is gone, it's gone forever.

 

[Kmrtnsn]

You might be on to something there... today the cover of the May 1954 issue caught my eye:

It's a two part article with plans and instructions for building the fold-out camper pictured on the cover. Seems to me it's a good design to put on top of a small offroad trailer, so I did that (digitally). Here it is on my Jeep-tub trailer - it's not the most elegant photo-hack I've ever done, but it gets the concept across:

On a 6'6" Dinoot Extended trailer, you could easily get a sleeping platform that's as big as a king-sized bed if you did a minimal single platform across the tub, or two sleeping platforms if you did beds on either side of the tub.

It could also be done on a military trailer, here it is on mine.

The complete May and June 1954 issues of Popular Mechanics are online in Google books, and with the complete plans and instructions there it wouldn't take much work to change a few dimensions and make this idea work on one of these trailers.

Jumping Jack Trailer makes several models just like that with removable canvas tents.

 

[screwball48]

The main difference between this and a jumping jack is the "homebuilt" aspect of the project.


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[jscherb]

Today my trip back from Moab/Easter Jeep Safari took me through northern Indiana, so I stopped at my favorite RV surplus store. I came away with 4 matching cargo hatches, still in the original manufacturer's packaging:

Back when I was designing the fiberglass cover for the military trailer, I drew a chuck wagon concept - it uses the same cover, and the chuck wagon section is basically a riser that sits between the tub and the cover. I drew the concept with square-cornered hatches, but having found these hatches today, I'll have to redraw the concept showing them instead of these square-cornered ones .

The chuck wagon section will attach to the tub using the same hinges/latches that the cover uses to attach to the tub, and then the cover will attach to the top of the chuck wagon section again using the same hinges/latches, so no mods are necessary to either the cover or the tub to insert this section. And the cover will still support a roof top tent while it's on top of the chuck wagon section.

I won't get to this project for a little while, but since I had the opportunity to pick up the hatches for $16 each, I figured I'd add them to my pending project pile.

 

[SSKU]

This thread and trailer are so damn cool that I had to join just to tell you that.

Ok, fanboy comment finished. I'm curious to know what it would look like if you took another tub, flipped it over and put it on top as a cap. Throw a rack on top and it could look pretty cool. If nothing else, it would be an easy way to add a cap and more capacity, though a new door/gate would have to be fabricated.

 

[jscherb]

This thread and trailer are so damn cool that I had to join just to tell you that.

Ok, fanboy comment finished. I'm curious to know what it would look like if you took another tub, flipped it over and put it on top as a cap. Throw a rack on top and it could look pretty cool. If nothing else, it would be an easy way to add a cap and more capacity, though a new door/gate would have to be fabricated.

Thank you.

It would be pretty easy to flip a second tub kit and mount it on top as a cap, but I'm not sure it would really be attractive.

With the fiberglass hard cover I've got on mine, one easy way to build a simple cap would be the same way I plan to build the chuck wagon cap - just build some panels to form the sides of the cap, and mount the fiberglass cover on top of it.

The side panels could be made whatever height was appropriate for your usage of the trailer, here's a concept drawing with lower sides:

Or without the fiberglass had cover, you could just make a plywood box; here's one I saw at a car show a few years ago and while the box on this one isn't plywood, it's a pretty straightforward design that would be easy to do in plywood. It's also got storage capability on the roof.

 

[jscherb]

I'm back from my Moab trip, and waiting in the mailbox for me was the sample of ACU camo fabric I ordered. I've clamped the sample in place on the bows to see how it looks for the covered wagon top:

ACU is a directional pattern, but not so directional that it looks terrible if pieces are butted 90-degrees to each other. The pattern is also small enough that it looks ok in a vertical orientation, which is how it's clamped in place in the photo above. I folded the sample so the patterns meet at 90 degrees, it isn't objectionable, and for the most part I can avoid this anyway by laying out the parts properly on the fabric before cutting.