It's been a while since I posted and will be working on a large post and photos of our 21 day, 8400km journey through the US. But in the meantime, here is one trailer update.
As we did this project in phases with 2 different fabricators (1) Chassis, 2) Habitat plus myself as the final cabinet and detail installer), one item that was noticed 1 1/2 weeks before the trip was that the fender gap between the trailer wheels and fenders was not that much. As we trailer chassis was built first and then delivered to Northern Teardrop in BC, when the chassis was built, unfortunately the fender gap got set on an unloaded trailer. When we got the trailer back from Northern Teardrop, we never noticed that gap being too small.
Once the trailer was back in AB to be finished, I put the entire trailer up on all three 2000# jacks and levelled it for cabinets and roof rack install, etc. About 1 1/2 weeks before the final trip I finally let the down onto the wheels and that is when the final weight of the trailer compressed the Timbren suspension and had less than 1" of fender gap...not much.
At that point there wasn't much we could do, so we went on our trip as we didn't have time to make changes. After 1 week, the welds on the rear lip on both sides broke (image 2). At that point, our trip continued and we observed that while broken, there was no concern of tire damage.
On our second last day from Nevada back to AB, we hit some large potholes on the highway and the shear force of 33" wheels, ripped the 1/8" plate steel on the passenger fender (image 1). I now knew that once I got home that I should take the trailer out until we get new fenders built and a proper fender gap set.
We have been back for 2 months now and finally got around to work with our friends to get new fenders built and installed. This time we opted to do checkerplate aluminum for the fenders. While not as nice as powder coated metal, we saw how much abuse those fenders were taking from the jeep and road and after 8400km, they were beat up. As such, no sense powder coating them or doing any Line-X, etc, it would all just get damaged.
Below are our new aluminum fenders, so happy with them (images 3 & 4).
This weekend I'm finally also getting the water port installed on the roof as well as reinstalling our Powertank 11lb propane tank mount on to the new fenders.
^ Image 1
^ Image 2
^ Image3
^ Image4
