Teardrop Build: Day 2

The next day that we had off we headed straight outside to finish the frame.

The biggest change we made was to leave off the part that the trailer stands on when it gets folded up for storage. We certainly won't be folding it and it was an easy accommodation to make as it didn't affect the plans in any real way.

The second half of the frame was pretty easy since we had just done the first half and it didn't have a weird tongue thing to have to figure out when the angles didn't all line up.

The wheels were a totally different kind of hell though. And probably the most terrifying part since one blow out or busted axle can potentially ruin the whole thing, but that might just be my own paranoia. The best piece of advice I can give here is to heed everyone else's warnings and go ahead and repack the wheel bearings while you can easily take it all apart. It definitely won't hurt.

Putting on the axle

Close-up of the wheel assembly

This is probably the best photo to show where we left the standing support for the folded trailer off. To the left of the axle you can see a flat attachment point. Normally you would attach a long bar that has small wheels on it there. We clearly didn't need it and it was easy to just leave off without impacting anything else that was vital to the structural integrity of the trailer.

 

The finished product!

There's the finish product. We're planning on building out over the wheel wells 12" so that we will have a 6' wide trailer. 4' is certainly enough, but it will maximize comfort to just build it up and over. That and we already have a mattress that will fit that space and we won't have to buy a new one.

I'm pretty happy with this trailer as far as ease of building and everything working together goes. In all it took a solid four hours to get the whole thing together from start to finish. Not bad for a couple of amateurs.

Now the fun part begins!