Where to Buy Parts for a Teardrop Build

so you're building a teardrop camper or you're upgrading one that you've purchased and you don't know where to find stuff you don't know where to find parts and accessories well stick around hey welcome back everyone the weather is finally starting to break here in east tennessee even though we had a lot of snow and ice here three or four weeks ago it's now in the 50s and the two-week forecast is looking good i think camping season is just right around the corner and speaking of camping season the channel has been getting a lot of questions from people who are starting their own builds or people who are wanting to retrofit their current camper with some new accessories you know and a lot of those questions are where do i get parts where do i find this stuff well that's something i hope to help you with today back when i built my own camp easy teardrop i mean i had a really good time but i will say i had some challenges being able to find some parts i mean a lot of the things you need for a teardrop aren't just items you go to walmart and buy so i hope that what i can show you today is going to help you in finding your own parts and accessories for your build or your upgrade so let's walk around this thing so let me get the whole trailer in view so you can see the frame the frame starts right here at the tongue and it works its way all the way to the back before you you know start curving out for the galley this is a frame that came from mastiff trailer in gainesboro tennessee and i bought this because he's a utility trailer manufacturer that i have experience with builds a good product and i called him up and asked if he could weld me up a frame with no sides or gate on the back he was happy to do that he did it out of 2x3 tubular steel he put a full wrap tongue almost all the way back to the axle for reinforcement and it's a good heavy frame so when he built the frame he put it on a 3500 pound axle which means it's a very robust axle i shouldn't have to worry about it holding up and it even has flanges on it where i can add brakes later um the only bad thing is it came with 3 500 pound leaf springs they were like 1750 per side and if i left those on there that would have beat my camper to death because it only weighs 1500 pounds so i went to northern tool and i picked up some 1 000 pound leaf springs that were the same length that made it 2000 overall and now i've got a 500 pound cushion and the camper rides so nice and soft i couldn't be happier with that and speaking of the brakes they're not on the camper yet that's going to be a future episode pick those up at e-trailer now e-trailer is a good source for a lot of well anything to do with the trailer so check out e-trailer so listen a quick disclaimer um i am not being sponsored by any of these companies or any of these brands that i'm telling you about this is just my own personal experience where i got the stuff to build my camper i'm not endorsing these places i'm just passing along information and maybe make it easier for you to find stuff these guys don't even know i exist so let's move up to the front here i've got a poly tongue box made by dz and that is d-e-e-z-e-e you can get those on e-trailer get them on ebay get them on amazon these are pretty readily available i've got a 100 amp hour agm battery in there i bought off of ebay it's made by wise w-e-i-z-e you can also get those off amazon uh pretty much all the electronics in here i bought from amazon now this is a shunt uh display i did an episode on in the in the shunt down here and i've noticed i'm getting some corrosion if any of you all have a good way of getting rid of corrosion let me know i asked mastiff trailer to leave the tongue jack off and i picked one up myself i bought this one at a little store called rural king similar to tractor supply but you can get those at a hardware store so let's just stand back a few feet one of the biggest questions i get asked is where did you buy the aluminum skin and the aluminum trim for your camper well the aluminum skin is 40 000 it's pre-painted aluminum that's what i've got on the body of the camper that's what i put on the doors i bought it at a local sign shop this particular aluminum is called risco w-r-i-s-c-o that's the name brand probably different name brands different parts of the country i could not be happier i bought this in four by ten sheets it bends well it works well cut with metal shears and i absolutely love it the metal trim virtually all of it when i say virtually the trim for the door the trim for the exterior the perimeter of the camper [Music] these pieces that go around the galley edge virtually all this trim came from a company called vintage technologies you can find those guys on the internet they may even sell on ebay but you can go to their storefront on the net and speaking of vintage technologies i bought a ton of stainless steel fasteners from them and they're basically just wood screws with the square head they did great they're self-tapping they were very affordable buy them in bulk another good item that i bought from vintage technologies you can see the butyl tape seeping out from around the trim right here their butyl tape is real soft a matter of fact if you were to pick a piece of it up it would probably even drip and i really like that i think it seals better i'm really happy with the butyl tape from vintage technologies and i also picked up a lot of caulk called trim pro 635 and i use it on areas like above this piece of aluminum here and around the doors i even capped off some areas around the trim with trim pro 635 i bought that from vintage technologies as well lots and lots of people asked where i bought the little propane tank i bought that propane tank i ordered it from ace hardware online it's a manchester brand tank i think it's just a one gallon or five pound tank they call it love that little guy the bracket i bought from socal teardrops they sell several teardrop camping accessories the little rail i clipped my side table on ebay purchase um the graphics i designed those on the computer i did an episode on that i designed all the graphics i saved them as a pdf file i emailed them to the same sign shop where i bought the aluminum they printed them out i took the camper there they applied them for me pretty easy the window came from ebay i literally typed in frameless rv window and a pair of these dudes popped up and i bought them so real quick let's talk about ebay um i've talked to folks that are afraid to buy from ebay for they're going to get burned back when ebay started it was it was just a bunch of people selling stuff out of their garage and yeah there were a lot of scoundrels out there a lot of shenanigans to have to put up with but ebay is a little different now there's a lot of people who make their living on ebay and they actually have storefronts for me personally what i have found that works and it works almost every time is that when i find a product i like i scroll down through the ad on my phone and i find the seller's name beside that will show how many reviews they have and it will show their score if they only have a few reviews i don't buy from them i don't take the chance if they have a lot of reviews and their score is good yeah i'll buy and when i say a good score i don't buy anything from anyone that has less than a 99.7 percent score 9970 and above i have great service quick delivery it's a good transaction i'm real happy with it ebay off also offers buyer protection and they offer money back but be sure to make sure that's available when you look at the individual seller's ad the wheels are 15-inch aluminum wheels with toyo extenso tires i bought both of those i picked them up from an ebay seller the little stabilizer jacks in the corner ebay those hinges are called refrigerator or freezer hinges some people even you know put them on back of big trucks i bought a four pack of them off of ebay the drip cap from the window i got off ebay you can get those from vintage technologies the fenders these are fiberglass reproduction fenders from a 1930 ford truck and i bought those from a local seller on facebook marketplace for 50 bucks and i brought them home i cut them down i did several episodes on that i found a green ink pen that i really liked i took it to the local paint shop it's a place called part city probably a national chain and they can mix and match almost any color paint you want they'll put it in a spray can it's a two part catalyzed paints automotive paint and then i brought that home and painted the fenders so let me close the hatch for a minute i want to show you something that's a really important feature this camper and that's the hurricane hinge and that's this two-piece hinge right here it enables you to lower and raise the hatch without getting rain down in your galley and you can find hurricane hinges all over you can buy them on ebay amazon vintage technologies all over the place but this one's special this one has a little flange at the top which is a built-in rain gutter most people that see my camper said they've never seen one with the rain gutter you can get this from a company called overland trailer it's not where i bought mine but i looked it up on google this morning and there's a company offering these called overland trailer now they're pricey but not having leaks in your galley is worth every penny so let me come to the other side you can see a little bit better this hurricane hinge hangs over the side about 3 8 of an inch and really i wish i would have left it hanging over maybe just a little bit longer but by doing that whenever it does rain the rain actually comes out about two inches and it pours on the ground stays away from the camper that's a great feature now come back over here this third brake light i think i just picked the light itself up off of amazon and i took angled aluminum and i built the housing myself custom could not find something like that anywhere and i used some scrap left over from the aluminum skin i did an episode on the handles that i put on the galley hatch these are just things i picked up on ebay they're just you know outdoor shed handles diamond plate is very expensive if you order it i found this at a local metal fabrication shop they had a bunch of this in stock i got it real cheap so i'm going to try to videotape the vent fan and still keep the microphone close to me the vent fan is a max air max fan i bought that from a store online called rv upgrade store had good service out of them good delivery and a great price you can see a bunch of little electronic gadgets and buttons this stuff i all picked up off of ebay and amazon this backsplash is plastic peel and stick backsplash that's an ebay purchase my green faucet everybody asks about that i literally top green faucet into ebay and that's what popped up couldn't have been easier this is a stainless steel salad bowl that my wife gave me i cut a hole in the bottom of it i put in a marine 90 degree drain in there again ebay purchase the cooler i think i showed you that on a recent episode about i bought that from overstock.com so i'm new to overstock i bought that in the mattress both there but they came in quick my drain tank for my gray water is just an oil tank a waste oil tank i picked up at a local hardware store now let's talk about cabinet hardware i bought the hinges let me show you if i can get in there show you the hinges i bought the hinges off ebay but after i bought them i found a company called d lawless hardware that sells cabinet hardware they sell drawer slides it's good stuff and it's affordable and if i was doing it again i would check out d lawless hardware while we're in here the two burner cooktop i bought that at rv upgrade store [Music] my galley struts to keep the hatch open came from ebay there's a seller on there that sells a ton of these things in different sizes and there's a an excel spreadsheet on the internet you can look up a teardrop galley strut calculator and it'll show you what size you need to buy so let's talk about getting creative when this hatch lowers it actually hits this handle and it's going to try to dent the hatch so i found some gutter plugs at lowe's and i put in there when it closes the handle goes up inside that plug everybody thinks it's a handle to lower your hatch but it's basically just to cover up the fact that this thing's going to hit the handles now speaking of the handles i built these myself with a 3d printer i cannot begin to tell you how cool 3d printing is and how many possibilities there is with it i wanted to go with a real fancy tail light but i decided that i've had so many problems with tail lights over all the years i've been pulling trailers i wanted some off-the-shelf tail lights that way if i'm on a trip and they break down i can go to advanced auto parts or autozone or o'reilly and i can pick up another set and bolt them on and that's what i've got here the you can get these on amazon ebay your local parts store but be sure to get led they're really bright miscellaneous hardware like this 30 amp rv entrance i picked up um amazon now while i'm up here let me show you this piece of aluminum this is not part of the galley hinge this is just something i wanted to put on here for aluminum trim pieces uh or aluminum bar stock rather an aluminum angle you can get that at lowe's home depot tractor supply but you're really going to pay up for it you can go to a local aluminum place that supplies your local industry and a lot of times they have heavier and better aluminum they can cut you off at a cheaper price or there's a company i found called orange aluminum that has a great selection and price so going to the inside of the door if you remember i did a recent episode where i built these straps to keep the door from opening too far you could build those out of dog leashes i think this is some scrap straps i had from a like a lunch box that i had the window again came from ebay in the curtains my wife made those out of some fabrics she picked up and those are velcroed on top looks like the it's actually come loose from the velcro a little bit but those velcro all the way across the top and we put some ties back there this is a ebay handle and if you remember i did an episode on a simple but effective locking door latch go to the outside this is a shed or out building t-handle and it comes with this d-shaped handle on the inside two pack of those were like 25 bucks and when you close it from the inside i put just a simple lock on there so now nobody can unlock this thing from the outside but it still does lock from the outside with the key really simple moving inside the camper the cabinetry is more of the same as what i did in the galley but i will say though specifically that this mount here for the ipad is the ibolt brand and they sell those on amazon i have one in the kitchen one in this camper i have one in my carted suction cup these things are phenomenal i cannot believe the quality and how well they hold this is a 30 or 35 amp power distribution panel it does both ac and dc it also charges the battery it's a wfco 8735 you get those i think you can get them at rv upgrade store amazon ebay campingworld.com just about anywhere that sells rv supplies now i do want to mention i've got ac electricity and i've got dc electricity and speaking of ac and dc electrical i'd love to show you what it all looks like but i can't it's all enclosed in the body of the camper i built it in as i was building the thing but what i can tell you is my own personal experience and you may find something different is that for the dc wiring i did better buying that on amazon and ebay as far as the cost and as far as the ac electrical i bought it was like either 12 2 or 12 3 romex wire i just went to my local lowe's and bought that they had this huge roll they cut off over how many feet i needed and it was a lot easier going that route now for some 12 volt electrical you'd be surprised how much amazon or not amazon but autozone and advanced auto parts and o'reilly has you know as far as fuses you know end connectors just terminal connectors they had a lot of that stuff and they actually had some pretty decent stuff so i would check those guys out so going back inside i left the bedding off of the mattress to show you this fully inflated we installed this in a recent episode this is not a memory foam mattress this is a gel memory foam mattress we absolutely love these things we have one in our house we picked this one up off of overstock.com and this is a queen size mattress so it fit the width of the camper nicely while we're in here be sure to check out your local dollar tree and your local dollar general store for little storage solutions have all different colors they're very very affordable and on the cabinetry i would like to point out that i have believe it or not four different kinds of wood used here but it all looks almost the same color i have maple trim i have baltic birch for the roof i have aspen for the door frames baltic birch on the inside and i think there's even a little pine so how did i get four different kinds of wood um looking so similar to one another well i have to say that they're all very similar wood anyway um the sapwood part of the tree is a little bit lighter in color than the heartwood part of a tree and these are all cut out of the sapwoods they're all going to be lighter anyway but i put a spar urethane coating about three or four coats over all this and it had a little bit of a milky hazy look and it blended the wood tones together nicely i didn't plan for that to happen but it really worked out good and that's something i picked up at lowe's a couple more items that you can't see but are in here is the wood frame that i used to box this in with now the walls are a one inch thick sandwich and i cut out a 5 8 inch baltic birch core and i cut holes in that to make it lighter weight those holes i filled in with rigid sheet foam from lowe's then i sheeted the inside of the wall with quarter inch baltic birch all the way you know front to back top to bottom and i did the outside with eighth inch and the reason i did that is those three thicknesses together made up one inch and i wanted the thicker on the inside in case i'm in there kicking around i don't want to punch a hole in the wall if it was just eighth inch so i put the quarter on the inside but it made a very very strong structure and you know i would say go to lowe's home depot see what kind of lumber they got uh you know but also you know don't forget your smaller hardware stores they can order things for you if you're towards a larger city um there are specialty hardwood stores that you can reach out to and some of them even sell five foot by ten foot plywood and just go to google type in five by ten plywood type in the name of your city and you'll be surprised what pops up and i almost forgot when i first started the build i had the frame in the shop i built a floor that was a sandwich as well i got some pine one before lumber and i built a duplicate of the metal trailer frame and i laid it on top of the trailer frame and i sheeted that with some eighth inch baltic birch and then i painted that with three coats of an asphalt fence post paint by black beauty and i picked that up at tractor supply after that was good and dry i flipped the whole thing over i put on a layer of half inch pine plywood for the subfloor now normally i would have done something a little bit heavier than that but i'm not walking in this camper i'm laying on it there's a 10 inch mattress over top of that so i felt half inch was good enough and i took that sandwich then and i bolted that to the frame of the camper all the way around and that's the floor that i used so let's revisit the sink just for a moment this does have running water and it is supplied by an rv water tank that's mounted underneath the camper it's a 5 gallon rv water tank i bought from amazon and if you remember the episode where i installed the tank i did so with some really long carriage bolts that were stainless steel they were pretty hard to find but i found a company online called albany county fasteners and wow they have a i mean it's just an unreal selection of specialty hardware now you're going to have to pay up for it but then you know you can't find it anywhere else but i've used them on multiple occasions and i highly recommend those guys so one of the challenges i had when i was building the camper was how do i know these sites are legit i mean it may be a 12 year old kid you know putting stuff on the internet to you know steal my money some of these guys to be honest i just took a chance on them some of them they had you know better business bureau reviews that i read and all the ones that i tried ended up being legit and they were good albany county fasteners d lawless hardware rv upgrade store orange aluminum that you know folks that i never hear about when i'm you know around the teardrop circles talking but they did well for me you know don't forget your tractor supply your lows your home depot amazon you can't get away from amazon if you want to and if you buy from ebay check out those seller ratings but get creative a lot of the things on here i fabricated myself if i couldn't find them so i'm not going to give you a source from that i can just say come from these two hands but go back and watch the videos that you haven't watched on the construction of this thing and one reason why i wanted to make this video is i've had a lot of people ask me well where are the episodes when you put the walls together when you started the frame well it'll be honestly i didn't know i wanted to do a youtube channel until i'd already had those things done i wish i would have started earlier but i didn't so this is just a little way for me to go back and say hey here's where i got my stuff and hopefully that'll help you in your own build i do have another really cool accessory to show you the only thing is you can't get one they're not available check out this super cool camping camera apron this was sent in by one of the viewers now he asked for me not to tell who he was so i won't but you know who you are and thank you very much this thing is awesome and hopefully the next time you see it'll be covered in barbecue sauce so whether you're building your own camper or you've bought one you're trying to fix it up hopefully these will be some places that you can go and find parts and accessories for your own camper and talking about diy versus factory built here's what i think the best camper is the one that you have it's the one that you can drop on the hitch your vehicle and take off and enjoy we're all in this together if you go to a tear jerkers meetup you're going to see factory belt home built converted cargo trailers you name it you're going to see it we all look at each other equally they're all tiny camper enthusiasts it's a great place to be so take what you've got get out there and enjoy it and in today's episode if you forgot to take notes of these different sources run over to patreon.com and go to the camping camera page and i've got some some of that written down for you hopefully that'll be a help and if you like today's episode give us a thumbs up and hit that subscribe button it helps the channel grow more than you could ever imagine so hey until next time take care we'll see on the road [Music] you

Channel: Camp and Camera

Views: 70,431

Keywords: Teardrop camper, teardrop trailer, diy teardrop, teardrop build, rv, travel trailer, camp, camping, campground, how to, build, make, construct, homemade, galley, diy teardrop campers community, Squaredrop, toy hauler, micro camper, tiny camper, diy camper, where to find parts for a teardrop, where to find aluminum skin, skinning a teardrop, aluminum trim for camper, how to skin a teardrop, hurricane hinge, rv roof vent, how to build a teardrop, where to get aluminum sheet

Id: OuE3trnKdOQ

Length: 25min 55sec (1555 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021