Putting it Together IV

Merry Christmas everyone,

Well the weather around here in Wisconsin is amazingly warm for Christmas. It's the day after Christmas and I think it got up to 47 degrees.  So that means I was able to heat the garage enough to work on the camper today and will likely do the same tomorrow.  Anyway, the goal today was to start putting up the interior paneling on the outside walls.  That probably sounds confusing, doesn't it.  If so, take a look at the pictures and maybe that will help. The theory here is that I will finish the inside walls so that I can start building the interior cabinets and fixtures.  After those are ready I can still run the wires where needed and install the insulation because the outside aluminum skin has not been attached yet.

Above is a picture taken from the inside. The openings are for the fridge, furnace water heater and the window which will end up being over the sink.

Above is a picture taken from the outside showing the same wall.

 

Above I have attached the refrigerator enclosure and have temporarily installed the "kitchen" window.  I needed the window installed so that I can calculate the exact height for the Formica counter top that will be installed below the window.

In the back of the camper I have started to calculate the exact location of the dinette which will also convert into a full size bed.

Not sure if I'll get any more done this year, but will post again if more progress is made.

Happy New Year everyone!

Putting it Together III

Over the past few weekends I've been able to finish building the outside stud walls and framed in the bathroom area and shower and even started some of the plumbing. 

It's winter up here now and the garage has heat but is not insulated so when the mercury dips down below 15 or 20 it gets difficult to heat the garage enough to be comfortable.  This will only slow down the progress on the project.  On a couple of the colder days I spent some time indoors testing out the wiring for the tank level meter system that I salvaged out of one of the crashed campers.  I am using the fresh water and gray water tanks from one of the crashed campers and the black water tank from the other crashed camper.  The black water tank did not have a tank level meter system, so I need to find a way to install probes in the black water tank so that I can attach the wiring from the other camper.  I was able to locate on the internet a service manual for the brand of tank meter system that I've got, so the positioning of the probes will be easy to figure out.

There are a few other things I can do indoors such as retrofit a single burner stove for the camper.  We only want one burner since we rarely use an indoor stove when we go camping and also because we have very limited counter space in the new camper.  I cannibalized the side burner off of our stainless steel propane barbeque grill.  It will work wonderfully because it has a hinged lid that fits flush so when we are not using the stove it will double as extra counter space.  The trouble is that the knob to control the flame is at a weird angle, so I'll need to modify this to fit a standard Formica counter top form factor.

Christmas is just around the corner and I'm planning to take a few days off to spend time with the family, but also might squeeze in a day to work on the camper.  It will mostly depend on how cold it gets. So till next time, Merry Christmas!

Putting it together II

Finally the walls are starting to go up.  I've been storing the salvaged wall materials in my garage for over a year now and over the past few days I've sorted through all the parts and started piecing them together on the recently finished deck.  It's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle because the layout in the new trailer is quite different from the junk campers that the parts came from.  The biggest challenge is to figure out where the openings for the various appliances will go in relation to everything else.  I'm pretty much making it up as I go but also sticking pretty closely to the plan that Geriann and I developed on paper last winter.

The first picture is before any of the walls were attached.....just trying to figure out where stuff goes.  The second picture shows the stud walls for about 1/2 of the outside are now attached.

You might have noticed that the wheels and axle are not under the trailer. This is for two reasons.  First, if I left the axle under the trailer and then constructed it in my garage, I'd never be able to get it out again without knocking a hole in the wall.  In other words it would end up higher than my 8 foot garage door would allow to pass under.  Secondly, I don't know yet where the axle should go to get the desired tongue weight.  I figure I'll get it mostly built and then calculate the best location for the axle so that I end up with about 10% to 12% of the total weight on the hitch.

Deck work

Finally got time to work on the trailer this week and was able to insulate and seal up the bottom with tarp material.  This is the same technique that many of the manufacturers use. After sealing up the bottom I was able to bolt the deck to the frame using a dozen 3/8" carriage bolts. Since the deck was mostly salvaged material I had a few last minute holes to patch before rolling out the new vinyl flooring. The pictures you see are the bottom side of the deck as I was insulating and then later after the deck was bolted on.

The large square hole in the deck is where the black water tank is going to be placed.

After rolling out the new vinyl flooring I covered it with clear plastic just to protect it while the rest of the construction is going on. 

Putting it together I

After a bunch of thinking over the winter and consulting with Geriann (my beloved wife) we decided on a floor plan which I did a mockup of on the garage floor using various parts from the salvage job.  The finished travel trailer will be 77" wide by 15' long which includes a 3' pointed front section.  It will be a single axle which I have already cut in half and added about 7" of tube in the middle so that the wheels will ride outside the walls of the trailer.  In other words, no wheel wells.  This is with the hopes of some day converting the axle and suspension some day to a drop down system like you sometimes see with ice shacks.  Here's a picture of the layout.

I know it's not the finest picture and hard to make out what's what, but basically there's a full size bed in the back which will flip down into a dinette.  On the back wall is the fridge, sink, stove, then up front (in the nose section) is the biff and shower.  

The frame is built from steel salvaged from the two crashed campers.  Here's a photo with it upside down as I'm welding things together, then another after painting.

Next I'll be working on getting the deck installed.

Destruction...

Here's a few pictures of the carnage from tearing apart the two crashed campers.

History behind the project...

The project started with the idea that our existing 37 year old motor home was long past due for replacement and I personally did not want to fix it up anymore since it is pretty much a lost cause.  I also did not like the fact that the old RV got only 6mpg.  So the idea of building a small travel trailer from the ground up was born.  Please note that this is more of a hobby project for me and I don't have any particular time frame for finishing it.  Also, please note that I am basicly a cheap skate and will try to build this camper with as little investment as possible in real cash.  Having said that it came to me early on that I should try to find used campers that I could tear down and salvage parts for the new camper.  Thus was born the idea to visit www.crashedtoys.com where I eventually purchased two busted up campers which are shown below.

The two campers shown above (yes that really is...or was a camper) were hauled home and have since been completely dismantled.  The good parts are ready and waiting to be used and the junk parts have been scrapped out. 

In the beginning...

Hi, and welcome to the Home Built Travel Trailer Project.  I will be documenting the construction of a pull behind camping travel trailer on this site.  I'm starting this blog in September of 2011, but the project actually began in August of 2010 and has slowly been moving forward.  First I'll add some history and a few pictures to fill in the progress since last year.