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.