:sombrero: Thanks! You're very kind to say so.
Off-road teardrop scratch-build
- Thread starter rob cote
- Start date
:sombrero: Thanks! You're very kind to say so.
So I ordered these super-beefy drawer slides for the fridge. Maybe overkill, but it's fairly heavy, even empty, so I don't want to take any chances.
I whipped up a tray from 3/4" plywood:
Fridge fits nice and snug in it
I might want to do something a little different with the plug if any of you have any tips. It's a weird 3-prong 12VDC plug that I've never seen before, so I'm not even sure if something like that is available. A right-angle plug would be ideal, but I will be able to make this one work if not. I'll remember to get some better pictures of the plug.
So I made a mock-up front panel from some scrap, which allowed me to mount the fridge drawer:
Then of course I wanted to see how everything looked, so I got the sink drawer from the previous post mounted up as well, and put the grill drawer back in. Took a few poser pics. :laugh:
I mentioned the low-profile sink drain, here's a better picture of it in case anyone cares. I just wanted to check that there was sufficient clearance for it.
So that's where I'm at now. Next, I'm shifting my focus to plumbing an electrical. Easy fun stuff. :thumbup:
I whipped up a tray from 3/4" plywood:
Fridge fits nice and snug in it
I might want to do something a little different with the plug if any of you have any tips. It's a weird 3-prong 12VDC plug that I've never seen before, so I'm not even sure if something like that is available. A right-angle plug would be ideal, but I will be able to make this one work if not. I'll remember to get some better pictures of the plug.
So I made a mock-up front panel from some scrap, which allowed me to mount the fridge drawer:
Then of course I wanted to see how everything looked, so I got the sink drawer from the previous post mounted up as well, and put the grill drawer back in. Took a few poser pics. :laugh:
I mentioned the low-profile sink drain, here's a better picture of it in case anyone cares. I just wanted to check that there was sufficient clearance for it.
So that's where I'm at now. Next, I'm shifting my focus to plumbing an electrical. Easy fun stuff. :thumbup:
Thanks! I'm really pleased with it, too! It's cool to put something on paper, and then make it into a real thing. I want to rework the drawer for the grill as it fits a little too snug for my liking. And the sink drawer makes it look like a hunka junk lol. But during construction it's workable.
The sink drain I got off amazon.
Totally welcome! And thank you. These ideas are not patented, I just wanted to try something a little out of the ordinary.
2180miles
Endurance Adventuring
Hey bud,
Late to this I suppose, but wanted to post it for you and for anyone else looking for the same kind of thing. I don't know if you're familiar with Pelican brand cases/containers, but I use them a lot in the event production industry to keep gear safe during transport. Pelican sells their cases with a replaceable and "pluck-able" foam insert, little 1cm x 1cm foam pieces that you pull out to match the design of whatever it is you're trying to store.
Pelican sells these foam inserts separately as well. They're a little bit expensive, but a "kit" comes with a few layers of foam to use for different things. For reference, the 1500 is a medium sized thing, perhaps perfect for your drawers, and the 1600 sizes are for larger cases. Here's a link, in case you want to check it out on Amazon.
Progress looks great. Excited to continue seeing it come together.
Late to this I suppose, but wanted to post it for you and for anyone else looking for the same kind of thing. I don't know if you're familiar with Pelican brand cases/containers, but I use them a lot in the event production industry to keep gear safe during transport. Pelican sells their cases with a replaceable and "pluck-able" foam insert, little 1cm x 1cm foam pieces that you pull out to match the design of whatever it is you're trying to store.
Pelican sells these foam inserts separately as well. They're a little bit expensive, but a "kit" comes with a few layers of foam to use for different things. For reference, the 1500 is a medium sized thing, perhaps perfect for your drawers, and the 1600 sizes are for larger cases. Here's a link, in case you want to check it out on Amazon.
Progress looks great. Excited to continue seeing it come together.
Thanks for the link! I like the foam, and it's a strong contender. I just don't love the price. It would be sweet if there were something more generic, so it could be cheaper. In other words, I don't need the outside dimensions to be such that it fits in their case. If I could just get the perforated foam in bulk, then I could cut it down to size to fit the drawers I need. That seems like it could be a cheaper option, but I haven't seen anything like that. But then again, I haven't really looked yet.
I haven't updated in a bit because I have been busy prepping a tow rig. 2003 Tacoma V6 TRD. It's a new england truck so it was in pretty rough shape:
I gave it a pretty thorough suspension refresh/upgrade/lift:
Before:
After:
Not totally quiet on the trailer front. I have been chipping away at the plumbing system. It's nearly complete, but I have to sort a few minor leaks first. I'm hoping to post that update soon, but we have a lot of stuff going on in our free time, that doesn't permit much trailer work to happen unfortunately.
I gave it a pretty thorough suspension refresh/upgrade/lift:
Before:
After:
Not totally quiet on the trailer front. I have been chipping away at the plumbing system. It's nearly complete, but I have to sort a few minor leaks first. I'm hoping to post that update soon, but we have a lot of stuff going on in our free time, that doesn't permit much trailer work to happen unfortunately.
Yeaaaa......it blows.
Love your trailer by the way. Lots of inspiration drawn from there.
stomperxj
Explorer
Thanks. Glad you got some use out of it
Keep up the good work on your trailer. Looks great so farSo I know it's been quite a while since I updated here. We've been crazy busy trying to finalize wedding and honeymoon plans, planning, preparing for, and embarking upon a Canadian overland trip, camping in the states, too, visiting friends and family, and general summertime craziness. Additionally, we kind of hit a phase where we were out of parts to assemble, and had to spend a deal of time planning before we could do much of anything that resembled work.
HOWEVER! We haven't given up! We just didn't have anything to show for quite a while. But now we've completed the water plumbing system. So let me show you it. But before I do that, let me explain a little bit. So you're not just like, why didn't they just slap a pump and some hose in there and call it good? We could have done that, been done a long time ago, and been onto other things by now. I think I touched on this earlier, but in case I didn't and for those of you just joining us, I'll give some background. We fully intend to bring this trailer to South America with us. We are trying to plan for the worst, and that includes no access to potable water. So we worked with a close friend who specializes in industrial filtration, and devised a setup that would allow us to filter ground water into drinking water. We will, of course, carry backup methods, like purification tablets, but we didn't want to have to rely on them, or any one method. You all know the importance of redundancies. So that was one major design consideration. The second was that I'm lazy. I don't want to have to pour 20 gallons of water into this thing every time it's empty. Do you know how heavy that would be? F that. This laziness also meant I was really dragging my feet on installing two pumps to make this work the way I wanted it to. Or maybe that was cheapness? I dunno. ANYWAY. Here's what we did, and it works fantastic!
I'll show you how it works, and you'll get the gist of how it all goes together, I think. And why it is the way that it is. So let's say we're empty, right? And we're in the boonies, and we find a small stream. Okay, so we take out our collapsible hose, and one filter.
And then we hook the hose up to the trailer, and put the filter onto the hose. Keep in mind this is just a coarse sediment filter.
Then with the valves in "suction" mode, we flip the pump switch on, and run it til the tank is full. Then, flip the switch off. What happens while the pump is sucking water up? Glad you asked! The water comes into the trailer's plumbing department and is then sent through a fine charcoal filter. (For now, we're using a 2 micron filter because potable water is easy to find. When we're ready to go more remote, we need to find an even finer filter. I believe the figure was .2 micron. Luckily the cartridge sizes are standardized.) So, then the water goes through a 3-way valve, to the pump. From the pump, it is pushed through another 3-way valve, and then directed into the top hole of the water tank. So what does all that look like? In a word; blue spaghetti.
Note that it's ugly AND it's hard to photograph. Most of these are from the ground, looking straight up. I'm sorry.
After the tank is full and we've disconnected and stowed the hose and coarse filter, we switch the 3-way valves to "normal" operation mode, and turn the pump back on. In normal operation mode, the water takes a different course. It "starts" its journey at the bottom outlet of the water tank, where it is directed through the first 3-way valve to the pump. The pump, again, pushes the water to the second 3-way valve, which now sends it out to the points of use; the sink and the water heater.
So, it's ugly, yeah, but it works beautifully. I initially used some FPTxPEX elbows that have a swivel built in, and a hand-knob on the FPT side. DO NOT BUY THESE. I had to throw away almost all of them because they refused to stop leaking. I tried snugging them, torquing them, lubing the seals, tightening, loosening, tightening until they broke. They wouldn't not leak. And they leak from the inside. It's impossible to describe clearly, but take my word for it. Or read hundreds of terrible reviews online that I didn't read until it was too late. -__- I reworked the design a little to use FPTxPEX non-swivels that are a bigger overall fitting, but they work perfectly.
Because there was so much leaking on the initial setup with the crappy elbows, I was having problems making it all work. I was so distraught because I'd put so much effort into the design concept, and I thought I was going to have to scrap it all and do two pumps or something. Further, the pump wouldn't build pressure in the system until it ran for like 2-3 mins with the sink off. I was beyond stoked when I swapped out the elbows and it worked flawlessly. Let me just reiterate, do not buy Pex swivel elbows.
HOWEVER! We haven't given up! We just didn't have anything to show for quite a while. But now we've completed the water plumbing system. So let me show you it. But before I do that, let me explain a little bit. So you're not just like, why didn't they just slap a pump and some hose in there and call it good? We could have done that, been done a long time ago, and been onto other things by now. I think I touched on this earlier, but in case I didn't and for those of you just joining us, I'll give some background. We fully intend to bring this trailer to South America with us. We are trying to plan for the worst, and that includes no access to potable water. So we worked with a close friend who specializes in industrial filtration, and devised a setup that would allow us to filter ground water into drinking water. We will, of course, carry backup methods, like purification tablets, but we didn't want to have to rely on them, or any one method. You all know the importance of redundancies. So that was one major design consideration. The second was that I'm lazy. I don't want to have to pour 20 gallons of water into this thing every time it's empty. Do you know how heavy that would be? F that. This laziness also meant I was really dragging my feet on installing two pumps to make this work the way I wanted it to. Or maybe that was cheapness? I dunno. ANYWAY. Here's what we did, and it works fantastic!
I'll show you how it works, and you'll get the gist of how it all goes together, I think. And why it is the way that it is. So let's say we're empty, right? And we're in the boonies, and we find a small stream. Okay, so we take out our collapsible hose, and one filter.
And then we hook the hose up to the trailer, and put the filter onto the hose. Keep in mind this is just a coarse sediment filter.
Then with the valves in "suction" mode, we flip the pump switch on, and run it til the tank is full. Then, flip the switch off. What happens while the pump is sucking water up? Glad you asked! The water comes into the trailer's plumbing department and is then sent through a fine charcoal filter. (For now, we're using a 2 micron filter because potable water is easy to find. When we're ready to go more remote, we need to find an even finer filter. I believe the figure was .2 micron. Luckily the cartridge sizes are standardized.) So, then the water goes through a 3-way valve, to the pump. From the pump, it is pushed through another 3-way valve, and then directed into the top hole of the water tank. So what does all that look like? In a word; blue spaghetti.
Note that it's ugly AND it's hard to photograph. Most of these are from the ground, looking straight up. I'm sorry.
After the tank is full and we've disconnected and stowed the hose and coarse filter, we switch the 3-way valves to "normal" operation mode, and turn the pump back on. In normal operation mode, the water takes a different course. It "starts" its journey at the bottom outlet of the water tank, where it is directed through the first 3-way valve to the pump. The pump, again, pushes the water to the second 3-way valve, which now sends it out to the points of use; the sink and the water heater.
So, it's ugly, yeah, but it works beautifully. I initially used some FPTxPEX elbows that have a swivel built in, and a hand-knob on the FPT side. DO NOT BUY THESE. I had to throw away almost all of them because they refused to stop leaking. I tried snugging them, torquing them, lubing the seals, tightening, loosening, tightening until they broke. They wouldn't not leak. And they leak from the inside. It's impossible to describe clearly, but take my word for it. Or read hundreds of terrible reviews online that I didn't read until it was too late. -__- I reworked the design a little to use FPTxPEX non-swivels that are a bigger overall fitting, but they work perfectly.
Because there was so much leaking on the initial setup with the crappy elbows, I was having problems making it all work. I was so distraught because I'd put so much effort into the design concept, and I thought I was going to have to scrap it all and do two pumps or something. Further, the pump wouldn't build pressure in the system until it ran for like 2-3 mins with the sink off. I was beyond stoked when I swapped out the elbows and it worked flawlessly. Let me just reiterate, do not buy Pex swivel elbows.
RWB_Runner
Member
Looking awesome! How do you access your propane tank to change it / refill it, and turn the value on and off?
I am considering putting a 20 lb tank under my trailer
I am considering putting a 20 lb tank under my trailer
The tank bolts to a skid plate, and the skid plate bolts to the trailer. So, to remove it, you have to get underneath the trailer. It's (6) 3/8" bolts and lower the whole skid plate + tank down, then disconnect the hose. It's not ideal, but everything's a compromise.