Starting The Prcess........A Trailer Build?

[Kiddmen57]

First, I have to give credit to Greenmonkey for the inspiration, and the suspension design I'll be using. his 2 trailers built thread is here:
http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/67840-My-2-trailers-build

The plan is to build a low COG base trailer to which I can accessorize as my needs change. The box will be shallower (height) internally than the standard chaser trailers many guys run. I'm looking into mounting the entire internal tray on a cargo slide mechanism to allow better access into the deeper portions of the cargo box as I do not intend for the lid to open. This will eventually be pulled behind a new Jeep Rubicon (to be purchased this year) and as such will be designed to have the same wheelbase as the jeep (rear wheel to trailer wheel). I will need the jeep to determine where the hitch is in relation to the rear wheels and adjust from there.

One of my crazier ideas is to mount twin Maggiolina AirTop's on this baby. I'll be looking into mounting them on slides and each will traverse a bit more than 50% (one left and one right) to allow simultaneous deployment. There will be a 16" or so difference in final elevations. Again, this is my concept as of today, things may change and the whole idea may get scrapped. I think it can be done.

So today i started by modelling p the frame and trailing arms per Greenmonkey's design. From there, not much will be the same. Thank you Greenmonkey for the well detailed build. If I ever get this whole thing sorted out, all drawings and models will go to the public domain.

 

[NC_IslandRunner]

Cool! Can't wait to see how this turns out.

 

[Woods]

Having built a similar frame a couple initial observations.

Run a center rail through or under the A-Frame to the coupler and as far back as the cross member that will support the trailing arms. This will allow you to run lighter material on the sides of the A-Frame and ads strength where you really need it. Most of the material used for my trailer is 1" X 2" .083 steel. I'm not telling you to use 083 material, because I don't know how you'll use the trailer. Mine is never over 1100 lbs. loaded.

Shorten your trailing arms - a lot. This is something that I wish I did. Think about the tire movement that you want, when you hit a bump. The obvious answer is up. The not so obvious answer is back. One reason Volkswagens Bugs made for such good Baja rigs was because of the front suspension. They use something similar to a trailing arm, but the arms are very short. This allowed for a smooth ride with a simple suspension. On my next build, I may go with something very similar to a Bug suspension. Using shorter trailing arms will save quite a bit of weight too.

Nice drawing and this looks like an interesting build with some new ideas. Subscribed.

 

[Greenmonkey]

I'm glad to see that my build was able to help someone in their build. I will say this about my trailer design/measurements, they are almost exactly the same as another major trailer manufacture. Their design has proven its self to work great over and over again. I love the plans you have for your trailer and am very anxious to see the build. You let me know if there is anything I can do to help and I will try my best to help. Subscribed!

 

[Kiddmen57]

So it turns out that sharing one solidworks license for the whole company (we use Catia as standard) is hard when there are others that wish to use it. I'm not getting as much time to work on this as I'd hoped, so it's going slower than expected. Over the last week I got the AirTops modeled and the wheels and tires mocked up. This is all just starting to form the rough concept. So far it's over 80" total height, going to need that to come down about 4-5 inches if this is to be viable for me. Couple of pics of the progress.

 

[Woods]

Looks great.

Nuther thought that crossed my mind. I did my axle length so my tires are about 2" inside (each side) of the Jeep wheel track. I've got 12.5 wide tires on wheels with 4" of back spacing. This still allowed me enough room to run a 48" wide box. On the trail, the wheel cheat (trailer tracking to the inside of the vehicle's track) can be a real problem on tight curvy trails.

I'm not sure what the spacing is between the wheel and the trailer frame, but a guess is an inch on each side.

I'd get you some measurements, but my trailer is in about 50 pieces right now. Getting the frame and trailing arms powder coated.