Orange Crush

I love the color orange.  It's my highlight color on the inside of the cabin and in the galley of the teardrop.  I've had plans to paint the rims and even add a stripe of color to the side of the teardrop for as long as I've been working on this project. 

There were always more important items to complete.  Well, today I decided to go ahead and paint the rims.  I had them off the trailer so that made it much simpler.  I didn't have any masking tape, but duct tape seemed to work just fine.

I put about four coats of paint on the rims and then set them in the sun to 'bake.' 

 

I'm not sure how I feel about the orange yet.  It seems a little 'loud' right now.  I think I'll live with it for a while and if I like it enough, I might tape out some lines on the side.

 

Now, I need to hook up the trailer to the Civic and test out all the wiring.  That is going to be tomorrow's task.

Trailer Time!

It took two days, but I managed to pull the wires up through my conduit and back into the electrical box in the back of the trailer.  It took a lot of manipulating and maneuvering, but I managed to get all the right wires into the right spots. 

I ended up taking the wheels off; something I thought would be a lot harder than to do. 

Thankfully I had bought a lug nut wrench that had the four typical sizes.  The lug nut wrench from the Honda did not fit the teardrop's.  With the wheels popped off, I could wiggle my arm up into the well and fish the wiring through. 

The lug nut wrench I bought from Harbor Freight folds up so that it can fit in the storage bin of the teardrop.  What a genius design!

This time, I decided to 'fix' some of my mistakes from wiring the trailer the first time.  I had used butt joint connectors, which worked fine, but did not keep out moisture if it worked its way up and under the electrical tape.  So, I purchased butt connectors that were 'heat shrinkable.'  When the joints are connected, heating them with a lighter 'seals' them and makes a water-tight connection.  I should have done it this way the first time.  There are a few connections on the trailer that still need to be 'switched,' but they were good enough at this time.

I also used zip ties to snug all the wires into place.  I must say, they look particularly nice and neat. You can see in the image that there is now a two-stage battery charger that is 'in-line.'  This is to keep the battery from 'over charging' when on the road. 

The piece of this puzzle that I'll need to keep in mind is that whenever the teardrop is connected to the Honda Civic, I'm essentially sharing the charge of the tow vehicle.  The battery charger will stop the charge when the battery is full, but I'll have to be careful of leaving the car plugged in because even the tiny LED battery meter will draw some power and could possibly pull down the car's battery too.  I'll just have to either disconnect the charging circuit or use the master kill switch.

"I'm Looking at a 1947 Tourette Teardrop Trailer..."

Christmas Day.

On the way to Ohio, we passed a Teardrop Trailer and the whole family gave a big thumbs up to the owners.

Powell, Ohio.  We are off to take the kids sledding around the corner from my brother-in-law's house.  As we sat in the car warming up, conversation drifted to Teardrops as it is want to do when I have a captive audience.  I shared a few images I had on my phone of a Teardrop and told Hans about my dream to build one and use it as the backbone of my future road trips with my kids and later with my wife.  Little did I know what would come of this innocent enough sounding exchange.

A day later, Hans is back in Tennessee and he called me, something I don't think he's ever done before.

"I'm looking at a 1947 Tourette Teardrop Trailer...just like the one you showed me in the picture."

After I processed what he was saying, I allowed myself to be politely excited. "Send me a few pictures if you would."

I took a look at the pictures on my phone, but didn't give it too much thought.

 I knew we had some projects that we wanted to pursue that were higher up in the cue than buying a 65 year old Teardrop Trailer.

My wife asked to see the pictures.  She seemed very interested.  She asked Hans to send more pictures and to go and open the doors, check the hatch and so on.

A few more photos came as well as a few phone calls that assured me it was a steel framed trailer and the Teardrop is all aluminum.  It has an aluminum frame and aluminum skin. 

"You can't go wrong here."  The next text said.

I started to get excited, but was guarded and cautious.  Erica brought it up with me a few more times.  I decided to give the owner a call and ask about it.  He knew very little.  He had picked it up at a swap meet in Georgia and has had some interest in it.  He said he would be raising the price in the spring.  The price was not negotiable.  In truth, I had a very hard time understanding the man because of his thick southern drawl.  I asked Hans to call and 'translate.'

A few more days passed and we got more information about it.  We had a few conversations about whether we could do it.  Whether we should do it.  I researched the trailer and found the original 1947 advertisement that was in Popular Mechanix.

We found out that this trailer was in fairly pristine shape.  It still had the original Ice Box and all of the interior was bare aluminum as it had been when it was created, over 65 years before.

Erica helped me see that if we bought this, it could help my 'dream' happen much more quickly than if we started from scratch.  I started to allow myself to get excited.  A couple more phone calls to Tennessee; I needed to make sure that Hans could store it for me until I could drive down there to pick it up.  I needed to make sure the funds would be in place to close the deal

Monday morning, we confirmed.  It was all going to happen!  Hans was going to pick it up and let me know when he had the Teardrop in his possession.

About 5:30 p.m. that evening, I was on my way to Tae Kwon Do with my son when a text appeared on my phone, which was in the cradle near the dash.

"Sorry, he sold it."

I let loose a slew of obscenities  unlike any I had spoken in as long as I can remember.  I was heartbroken.

"What's wrong Dad?"  Jack asked, worried by my string of obscenities.

"Uncle Hans just told me that the guy sold the Teardrop!" I was crushed.  I was heartbroken.  I was angry.

"Oh no!"

About that time, the phone buzzed again and the little green bubble from Hans showed another text.  I didn't have the heart to read it, thinking it was just more bad news.

"Sike!  Ha ha!"

"Grrrrrrrrr!" I growled.  Hans, always the trickster sure did get me.  I was through with texts.  I wanted to speak with him.

Thankfully, all was well.  He had it at home.  There were no problems and he had it safely in storage.

Now, the planning can begin!