Primered and painted.
Went to drill holes for the tongue coupler but broke one drill bit and couldn’t make much progress with any of the other 1/2″ bits. Ended up poking small holes through with a tiny drill bit and expanding them with the oxyfuel torch.
Bolted the wheels on. Yes, folks, we have a chassis and it rolls smooth.
Flipped the chassis over with two guys (thanks Russ, Dennis!) and welded all visible joints on the top deck. Here are some of the A-member welds:
Mounted the wheel hubs, packed the bearings with grease. Wow. Sure hope I never have to do that again. I’ve got grease on half my tools now.
To prepare for the paint job, there can’t be any rust or dirt on the frame. Took a grinder with a wire cup to all the welds and made them nice and shiny. Hit every spot of rust I could find. Gave all the steel a quick twice over with acetone. Next time, I think I’ll clean the steel before welding it.
To do: weld spare wheel carrier to side. Determine optimal tongue height and mount ball-hitch coupler. Primer and paint. Remount wheel jack to tongue. That should do it for the chassis.
Well, we screwed up last time. We mounted the axle only 20% of the way from the back. It should be 35-45%. I think we basically welded one spring hanger and instead of extending forward to weld the second, we went extended backward instead. Whoops. So I cut the welds, got new hangers, and rewelded them all today.
I added A-members to the front. That’ll add a bit of structural rigidity and prevent tongue twist.
Also added some cross braces on each back corner and plug welded a pair of Atwood swingdown stabilizer jacks to the braces.
Bolted my swingdown wheel jack to the tongue.
Tomorrow, we flip, grease pack bearings, add wheels, and add a few more welds.
Richard came over yesterday and in about three hours we welded the chassis. We tag-teamed it: he’d do a joint, I’d take the next, and back again. He’s been welding for ten years, so a few of the trickier/more critical joints were all his.
The chassis is mostly done. What we’ve got now is a 10′ x 4′ rectangle, two 4′ cross bars, a tongue that extends back to the 1st cross bar, springs, and an axle.
Bare minimum to get it rolling, I need to mount the hubs, grease the bearings, add the wheels, and mount a ball-hitch coupler.
For bonus points, I’d like to add A-members that connect the tongue diagonally to the front corners of the rectangle. That will give us a triangular platform for stuff like propane and car batteries. More importantly, it’ll strengthen the frame a substantial amount.
Installed the tow hitch receiver. The tricky part was cutting a bigger hole in one side of the frame. Needed a bigger hole to get the bolts inside the frame. Mr. Sawzall made short work of that. With a little help from Karissa holding up one side of the hitch receiver, I got two bolts thumb-tightened on, aligned it straight, and went back with a ratchet. Nice.
Next, we need electrical. Can’t tow a trailer without working brake lights and turn signals. This didn’t go as smoothly: I couldn’t find the turn signals in the wire harness hanging near my left rear wheel (there it is in the picture). Found pos and neg power as well as a few other wires that illuminated steadily but nothing that flashed in time with the blinker. Course I broke one of the wires testing it. Great.. called it a night after that and went back the next day.
ETrailer’s support suggested pulling the rear lights and splicing into those lines. Perfect except I had to extend my right-turn signal’s wire to get all the way across. A little 18 gauge speaker wire (that should work, right?) and that was taken care of. Soldered my broken wire back, cleaned, covered, and sealed all the wire harnesses I took apart, and then snaked 20 feet of 10 gauge wire all the way to the front, zip tying as I went, and connected it to the battery. We now have two signals that work! I still need to test brake lights with Karissa… but that has to wait until she’s here – it’s hard to work the circuit tester in the back and hit the brakes at the same time.
Kinda need that 220v now…
Made a power cable while I waited. 10-3 gauge cable.
The electricians will need access into the walls to wire 240v. The new power wires will have to run up from the panel, horizontally over the ceiling (in the garage’s attic), and down the final wall. From there, I mine as well send some more power down to the basement – we can refinish that in a year or three. Anyway, for the task at hand, getting power into the garage for big table saws and welders, I needed to remove some sheetrock and provide access into the wall.
Task one: find the studs. If we remove the sheetrock over the studs, it should be easier to replace them later. No need to buy more rock, cut it to fit, and mud it back up. That’s the theory anyway.
Finding the studs on the panel was easy: they sit on each side of it. That’s a little bit surprising, because the panel’s narrower than the typical 18″ stud gap. Finding the studs in the second wall was harder. My cheap electric stud finder gave unpredictable results. There were a few preexisting holes. I could push a screwdriver into each hole, but not in between the holes. Maybe the holes were on each side of the stud which was sort of confirmed by the audio tap test. And 18″ from that it sounds… less hollow. More poking and I think I’ve found our studs.
Task two: remove sheetrock. Over the panel, I used hammer and chisel. Results were decent. Found two screws along the cuts and removed them. Easy removal!
The other wall I did two ways: knife/drywall saw/knife; the knife to cut the paperboard facing on each side. This method took about 45 minutes to work a 4′ line. It’s a lot of work but it doesn’t aerosolize the drywall into freefloaing particulate dust. With another 12 feet of cutting to do, I gave up, grabbed the circular saw, respirator, goggles, and finished the main cuts in three minutes. And had dust on everything and in the air. A few fans cleared the air in 30 minutes though. Not too bad…
These panels didn’t want to come off. After poking around, looking for screws, I had an idea: magnet. Kitchen magnet wasn’t strong enough. But I have a stronger one. In a dead hard drive. The magnets sit around the arm. Pulled the pair of magnets out and wow, these things are ridiculously strong! An hour later, every screw was in the trash. A few stray nails; too. Done.
Removed the sheetrock and… and now I know why my stud finder was behaving so erratically – there aren’t any studs right below the rock – it’s all plywood.
Another contractor arrives on Wednesday to give me a quote on the work.
Rich’s List aka the tttt.pdf lists all the different places to buy various Teardrop parts – everything from Aluminum and Axles to Vents and Wheels. Among those, they list different sets of plans. Previously, I ran through the free Generic Benroy plans. Since then, I’ve spent $60 on the Rich’s highest recommendation, Kuffel Creek’s plans, specifically for a 4×10′ Comet trailer.
The Kuffel Creek 10′ Comet on the playa
Seems like a good purchase. Kuffel Creek’s plans include both tool and material lists. The free plans didn’t have these, so I’d have to compile on my own. Better yet, the materials lists are divided into sections. You start by ordering the axle and windows. In their words, “Order the axle now, as the lead-time on it will determine when you can start the rest of the trailer.” Smart. Then there’s the trailer parts section. The deck materials. Each one is a decent length so the builder doesn’t get overwhelmed.
I might use a few ideas from the free plans – combining the best of both. The electricals from the Benroy plans were well-explained.
This weekend, the Memorial Day sales were out in force, so we stopped by Harbor Freight and picked up $144 worth of parts and tools. New:
There are a few tools I’m hoping to do without (table saw w/ dado blade, router, jointer, biscuit or dowel jig. While the plans are pretty excited about building flush-face cabinets and closets, I’m hoping to avoid that; saving time, labor, and money. Portland is the lucky home of the Rebuilding Center, where house parts go to sleep before being repurchased and repurposed. You could probably build an entire house from their floor, using recycled wood beams, windows, doors, sinks, lights, all manner of fixtures… pretty much everything except the water heater and furnace. Never seen those there.
We walked through six aisles of recycled kitchen cabinets and vanities. A few of the bathroom vanities with smaller drawers look like they’d work perfectly. One was $50, the other: $60. Didn’t find any shallow sinks. I’d like one about about 6″ deep. Could buy a full-depth one, grind off the bottom, and weld it back together a little shallower. I think I’ll find a better solution before we get that far along.
Almost forgot! Tad gifted us close to 200 pounds of scrap steel. The previous owners of his garage just left it lying there. Half is small plate steel, up to 3/8″ thick, and the rest is angle iron. Perfect for practice.
Next: order axle, find windows, call Durabuilt to find out why my air compressor only hums.
More: patiently wait for towing kit to arrive (15 days after I ordered. Maybe etrailer.com’s not that great after all), turn metal bedframe into welder cart.
Found a factory-reconditioned A stock Hobart 187 for about 20% off. With a coupon or two, I’m getting it for $2 cheaper than their advertised price, shipped from ToolKing.com. This should make building the frame easier.
I picked this welder for a few reasons:
ToolKing seems to do quite a lot of business selling refurb and factory-reconditioned tools; search for “toolking coupons” before you buy anything; there should be a coupon out there to save you a few bucks or get cheap shipping.
Last year at Burning Man, we slept in a small tent. Our camp had too many people for the amount of space we had. We pulled much of what we needed from the car, and parked the car on the outskirts of Black Rock City. Still, just about every day, we’d head back to the car for more supplies.Being able to pack everything we need into a trailer is a really enticing idea. No sooner had we come home then we checked out the Craigslist RV section for used camper-vans (aka class B motorhomes). These are smaller and less obnoxious than 40′ RVs. Drive out, park, sleep in the back. Nice. Problem was that the vans we liked were either 25 years old or much more than we wanted to spend.
A little more research and we saw our first teardrops. They were popularized in the 30s by magazines that printed DIY building plans.
There’s a lot to like: they’re small, they’re cute, they have living quarters in the front and a kitchen (galley) in the back, accessed by a hatchback door. You can find new ones for sale around the $5000 mark. Me, I’d like to build one. In fact, there’s a whole community of people who are repopularizing these great trailers.
Teardrop builds – in the broadest sense – are a two-stage process:
Last week, I ordered a tow receiver for my car. It terminates in a 2″ square opening. Once that’s mounted, I’ll pick up the drawbar and ballhitch from Harbor Freight. They have a $20 kit that also comes with keyed locks. Towing will be a go at that point.
It’s also necessary to light up the trailer; to make the brake lights, side indicator lights, and direction signals work. http://etrailer.com is sending me both the receiver hitch and the electrical system. Of particular note, they have videos that demonstrate how to install different types of hitches on different types of cars. And the same goes for the electrical installation. Big thumbs up.
Next we need to talk trailer frames. Build or buy? Well, I’d like this project ready and done by August 1 so that we can roadtest it prior to BM, which is three weeks later. Roughly, that gives us a three month build time.
Back to the trailer. The [free] Benroy Trailer Plans call for a 5 x 8′. I have a choice of ordering one from RedTrailers.com for $635 (incl S/H) or driving out to a trailer retrailer in the area. More when I find out how much it costs to buy local.