Hey all, thought I might share my most current and pressing project with you.. updating it's progress here might even spur me to get it finished!
The wife and I gave some pretty serious consideration to purchasing a TrackAbout Explorer camper trailer last year, but in the end came to the conclusion that spending $40k+ (AUD) on a camper trailer was a little out of our budget! (Somewhat devastated, fantastic trailers and an even better lot of blokes building them! But I digress..)
So, as with most things I set about building something that would meet the basic needs of our camping trips:
1. somewhat lightweight.
2. off-road, hard-trail capable
3. quick to set up for camp
4. storage space for all of our junk!
5. ability to expand for future family additions
Easy right?
So, I previously had a Nissan D22 Navara (Frontier in the USA), and had a couple of wrecks laying around doing nothing. The plan was to build a chassis underneath a spare D22 tub, and have the chassis utilise the basic dimensions of the D22's chassis.
So I started with a bit of 3mm steel plate:
And a few lengths of 100mmx50mmx3mm RHS and 10mm plate:
Made my own basic bender to use in the press (did a surprisingly good job despite breaking the press a couple of times!)
Used the plasma cutter and bender to make up some fishplates for the chassis to tie it all together:
...
The wife and I gave some pretty serious consideration to purchasing a TrackAbout Explorer camper trailer last year, but in the end came to the conclusion that spending $40k+ (AUD) on a camper trailer was a little out of our budget! (Somewhat devastated, fantastic trailers and an even better lot of blokes building them! But I digress..)
So, as with most things I set about building something that would meet the basic needs of our camping trips:
1. somewhat lightweight.
2. off-road, hard-trail capable
3. quick to set up for camp
4. storage space for all of our junk!
5. ability to expand for future family additions
Easy right?
So, I previously had a Nissan D22 Navara (Frontier in the USA), and had a couple of wrecks laying around doing nothing. The plan was to build a chassis underneath a spare D22 tub, and have the chassis utilise the basic dimensions of the D22's chassis.
So I started with a bit of 3mm steel plate:
And a few lengths of 100mmx50mmx3mm RHS and 10mm plate:
Made my own basic bender to use in the press (did a surprisingly good job despite breaking the press a couple of times!)
Used the plasma cutter and bender to make up some fishplates for the chassis to tie it all together:
...