Sunday

Today was a very productive day!

I started by making a trip to Harbor Freight.  I bought two jack stands for $21.00.  They allowed me, with the help of the jack from my Honda, to lift the teardrop about two feet off the ground. In doing this, it gave me the chance to properly mount the storage boxes.   I ended up using the jack to hold each box in place while I screwed the aluminum angle onto the frame.  I was able to slide in underneath and work easily.  Not a bad way to work by yourself, if I do say so myself!  It's a little hard to see in this image, but the jack is on the axle and there is about a foot of space between the wheel and the floor.  That was a very good purchase.

After mounting the boxes, I cut the aluminum for the storage box lids.  I am so glad I re-did the aluminum because I think it looks TONS better in its shiny finish rather than painted black like I had originally had done.  After cutting the aluminum, I installed the headliner and then glued the aluminum pieces in place.

 

Doesn't that look awesome?

The next project was to install the aluminum angle that originally held the aluminum to the frame.  The aluminum was pretty badly cut and bent, as you can see from the before images above.  I installed a 1" x 2" green treated board behind the aluminum angle and it pulled the ragged aluminum into place.

That front section looks 'finished' again.  I had originally planned a piece of aluminum diamond plate, or my rubber idea.  It looks so good that at this point, the 'cover up' will still look great, but it won't be hiding anything.  

I took a little time to figure out how the reading light fixture would be mounted inside the teardrop.  The lights swivel and thus have a 'ball' like feature that extends below the plate.  I found that mounting it on a piece of 3/4" plywood was just about the perfect amount of space.  I'll cover this in the headliner material and mount onto the styrofoam to give it a finished look.  This got me excited about how the finishing touches are going to look.  

 My wingman showed up with a present.  He had a cargo basket that he was not going to use anymore.  He made me an incredible deal on it and it fit perfectly on the teardrop's tongue.  I had originally thought I would just buy one from Harbor Freight, but the ones they sell are bolted together and do not have a mesh bottom like this one.  This basket is all welded steel.  The great news about it is that I will be able to easily remove the basket and use it on the tow vehicle's hitch if we ever need or want to use it.  It has a fold up hitch mount that easily slips onto the tongue piece.  I am going to add a couple of bolts and one or two 'U' bolts to hold it on the tongue.  Lastly, I'm going to add a couple of conduit clips through the teardrop to help it ride firmly.  What a great addition to the Carpe Diem!

This image shows how nicely it rides on the tongue and how cleanly the aluminum came together by mounting that strip at the bottom.

 The next project was to replace the aluminum strip that sits on the end of the hatch.  This is the piece that I 're-tooled' to get it as straight as possible.  You can see that I painted it with Rustoleum to protect it.  I installed it with stainless steel screws.

The hatch is off, that's why this image is vertical.

The next project was to try out the new lock sets I ordered.  Unfortunately, it looks like the inner locks are not going to work for my rebuild.  Unfortunately, I would have to drill new holes for the handle in order for the latch to hit at the appropriate spot on the door.  It's right now when I am SO glad that I did not pitch the original door hardware.  A quick coat of Rustoleum and I think the original door latches and locks will work just fine!

 

The original outside door handles were in bad shape.  One of them was missing, the other had been mangled and was beyond salvaging.  However, I ordered these new beautiful chrome handles.  I will only have to slightly adjust the interior latches in order to get these new handles to work perfectly.

I may end up keeping the original latch for the hatch too.  It's on the lower left section of the image above.

After a thorough cleaning of the garage and putting all my tools and materials back in place, I was able to close down the garage and head back inside ready for the work week.  If I have any time this week, I'll work on the galley cabinets.  All in all, it was a great weekend!

Saturday

My Wingman, Jim Tingey was back for a status update today.  He helped me jack up the teardrop in order to anchor the edges of the plywood floor which needed to be bolted together.  We also completed the bulkhead installation of the green treated board.

Next, I measured and cut the first piece of headliner for the floor.  Simply placing it on the floor of the teardrop immediately made a huge difference!  The whole space was more 'finished' and pleasant.  Unfortunately, I had to remove the storage boxes and start over with the aluminum trim.  I was too eager to have the floor boxes in place and realized that with the headliner on the floor, I would need to re-do the aluminum edging.  Nonetheless, it looks much, much better.  I didn't use any contact cement yet.  It's too cold and I'm weighing the benefits of the material I have.  I may end up returning the gallon of contact cement and going with a spray adhesive from 3M.  I'm researching that for a later date.

In addition to 're-doing' the trim, I decided to anchor the boxes to the frame with some of the left over aluminum angle material that was left over from removing the galley.  I screwed the angle to the frame and then screwed the boxes to it.  This is a much more secure way to do the floor boxes anyway.  I should have done it that way in the first place. Well, I should say, I tried to do this.  I need to invest in some jacks to get the trailer up in the air, even a few inches will greatly increase my ability to work on it.  I plan on picking a set up from Harbor Freight tomorrow.

I showed the door hardware and the ventilation fan to Jim.  He was impressed with the fan!  One thing I discovered, kinda by accident, is that the fan's blades are clear which allows you to be able to 'see' the stars through the vent!  I'm thinking about where to place the vent in order to take advantage of this awesome design feature.

I may go ahead and cut the opening for the ventilation fan tomorrow.  It would be nice to have the additional light in the cabin while I'm working on it; plus this would motivate me to get the other electrical work started.


I started measuring the cabin for the foam that I plan to install.  I turned to Sketchup again to help me with figuring out my materials.  The end result is pretty cool, take a look:

Above you can see the 4 x 8 sheets with all the individual sections marked out.  My plan, at this point is to install the headliner on the individual pieces of foam and then install the pieces.  By doing this, I should eliminate the need for large sheets of headliner to be installed.  That's the plan at this point.

I'm getting ahead of myself.  The galley needs to be at least roughed in completely before I can start installing the electric.  

Cabin Thoughts

I've been contemplating some design concepts for the cabin.  Originally I planned to insulate and then cover the insulation with a thin skin of Luan.  One of the large considerations of this plan was that the doors are such a significant portion of the side of the cabin that 'skinning' them has some potential challenges that may make it incredibly difficult.

After some exploration and brainstorming with Jim, I've come up with a hybrid plan that I think will help make the interior finishing quite a bit more simplified.

I am thinking that I will still add the foam to the ceiling.  I will cut 'channels' in the foam to carry my wiring for the ventilation fan and ceiling lights.  Rather than put the foam on in one large sheet, I'll use 1" strips of wood every 24."  This will allow me to have 'something' solid to screw the plywood into.  I will then use a product, I mentioned way back in my original planning stages, called a headliner.  I found a product at Kendor Marine's online site.  It is perfect.  It is a mold proof, heavy duty marine grade 'carpet'-like product.  It has a rubberized backing (which is apparently unique).  I will add this, not only to the ceiling, but also to the aluminum skin walls.  I won't add any additional insulation panels however to the walls.  Here is a link to this product.  This will do many things.

1.  It will provide just a bit of 'cushion' when you bump into the aluminum wall.
2.  It will soften the interior of the cabin; deadening some of the bouncy sound that exists in it with just the aluminum skin.
3.  It will be tremendously easier to complete the interior of the cabin.
4.  The headliner will help insulate against heat and cold.

One of the things that made this work in my mind was the great find on their website of the dual reading lights that can be mounted on the ceiling.  In doing this, I eliminated the need to have wiring run to the side cabin walls, where I had planned on installing some chrome reading lights.  All of the wiring can be run in the ceiling.  Here is a link to this fixture.

(Just found out that their online store's warehouse is in Racine.  This will save me $40 in shipping.  I ordered the headliner and cabin light and will pick up later this week.)

I found a terrific deal on the LED light I will install on the hatch.  This light will swivel 180 degrees which will be perfect for when the hatch is up.  I'll be able to swivel it to cover the galley area, but also it can swivel to light up the picnic table if needed!  Plus, the one below is over 18" long.  This will provide plenty of light.  Here is a link to this fixture.

I may even add the headliner material to the underside of the hatch.  This will add a nice finished look to the hatch when it is lifted.  Here is a link to those fixtures.

Super Bright LED's had the LED Swivel light and the above 'porch lights' that I will install above the door to light the way when returning from the bathroom, etc.  (I ordered two more to put in the galley.  I intend to have them in the back as night vision lights for that area too.) They had tremendously reasonable prices.  I also found the marker lights below.  I want to use one of each color on the sides of the trailer.  The chrome will look awesome on the side of the trailer.  Here is a link to these marker lights.

Teardrop Pick Up Journal

The trip south to pick up the teardrop was a crazy blur of a couple of days.

I started heading south at 6:00 a.m. and met my good friend and wingman, Jim Tingey near Highland Park, IL.  As we made our way south, the weather slowly degraded.  Just outside of Chicago, the snow started.  It got progressively worse as we got closer to Indianapolis.

  At one point, we saw a State Trooper turned the opposite direction to oncoming traffic with his lights flashing. 

Moments later, we came over a hill and saw traffic stopped for as far as we could see.  We wisely pulled off and found a back route around Indianapolis.  We joined back up with Interstate 65 on the south side of Indianapolis and continued on our way.  We later found out that the whole interstate had been shut down on that small stretch due to a very bad crash.  We had successfully dodged a bullet!  The weather continued to get worse; at one point it was snowing so hard I could barely see the yellow line.

We traversed the entire state of Indiana, a small section of Kentucky and finally Tennessee.  I made a questionable call and took a 'back' route to Cookeville rather than taking the interstate.  We got to see some picturesque parts of Tennessee and arrived at Hans' at around 6:00 p.m.

After catching up with the Beans, we headed over to the garage and got our first official look at the teardrop.

Some things were pleasant surprises while others were more sobering.

The teardrop was smaller than I had imagined.  The skin of the trailer was in pretty good condition.  The tires were going to be a big problem.  They 'rubbed' on the aluminum skin when the trailer was moved.  We tested lots of theories:  the axle must be too big; the tires are too big for the frame and others.  We wouldn't know for sure until we took it to a tire place and they examined it.  The three of us enjoyed some Wild Turkey and had a terrific conversation about all manner of things.  We all turned in about 11:00 with plans to get started early in the morning.

The first thing we did was pull the trailer over to Wal Mart. 

We needed to pick up some items.  We purchased a safety chain and connectors, a temporary light kit, some cleaning pads, duck tape, and WD40.  While we were there, we took a look at the trailer tires.  They would be perfect; if they fit.  They were about 1/3 narrower than the automotive tires that were installed on the trailer.  With excitement, we purchased three of them (one for a spare) and asked the installers to put them on the trailer.  This would have been awesome because we would be almost ready to leave.  Turns out the bolt pattern didn't match.

We were going to have to try a tire specialist.

On to our second stop.  They thought that they could sell us a narrower profile tire that would fit the rim that was on the trailer.  They installed them and then it was pretty obvious, they were too thick.  They rubbed on the aluminum skin. 



The installer was awesome.  He tried all sorts of things to see if we could 'make' them work.  There was a lot of pounding with a sledge hammer and hammering.  In the end, we realized that this was not going to work.  







 So, I had an idea.  The 'spindle' or the 'hub' seemed to be the problem.  The hub we had on the axle was an automotive hub, not a trailer hub.  For this reason we would not find a tire that would fit the bolt pattern that would be the width we needed.  My idea was to remove the hub and replace it with a 'trailer' hub.

They directed us to a trailer specialty store.  We headed to New Era Trailer about 15 minutes away.  They were just the ticket.  They had the wheels, the hubs and even the lighting package we needed.  We purchased all of it and took it back to the tire specialists.  Their installer was tremendous.  He had the new hubs and tires installed in less than ten minutes.  We were nearly road ready. 

We pulled the trailer back to Hans' house and started working on the lights.  The snow had decided to come back and our hands were cold and we were slowly getting soaked by the snow/slush/rain that was falling pretty heavily.














Finally, we had the lights installed.  We were ready to hit the road.

We said our goodbyes, checked on directions and hit it!

Notice the snow!

We made it about two miles when I noticed the hatch.  It was acting like an air foil.  It was lifting up as we hit about 50 miles per hour.

We stopped.  Pulled out a bungee cord, that thankfully was left inside the cabin, and strapped the hatch down.  We knew it was missing the hatch handle and striker, I don't know why we didn't anticipate the problem.

We were on our way, again.  We made it less than a mile when we realized that it was still lifting up.  We stopped in the snow/sleet/rain and decided we needed to purchase some straps to hold the hatch down.  Jim and I went to an Auto Zone and bought some straps.  We asked for a cardboard box or two to use to keep our bodies somewhat dry as we crawled under the trailer to attach the straps.  After twenty minutes or so of fumbling with the straps, we figured out a system that seemed to work pretty well.  We started off again, it was about three o'clock in the afternoon.  The snow and rain was still coming down.  Jim followed behind me and gave me regular updates on how things were looking from behind.  We parted ways in Nashville and I was on my way north, without my wingman.

The snow did not let up until I reached Illinois.  I stopped once just north of Indianapolis.  I always love seeing the windmills in the giant wind farm there.  The night was clear and I could see hundreds of little red blinking lights that are found on the top of the windmill.  After a restroom break and another large soda, I was ready to make it the rest of the way home. Unfortunately I did not get to stop in Ohio to meet my friend Larry.  Things just did not work out for that visit, but I'm planning to meet with him this summer at some point.

I pulled into our driveway at about 1:15 in the morning.  In the past 48 hours, I had spent 22 of them on the road.  I took a shower and crashed.