A pivotal discovery

I've been worrying about the problem of how to attach the struts that hold up the tailgate for quite a while. But then I spotted some old castors that were lying around and I thought, "pivot... swivel..."

It was all that was needed. Ready made. So here's the first one in place. It's nice when things work out.

Beginning the next phase

This is the bit where we use the aluminium sheet off the roof of the dumped caravan to cover the nose, roof and tailgate of the teardrop. Because there were two holes in the caravan roof where a couple of vents/lights had been, I ended up with 4 pieces. They were around 3m, 2.5m, 1.75m and 1.25m long and a bit under 1m wide. This is the second longest piece.

The algae, lichen and bird poo cleaned off quite successfully with a bit of bleach, but I was going to use it upside down anyway so I just wanted to remove stuff that was going to be trapped inside. On the whole the aluminium wasn't in bad shape, the odd dent and scratch, but liveable with.

First of all the tailgate. The teardrop is 155cm wide and the tailgate length is a single 4ft width of plywood, so the two shorter pieces would do nicely and I'd have a piece left over for the more complicated jig saw on the main body. I cut the aluminium into 78cm widths which left some decent offcuts which will come in handy later.

This is the tailgate with the two pieces in place and a length of trim from the donor caravan along the bottom edge. Looking better already. Then added a piece of the central strip off the old caravan and put the hinge back on.  Then some "hockey stick" profile strip along the sides (had to buy this) - because I was attaching this to the 3.6mm ply at the edge here, I riveted these rather than use screws.  Here's the almost finished article.

Now to the main body. Unforunately, the length from the hinge to the bottom front edge was longer than my longest piece, so I needed to do some joining. First I loosened the bolts holding the body to the chassis and jacked up the front of the body so that I could slide in a piece to cover the join where the plywood skin meets the base. I put mastic along the edge of this piece and lowered the body on to the first 5cm, then bent the remaining 10cm up the front and attached it to the body.

Next came the longest piece. It was sheer luck, really, that all these bits of aluminium fitted exactly to where I'd got cross-members inside the skin. Or skill. Here it is in place.

Now came the piece I cut off when making the tailgate. And then the other longer piece. In this next photo you can see the orange luggage strap I used to hold the aluminium tight to the body while I attached it.

And here's one showing all sheets attached.

And this is the sate of play this morning. I've got varous bits of trim off the donor caravan attached. You can see the last piece of the central strip on the mesh tray at the front. Just needs to be cut to fit that lower bit.

We've bought some silver plastic strip cover the screw heads in the horizontal trim. Next job is to refit the tail gate. And I'm also pleased that I've got enough cabbage left over to cover the drop-down flap at the back. I aim to decorate and varnish the sides before finally attaching the edging strip. That's the plan anyway.

Not making progress with the teardrop but ...

We made a very neat potato cannon for Rhys' 15th birthday, shown here in action. An explosive success (you could say).

You are probably asking yourself what that thing its mounted on is. Well here is a closer look ...

Its a c.1940 device for mowing meadows. This is our 'spare' Allen Scythe. :-)

Rhys adjusts the aim while Steve stands ready with the can of lighter fuel to give it a bit of oomph so that it does this ...

Yes, it has quite a bit of force when hurling potatoes. Recommended book if you want to make one is this one on Backyard Ballisitics

We will be getting on with the teardrop shortly.

Chris

Its that 80:20 thing ...

If 80% of the work takes 20% of the time then you can see why its taking us a while to finish the job. Here are some pics showing some of the things done last week and there are a few more to follow.

First picture shows the back view with the number plate section up

Rather than wrestling the fridge out from under the worksurface we now have it on a customised ikea keyboard shelf (an ikeahack).

Then we have some work on the inside. Picture here shows the lights which work off the battery and the cupboard at the front. The shelf lifts up so we'll store the bedding in there during the day and the cushions in there during the night.

While at the foot end of the bed we have the start of the cupboards that will hold clothing etc. Note that its got a pull out tray for the portable DVD, for that home cinema effect!

We are not finished yet.

Of course there are plenty on the tcgb forums who would say that we will never be finished. In fact we have caught an addiction and this will lead to more and more trailer-building. Its not that bad a prospect.

Is it ready to camp in ... yes it is!

Well the teardrop was ready to camp in and undeterred by still working on it -4 hours after we were supposed to be setting out we went and pitched the teardop in the dark with an awning that we had never pitched before in an unfamiliar field in North Notts for Wadfest.

We had some _very_ helpful neighbours. Thanks to Jodie, Jordan and Jake for their help. Here are some pics.



It all looks quite sane here but Wadfest is not usually known for sanity.

Chris

Quite a lot of work in quite a short time ...

When it comes to decorating rooms in the house then inviting people to come and visit is a good prompt to progress. When it comes to building a teardrop it seems that having a camping trip planned when you need to use it is an equally good prompt. Not exactly, completely finished, but definitely useable. And fantastic progress in just a couple of weeks.



Really looking forward to using it soon.

Chris

Teardrop-builders' gift horse or a big hint from on high?

Our house is in the middle of nowhere, but also near to some main roads. Our drive is long and overgrown and not overlooked. This makes it the ideal place for ... fly tippers. Two or three times a year things are dumped and we get the pleasant task or sorting through the mess. As a pair of natural scavengers we occasionally reuse some of the stuff that is dumped, or at least clean it up and send it to a charity shop. Occasionally, but not for a while, the dumping is of a vehicle. Back in May when we had not done ANYTHING on the teardrop since the February pictures (good reasons) we ended up with a caravan dumped.

Now I am sure the neighbours thought that this was a damned nuisance and an eyesore. But of course Steve saw it as another teardrop in the making.

So when we finally cleared some time to start again on the project (last week) he started asset stripping the asset. Here are some pics of that activity in progress.

The alumnimum will be the roof of our Mk#1 trailer, and a few other bits and peices too. As you will see. Because progress is finally being made ...

Chris