Horse trailer as a shell

[ThomD]

Thanks all.

Chip. Yup, I'm all over the fiberglass camper forums, and I've eyed that Lopez 55 pretty hard.

Keep those ideas coming - it'll give me more info to pester the wife with.

 

[Mobryan]

I second the FG trailer idea. We've got a 35 year old Scamp knockoff that is STILL going strong, in the 5 years I've had it, it's been drug over, around, and through more stuff then many campers see in a lifetime, with no ill effects. I daresay it's more durable then an Airstream (wildly dodging the Silver Bullets thrown at me by the AS crowd )

Depending on just how much room you need, perhaps a 15' Scamp would be the best. If you mounted it on a chassis similar or just a touch longer then Hunter's, you could mount a 3' dromedary box on front for bike storage, it could double as the basement area for your non-biking trips.


Matt

 

[ThomD]

I'm working on mounting a camper on a Fuso FG with a 13" Stahl service body on it. Camper will have a bath and rig will not be over 20" long. There will be space under the forward portion of the camper in the service body into which a bike garage could be built, not unlike Hackney's version. The camper portion will not be as stoutly built as a horse trailer because no camper is built that stout as far as I know.
I've been driving the truck and service body around time and it's definitely manageable in the mall parking lot.

I'm looking forward to photos as you move through this project.

I probably won't be able to use Doug's garage idea. I could easily find myself in a lot with cars on both ways an no room to extract the bikes. Right now I'm thing that I'll need something on the back end that opens to the rear.

 

[whatcharterboat]

Hi Thom

I know this is much more than you were thinking, but there are plenty of good ideas in this unit. It can sleep up to 8.

 

[haven]

It's not too expensive to have a company build the basic shell of a box on the back of your Fuso FG, and then outfit the interior the way you want it. Here's the camper that Don and Kim Greene built for their world-wide wanderings

(A temporary rear bumper is shown. The current one offers much more clearance and storage for two spare tires.)

The camper has a one-piece fiberglass shell made by Unicell. The shell is like an inverted bowl, stiffened by internal framing. Then doors and windows were inserted. See the construction process here: http://www.questconnect.org/ExpeditionVehicle.html

Don and Kim have driven this vehicle across North, Central and South America, Australia and New Zealand. In 2009, the Greenes will travel south from Europe into West Africa.

Chip Haven