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Here’s another cut of the galley bulkhead extending to the floor. The remaining wood is around five inches wide, except near the floor which looks more like two inches in the illustrations. Five inches seems enough to support the shape of the shell. Any stress on the bulkhead presumably isn’t great unless the roof is carrying weight, but I’d like to carry weight on the roof. According to CLC, roof racks can carry up to 150 lbs. Does cutting the bulkhead this way substantially reduce this weight?
Could I put 15″ wheels on this trailer? Larger wheels would increase the safe towing speed and also raise the camper three inches.
Here’s an article on “axle flipping”:
Flipping the axle raises the trailer bed a few inches. Can the axle on this trailer be flipped? A guy in the comments section at Amazon says that he flipped the axle on a 5×8 Harbor Freight trailer.
I’ll cut a hatch in the floor of the camper, so I can stand on the ground while inside. I’m 5’10”. If the roof is only a few inches higher than it appears in your pictures, I could stand straight up.
$12k was also my first thought, but frankly, I wouldn’t trust anyone earning $10/hour (in the U.S.) to build this trailer for me. The cost of employing someone doing this sort of work at CLC is probably closer to $20/hour or more, and I wouldn’t do it for less than $50. On the other hand, someone skilled at building this camper could do it in half the time.
But cost is not price anyway. If Hutte Hut sells many campers for 64 grand, this thing easily has a market at $15-20k. If it’s two feet longer and a foot higher, without a galley, its dimensions are comparable to the Hutte Hut, and it’s every bit as beautiful inside and out. It only needs a highway-worthy trailer and some refinements on the interior to be very comparable, and these changes don’t add dramatically to the cost.
CLC has a heavenly business model. John Harris should get Obama’s Nobel prize.
Very nice! I’m not carpenter enough to dare such a thing at this point, but I’ll have enough bulkhead to mount lights and 12V outlets. I’ll wire for 12V only. I can plug an inverter into a 12V socket, but I don’t expect to need it. I’m happy with earbuds, so I don’t need a built-in stereo or speakers, and I always have a laptop, so I don’t need anything like a television, but being online all the time is important to me.
Next year, I’ll take the camper on the road and live in it full-time for several months while traveling the east coast. I want to be completely off grid, so I’ll invest in a solar system with lithium batteries. I think I need one kW-hour per day on average and four days reserve at half that level, so 200-300 watt panels and two 100 Ah batteries. I imagine a wet bath beneath the camper between two trailer slats. It’s beneath a hatch in the floor and soft-sided (but air-tight and well-insulated) so it folds up for travel. Who says this camper is not a mini-Winnebago?
You’ve persuaded me to worry less about cutting the shell, so I’ll build both doors and the galley hatch. I’ll install the piece of the bulkhead as illustrated above, extending down to the junction between the two side panels. Since it won’t support the flat, the legs of the bulkhead presumably aren’t needed, but I still think the bulkhead is needed to support to shape of the shell. I’d like to be persuaded otherwise. I also assume that the legs of the bulkhead don’t support loads on the roof of the shell.
I’ll cut the galley flat as in the first illustration in the first post, two or three inches from the end, and I’ll attach this part to the shell as designed. I’ll finish the rest of the flat and build supports for it on the sides of the shell. With the remaining flat sitting on these supports, the full galley flat is available from either side, but I can remove it if I prefer more interior space. I may cut the remainder of the flat in half and install supports for both halves, so I can have a shorter flat if I prefer. The shorter pieces will also be easier to maneuver.
Congratulations and thanks for very helpful contributions to the forum. Hope you’ll stick around for a while.
Thanks, JC. To omit the hatch, I’ll fill the pre-cut grooves with epoxy and cover with a black stripe. The same approach to a door seems possible, but you’re right. The second door also adds cross ventilation and a safety margin in case of fire. I’ll build both doors, but I’m still debating the hatch. My primary goal is more interior space.
What do you think of omitting the galley flat and bulkhead entirely, as suggested in the first post? Does the bulkhead bear weight on top of the shell, like a racked boat? Would the shell hold its shape without the bulkhead? With no galley or bulkhead (or the minimal pieces above), a hatch makes the camper useful for hauling things.
I see what you’re saying, but I have little woodworking experience, and I’m trying to do less. I still need the galley or a piece of it to slot between the top of the shell and the lower rear and side panels.
In such a small space, I don’t want to dedicate space exclusively to any one thing, but I also don’t want to deviate too much from the design. A large shelf accessible from the inside isn’t a bad compromise with the design, and it still supports many more uses than the same shelf accessible only from the outside.
The hatch could be useful even with no galley flat, but it involves a lot of cutting. I’ve also considered building only one door, installing only the window on one side. Omitting the galley flat and bulkhead and hatch and a door seems to cut many hours from the build time. Cutting the shell generally scares me, but I can’t avoid one door, and I may hesitate less when I’ve done it.
A less radical approach only makes the galley space accessible from the interior. I cut a hole in the bulkhead, and I don’t build the hatch, but the build is unchanged otherwise.
Since the bulkhead supports the flat, a large hole leaving so little wood at the bottom seems risky, but I could install a table leg near the center of the flat screwed to the flat and the floor. I could also cut too, smaller holes and skip the table leg.
This approach seems foolproof (assuming I can build the thing at all), but I prefer removing more of the bulkhead, and I prefer omitting the galley altogether to either of these options. With the unused wood, I could build tables or something.
I ordered a kit today but won’t begin construction until early June. If anyone has built or considered building the trailer with similar modifications, or if you foresee a problem with these modifications, please chime in.
What’s a leaf of on a spring?
If 45 is the lawyer’s max, 55 still seems very safe. With this thing behind me, I’m on the road less traveled anyway.
ph_up may be high, but Bob is definitely low. I’ve shopped for teardrops a lot, and retail for a conventional teardrop, outfitted like CLC’s model, is well above five grand. Before I discovered the CLC trailer, I considered a Little Guy MyPod. It has no galley, and the basic model retails for $8000. The market is very hot. Little Guy is already sold out of the 2017 model, and when I called a local dealer a few weeks ago, he said I’d wait at least two months. The 5 Wide model from Little Guy, which has a galley and a more conventional shape, starts at ten grand and is also sold out for the model year.
The additional aesthetic value could also surprise you. Check out the Hutte Hut at huttehut.com. It’s larger, but the exterior style is similar, and it’s also built from Okume marine ply. This video gives a better idea of the size.
It has maybe twice the interior space and no galley. I don’t want a galley, so this trailer seemed ideal for me until I saw the price. Starts at $63,900!
Here’s a list of teardrop manufacturers:
http://smalltrailerenthusiast.com/manufacturers-2/
If the build quality is high and includes all features of the CLC model, twenty grand wouldn’t shock me.
You’re very close to CLC’s trailer at a third of the cost. Thanks. Since it also has 12″ wheels, I wonder if the CLC trailer also has a 45 mph speed limit, technically.
Will you leave the wheel fenders off? Do they interfere with the door? Can they be lowered compared with the height in Northern Tools’ illustration?
