Mobile base camp build

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Elmo, I saw your build before I bought my box and it was part of my inspiration to proceed with this concept.

The kitchen is about the only compartment I've really got figured out to any degree.

My stove will mount to the door itself to allow quick and easy setup times(ignore the bungee cord, it was for mockup purposes only). The remainder of the door will get covered in cutting board material and function as a countertop/prep area.





The sink will be stowed until needed and will attach to the back of the box as required. I plan to sink the faucet into the rear of the box with a small access door. This will allow me to have water whenever necessary at the rear of the trailer, but only have to set up the sink if I really need a sink.



I've been busy the past couple days with some other stuff, but am about to get back to work on it this afternoon.

Ary

PS Go Hokies!

[Arya Ebrahimi]

My tent came!!!

It got here about an hour ago and I quickly drug it inside and unwrapped it in the living room



I ordered the 72x94 camping lab tent and I think it's going to be perfect!

There was some slight shipping damage on part of half of the floor, but nothing too concerning and definitely easily fixed(it's a slight bend in the sandwhiched aluminum which I believe I can pull out once the tent is mounted to the trailer).

Of course with all of this commotion the pooch had to come see WTF dad was up to. She seemed a bit cautious at first.



But then settled in quite nicely.







This tent is Chelsea approved

[Arya Ebrahimi]

I was also pleasantly surprised that I can sit completely upright and I still have about 8" of overhead clearance. This is quite impressive since I'm 6'3" and have a very long torso. I'm happy

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Ok, back at it today after a long weekend of downhill mountain biking

I started off by getting the "body mounts" fabbed up and tacked on. Nothing real complicated, just some angle iron with a couple holes. I intend to hard mount the body to the frame since there's no opposing articulation putting stress on the frame. I will brace these underneath to keep them from bending down, just wanted to make sure they would fit/work before I did all that.



Then I slid the frame back up under the body to make sure it fit and aside from a few necessary tweaks to the body with the grinder, all's well. It's actually a pretty snug fit which I'm happy about.



You can also see that there's quite a bit of room between the frame and the floor above. This is the space where I intend to hide the water and fuel tanks.



No day would be complete with out at least one SNAFU.

I picked up a set of 80-series wheels with some bald 35x12.50 TrXus's yesterday. My intent has always been to put this tire/wheel combo on the trailer. The wheels/tires you saw previously are intended for the cruiser once I start on that build.

Anyway, when I spec'ed this axle, I had these wheels in mind. Unfortunately I also had in mind to relocate the spring perches inwards about 2" on either side. Well I forgot all about that when I built the frame based on the existing perch width.

So....what does all that mean? The tires rub the springs HARD

Fortunately I've got an extra set of wheel spacers kicking around that should fix me right up, but I hate using them on a 'new' build just as a matter of principle.



Now I need some input.

I've been planning to carry two spares since they will also serve as spares for the tow vehicle(same tire/wheel combo). However, I'm wondering if this is just taking redundancy to a ridiculous level. I will also have a spare on the Cruiser which amounts to a total of 3 spare tires.

I also plan to carry 2 propane cylinders and am beginning to question that as well.

What do you guys think? It's really not much more work to make the spare tire carrier for 2 tires as opposed to one, it's just a matter of whether I want to carry that extra weight around all the time.

I did some mockups to see what the two ideas would look like. Obviously in the one with the tire offset to one side there would be another tire in the same position on the other side.

So what say you?





After that I got the axle slung under the trailer. I'm trying to figure out if I have enough fender clearance or if I need to "lift" the trailer a bit more. My wheel spacers are being brought over by my courier(love you mom ) to see if they make enough of a difference or not. If I have enough sidewall clearance then my uptravel will be limited by the spring/shackle and not sheetmetal which is good.

I'm not crazy about how the wheel well looks so full with the tire stuffed up in there all the time, but maybe it will grow on me. I really don't want to make this thing any taller.





So what do you guys think? Lots of questions in there, so tell me what you think please!

[elmo_4_vt]

I used body lift bushings that I got off of ebay (you can find them cheap for obscure types of trucks) for $5 and cut them down to 2" for a little extra tire clearance. I also had to put on extended shackles when I went with 35s..

Don

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[ntsqd]

When was the last time on a trip that you got two flats, of which at least one of them was not field repairable (due to any reason) ?

How long does a full bottle of propane last you between refills?


My answers to those questions are:

Never. A spare for each seems more than reasonable enough for U.S. trips. Heck, if the furthest that you can get away from a McDonald's is 145 miles by road, there's bound to be a tire shop within that range as well.
If you are thinking OZ Outback, Africa, or South America, then maybe a third is appropriate. I would make sure to have a good tire 'boot' for sidewall patches (purely limp out mode), and a tube of the right size vacuum sealed in a foiled mylar computer parts bag goes a long ways towards not needing another spare. That buggy in my avatar had a tube in a tubeless left rear tire when that picture was taken.

Don't know for sure, on the plus side of 6 days somewhere. 6 days of cooking breakfasts and dinners for 6-10 guys is the most that I've used a 5 gallon propane tank, & I've always come home with fuel in the tank. Based on this I plan to eliminate one of the two tanks on the TrailBlazer trailer.

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Very valid points. I've never gotten a flat....ever. But I've never hauled as$ in the desert either Kind of an unknown for me, but I see desert rigs with flats all the time.

I think I will wait and see how the Cruiser build goes. I may elect to move the Cruiser's spare to the trailer(for weight distribution), where having a double carrier would come in handy.

I agree on the propane thing. I will just run one tank.

Thanks!

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Time for an update.

Well I've been working out of town which gives me plenty of time to think about this build, but not a whole lot of time to work on it. Since I had a 3 day weekend thanks to Martin Luther, I decided to devote the whole weekend to the build.

I got home Friday afternoon and found a box full of goodies

(Pics just show the highlights, not all the parts )

[Arya Ebrahimi]

So you're probably wondering what I'm doing with airbags if I'm running leaf springs. Well.....the leaf springs are going bye bye

I realized that I was making too many design compromises because of the leafs, and switching to independent trailing arms with air bags literally solved every single complaint I had about the current design.

The wheel wells are fairly narrow and I was concerned about the articulated travel of a leaf spring setup causing tire rub.

The trailer was also sitting too high to make the kitchen compartment very useful, and too low for proper offroad ground clearance in my opinion.

With the air bags in combination with a compressed air source and 2 paddle valves, I now have the ability to raise and lower the trailer at will, as well as level side to side, and so on. I anticipate dumping the bags while at camp to let the rear jack legs hit the ground, as well as bring the kitchen down to a reasonable working level. Additionally it will make the loading/unloading of ATVs and other items much more manageable.

So with the necessary parts in hand, I set about to build a trailing arm suspension. I started by reading extensively on here about different design concerns and also problems other people have had with their homebuilt suspensions. I also read about fabrication issues that Martyn, the owner of adventure trailers, has experienced in producing the suspension parts for his trailers. With all of that in mind I set out to build a simple and strong design while accomodating as much tolerance as possible. I'm happy to report that I was succesful in building a pair of trailing arms with no noticeable warp/misalignment!

The last picture shows where I cut the axle tube after I was finished with fabrication. The tubes stayed perfectly aligned and spread by about 1/32 of an inch. Ironically, the trailing arms were about 1/32 of an inch out before, so now everything lines up perfectly

[Arya Ebrahimi]

I've just about caught up to where I am presently. I'm waiting for my brother to come back with the bolts for the bushing assemblies so I can finish the frame crossmember and bushing mounts on the arms to tie everything together.