Offroad Teardrop Camper Build - Overview

foreign what's up uh got another trailer video here um I gotta start off by apologizing to everyone who has been commenting on my first two videos those two came out like a little over two years ago now um I started this project like right at the beginning of covid um like very beginning when all the first shutdowns happened I work for a cabinet company and we shut down our shop for like two weeks so I started this project and because I had so much free time to work on it I decided to start filming um because I wanted to make a series of videos on how to build the whole thing and then after the first two videos I was starting to realize that trying to film everything while building everything was a lot of work and uh I was taking I took some more video after the first two videos but I kept forgetting to pull out the camera and take video constantly so I didn't have enough to make a decent video um but yeah so I'm gonna do an overview video of the thing the trailer is done now like 98 done um I thought I'd finish it so I started March 2020 and I was planning to finish it by the end of summer in 2020 and then I ended up actually finishing like the middle of summer 21. but I did park it for the whole winter like October through like February March just because I live in Seattle area and it's raining constantly and I don't have a big enough garage to work on it inside all winter so I just put a cover on it and parked it for like four months um but yeah so I'm gonna do an overview of this thing now so here it is a completed trailer almost two and a half years later my last two videos or my last video I left off I was still welding up the bottom frame and it's obviously came quite a way since then it's really dirty right now it's got dust and some bird all over it but giving you a good idea I looked when it was done so let's see I got um so the whole body is made out of one inch square tube um a whole frame the upper frame is separate from the Mainframe I didn't weld it together I bolted it just because I wanted to paint this whole bottom frame separately um this is all one inch square tube as well and then so on the outside of the square tube here is half inch Maple plywood I believe I used I got a deal on it from work so I just use maple um and then the interior is quarter inch Maple and then I have one inch insulation in the walls and ceiling and then on the floor I believe I just did half inch it's all rigid insulation um on the outside I got storage cubby here and on the other side there's a divider in the middle to keep stuff separated got a couple vents here because um inside these Cubbies would get really hot and humid so I started to get a little bit of mold growth so I wanted to vent it out because in the summer it was just like overheating like crazy and this one over here is where all the electronics are so I didn't want that to happen these holes here were for a custom spare tire rack I made but then after I got everything together I decided to just keep the spare tire up there instead so I've got some holes I got a patch um this storage rack thing is mainly designed just for like big coolers or barbecue or whatever um this metal frame is screwed into the one inch square tube subframe so it's strong enough to like tie down coolers or whatever but it's not like super crazy strong I wouldn't bolt anything crazy heavy to it um I got a hundred and I guess just 100 watt solar panel foreign the doors I got them used from someone on Craigslist but I believe they're from vintage technology I looked at their website and I found I'm pretty sure the same exact ones the windows I believe I got from eBay you can actually find a lot of Windows and stuff on there and doors like that I bought these doors I got a pack of like six of them on eBay and it was not very expensive and I only used two of them my original plan had doors right here on each side they were supposed to go kind of under the countertop in the back but then after I got into building and I realized there was not going to be enough room for storage there with how low the countering needs to be so I just ended up getting rid of that completely um I got a roof rack up here if I can get out of the Sun roof rack all right let's refracts from Amazon and it comes in pieces you can get different sizes so the reason I got this one specifically is because of how wide it is a lot of the other ones are a lot more narrow and this one's like four feet wide so that worked out really well it was pretty cheap I got my spare tire up there I can keep an extra pop-up canopy uh camp chair spare tire you can probably fit some more stuff up here even too but there's a lot of storage up here um on this side I got the Iron Man 4x4 pull out uh cover thing I forget what it's called but I can link it in the description it's like a six and a half foot long and it comes out like eight feet and it's got two legs and then there's some LED lights in there as well which is nice and then on this side I've got a homemade solar shower that actually works really well I don't remember how many gallons it holds exactly but it holds quite a bit and it gets really warm it's got a um PVC cap here that's all glued in and it holds pressure and that's where you can fill it and then I have a coiled hose that quick attaches right here with just a regular garden hose nozzle thing with the shower feature on it and then this is where you connect your air to pressurize it and for that I have a little Milwaukee M12 inflator and that inflates that thing within like a minute or less which isn't too bad and then so this door I bought from Challenger door I believe and it was a custom order and I think total ended up being like 400 bucks the door itself was like two something and then shipping was like 199 or something like that so it was around 400 bucks but I couldn't find any other doors that were this size and 400 for a nice Custom Door um not a bad deal and I decided to just leave it the gloss black even though it's covered in dust right now it is gloss black I thought about painting it to match but decided to just leave it um I think it looks cool like that um I have a receiver hitch down there and that's only for like if we want to have a bike rack I wouldn't put anything heavier on there even a bike rack could probably do an aluminum one or something um I built the fenders strong enough to stand on which was a good call because I think while building this I stood on these probably 500 times um I have these steps right here on either side as well um lighting I've got a LED porch light here and on the other side we got the clearance lights there on both sides got the red light there on both sides three of them there tail light blinker brake lights and then a license plate light right there as well [Music] I think that's it for the exterior stuff I got a fan up there as well um I forget what brand it is but I'll link it in the bottom um so let's look at the interior start off with these front Cubbies here um like I said before I got six of these doors and on these two of them and then I was able to just paint this to match the outside I used a raptor liner obviously on here um so this side is all the electronics I got my battery my solar controller a shut off going from the solar to the battery and then I shut off shutting off the battery and then I got my positive uh fuse box and then negative bus there and then that's the junction box for all of the trailer wiring for like the brake lights and everything and then this is just extra storage space in here for random stuff that I don't need that often and then oh that's the vent coming in from the outside works pretty well I use some vinyl plank vinyl luxury plank flooring in here and in the inside of the cabin as well I originally used the peel and stick kind but because it got so hot in there it peeled up immediately and started curling so I just ripped it out and put in some vinyl this side there's nothing specific in here it's just open storage it's got a bunch of stuff shoved in here right now um one thing about these doors they don't have a handle to turn so the only way to like latch them closed just to lock it which is kind of annoying so I'd like to find like a handle I can replace this with that locks that way I can shut it and latch it without having to lock it every time um let's go to the back this door is nice with when ordering these doors from Challenger you can choose which type of latch you want I think they have a few different options and you can choose how far open you want it if you just want it 90 degrees I think this was like 120 or something um but I wanted 120 because I'm tall and if it was at 90 I'd be hitting my head every time um so this is what the back looks like I was gonna put a sink in and then decided last minute I didn't really think I would use it enough to do it but I still could there's plenty of space under this countertop where you can add a sink and have all the plumbing underneath I have LED strip lighting it's probably kind of hard to see LED strip lighting under both sides I'll turn them on in a second um the switch panel here this controls the strip lights and then this one I'm going to set up to control the light and Awning and the rest of these don't do anything when I bought this I thought I was going to have a lot more electronics for some reason and then ended up having way less than I thought um this countertop just two well it's one layer of plywood with build up on the edge and then this is like a formica laminate that I put on this is all this stuff left over from work that I was able to get um same with all all the plywood inside is pre-finished which I was able to get through work that's why it's all kind of shiny I didn't finish any of this it was all pre-finished um I got two cabinets here I don't have any handles on here yet because I'm not really sure what I want to do I want to do a magnetic latch to hold it closed but I haven't figured out how to do it yet um but yeah a decent amount of storage in both of these it's got a bunch of stuff shoved in right now we haven't used this thing in a while um turn on the power and then I can show the lights it's kind of sunny out right now so you can't really see probably yeah it's really bright out but when it's dark these are really bright and light up everything so it's a really nice working area um let's check them inside turn on these outside yeah it's really bright out but this thing's super bright I kind of wish it was a little less bright but it works so in interior it's just big enough for like a normal queen size mattress almost this is a queen size uh foam not including if you can go past these it's a full queen mattress but these kind of mess it up I have a meaning to just trim this foam to fit around this perfectly and as I haven't done it yet but God two switches over there one for the interior Puck lights there's four of them and then one for the porch light on the outside and then on this side they're just one for that porch light and then I got these two lights here one dot is this little if you touch it once you get this little blue like NightLight thing I touch it again you got a nice reading light these are sweet they also have a USB port on the side to plug in your phone or whatever um I got my wife put up these like cheap Dollar Store string light deals that are falling um this piece of plywood is loose that's why it looks like that I gotta reattach that um I got the fan I don't remember I believe it's a Max fan max air fan or whatever like what one of the cheaper ones um they have those other ones that stick up really high on top but I didn't really like the look of those so I wanted like the the Slimmer looking one like this it works great we've slept in this one it's like 100 out and we were comfortable it's not too bad at all with no AC um back there I got USB ports um 12 volt port giving my battery voltage so I can lay in here at night and see if my battery's getting low I got this iPad mount so we can lay in here at night and watch stuff on the iPad if we're really bored or if the weather's crappy um I got a little USB fan just for a little extra circulation in here um but like I said with the like the vents open windows open and the fan on up here it's really comfortable it's not bad at all I think the insulating this helps a lot I see a lot of people build these trailers just with three quarter inch plywood walls and no insulation and I definitely wanted to insulate this because I figured we'd use it kind of year round and yeah sleeping in this thing in the summer when it's a hundred is definitely comfortable not bad at all I haven't slept in it in the winter yet though um this is just a big flip up door down there and behind that is just like a bunch of wiring and stuff um he could store some things down there if you really wanted to but we don't really have anything to put back there um storage Cubbies up here closed inside I've got a bunch of wiring back there but it's easy to get to that from the back side if I need to which is nice I I designed this thing so this whole panel can kind of pop out really easily and you can get all the wiring to add stuff or whatever and then there's some space up above these to run wires if needed which is nice and then like I said there's a bunch of space under this to run wiring or whatever or add a sink later if we decide um oh we got these nice LED reverse lights as well um I thought about hooking them up to a switch to use also so like reverse and switched but they're super bright I don't think we'd really need them switched for anything if you're in a campsite at night and you have these strip lights on it's pretty bright it's not too bad at all and the nice thing is it's not like lit up right in your face so you can stand here and do stuff and you're not getting blinded trying to work um it's got these water jugs for water for now we don't really need a sink I usually just keep those up I keep one either on the roof rack or in the back of my truck [Music] think of what else I got 33 inch tires I believe those were Jeep wheels that I just painted [Music] that's it I'm going to link everything in the description as much as I can find and if I'm missing something that you're interested in let me know or if you have any questions let me know um definitely I'd say one of the biggest mistakes I made on this thing for sure is I went um Raptor liner straight on the plywood and that was probably the biggest mistake I think I spent a couple months fixing things just because of that um the Raptor I don't know if it's the Raptor liner that shrank or what but pretty much all the seams of the plywood here under this trim a lot of them started to split and then there's like some seams here it started to split because this this whole side is like nine feet long so I seamed it right here and it start to split a bit so I'm gonna go through and fix all the cracking and I'm probably gonna re-spray the whole thing and I might do a different color I'm thinking like a military tan like desert tan would look really cool but I'm not really sure yet um but yeah there's like some random cracking in spots in the plywood um if I would have fiberglass the whole body and then Raptor lined I would have had way less issues um all this metal trim I was not planning on doing in the beginning and the only reason I did was to help cover up a lot of the splitting I went through and fixed a lot of splitting and filled it in and then all these trim I use like thin VHB tape on either side on the edge and then inside on both sides I did a bunch of sealant all the way down everywhere so the VHB tape should keep most moisture out but if any moisture gets past that there's a ton of sealant in there to keep everything um contained but yeah if I could go back and do this again I would fiberglass the whole thing and save a whole bunch of extra work but yeah super dirty but this is it I'm probably gonna go through and repaint it and clean it up I'll probably repaint some of the black stuff because it's just getting kind of beat up and dirty um I'll probably do a video about that um I'll probably just spray it with more Raptor liner just to make sure it's really durable um I probably could do regular paint over this but Raptor will help kind of hide some of the imperfections so yeah this is it um if you have any questions leave them in the comments um I'll link as much as I can in the description and thanks for watching I just wanted to show off this uh cover I got from this really quick too it's from Amazon and it's just like a generic cover for like any trailer this size of this size or whatever but it actually fits pretty well like it's obviously baggy up here but it fits just enough over the front back where it stays tight most of the time it's got um elastic on the corners to keep it underneath it's got vents here to keep the left the hot air out if it gets really hot it's got zippers on the back two corners so you can unzip it and get it Loose it's got tie down deals so you can tie it down if it's super windy or whatever um zipper on the side here for a door I thought it had zipper on both sides but I guess it's only this side um but yeah works pretty good I've had this cover for like two years as well um it's ripped a little bit like the Top's kind of thin and I got like stuff on top it's kind of pointy so it's ripped a bit in the wind because we get really crazy wind here but [Music] um other than that it works pretty good and it keeps everything pretty much dry I also for the last year I've had it under this cover but before that it was out in the open and the rain and I live in Seattle where there's a ton of rain so we're near Seattle yeah I'll link this as well

Channel: Nick Forster

Views: 39,706

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Id: YV0dToaiDa4

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 21 2022