Anyone interested in a teardrop camping trailer build thread?

Looking good man! 

I built one a few years ago. Slightly more rugged as we used it all off road. Towed it from Vegas almost all the way down to Cabo. 1,000's of offroad miles. Makes me miss it!

Oh man, I am REALLY interested in making one of these after my best friend went to this year's Wasteland Weekend. Would you be able to make a kind of "expansion" or pop-up roof at the rear, or would that compromise structural integrity too much?

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

You could, but it wouldn’t serve much purpose. 

Typical teardrop layout is large enough for a double bed inside, and the rear hatch opens to access a kitchen and/or storage from the outside. 

Since the roof isn’t high enough to stand or sit in a chair, the additional “expansion” wouldn’t serve much purpose on the inside, and would eliminate the “kitchen” accessed form the outside (which would be a big loss). 

That type of expansion is better when you are trying to gain head room (like in a Westfalia, or an Element, or a pop-up camper), or when you are trying to gain floor space that doesn’t exist otherwise (like in a flip-over rooftop tent). An expansion that doesn’t gain headroom over an existing floor area that serves a good purpose already isn’t going to offer much.

fanfoy said:

In reply to californiamilleghia :

I'm expecting somewhere around 1750-2000 pounds total. A lot depends on the accessories I'll put in. 

I bet it's way less than that.  Our pop up is only 2k lb's empty and it's much much bigger than your teardrop with a slide-out dinette/bed plus one king bed at one end and a queen at the other. 

Great work so far!

SVreX said:

I used to have a teardrop. 

Mine was stainless steel skinned, and looked gorgeous. But it was polished, and highly reflective. 

I pulled mine behind my 1960 El Camino- long hauler in the Power Tour.

It was always causing strong glare to people behind me. It was a hazard. 

Dont use a highly reflective surface on the exterior of the roof skin.

Looking great!  Carry on...

 

Thanks for letting me know. I was actually debating if I wanted to make it shinny of not. With that comment, I'll make it brushed. It should still look great.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

I should have written that I want it to weight a max of 1750 to 2000 pounds. But yeah, I'm hoping for less than that. I can still easily lift the tongue with one hand, so I'm curious.

I'll just dump a little picture of the inside. I don't know if anyone noticed that extra lower tube that I had welded to the skeleton, but it's function was to support the shelf inside.

You can see the center power supply for phone charging or other 12V accessories. The dangling wires are for the ceiling fan. They will be hidden by the inside fan shroud. You can see at the bottom that the water tank actually comes into the sleeping area. That was a measuring mistake on my part and I didn't want to send it back. I'll add a little corner trim to hide it.  You can also see the second "box" at the back of the sleeping area. That a shelf for the kitchen area in the back. 

This is the kitchen area in the back. The shelf can be lifted to allow us to pass a mattress thru the rear in case we can't fold it thru the side doors. The rear hatch is still missing its aluminum skin in this picture. I still need to install the gas struts to hold it up and finish the door handle install. 

I think I will leave the inside of the rear hatch exposed because I rather like its look. What do you guys think?

As I wrote in my very first post, I suck at build threads. I haven't updated this in almost a year...

So spoilers: we used it this summer, and we loved it!

My old Volvo didn't know it was back there.

The kitchen area still needs to be finished, which I'm doing right now.

I'm not too happy with my corners. They look good in the photo, but they are wavy up-close.

Doors are hard! If I ever make another one, I'm going with pre-made doors. 

I'm really happy with the little accessory box I fabricated for the front of it:

That's neat!  Looking forward to pictures of the kitchen.