ok, so photos down below. it's ready for moab. It'll get paint when it gets back. Right now I can't believe how well it turned out. Kudos to steve and his guys at ebi cruisers for great work. they built it more or less exactly the way i described it to steve but with some creative falir of their own.
the siderails are 1.25" .125" steel and are plenty beefy enough with little or no flex. I got a set of kwik rail artificial rain gutters for the yakima cross rails (cheapest place is a truck canopy shop) and mounted them so the tent is 2" forward of centre. the rails are 12.5" above the bed which seems like a good height. I can get into the trailer very easily with the tent mounted and was even able to load it with crap for a run to the dump without removing the tent. The side rails also mean I can mount some plywood boards and increase the bed capacity big time. In fact I am going to mount some hooks on the boards and use the canopy on top!
the tent does seem to make the trailer sway side to side a bit even with the bed loaded but with the spare mounted (65 lbs) that went away and it tracks nice, even though it is tilting backwards because my truck is way taller than the trailer. the tire also seems to cut down on bounce. I've never seen my trailer before while towing and was amazed to see how much the side rails in my rear view mirror bounced on bumps when the tent is off and the trailer is unloaded. one nice side effect of the rails is i can actually back the thing up for the first time and actually see how it is tracking.
when I get home I'm going to looking into shackle extensions to get the springs parallel to the ground. As long as I run 33s on the truck I think an SOA would be too much, as well as looking weird on stock rims.
anyway, no shots with the tent open but it works great and passed the kid test. the front and rear trailerjacks allow me to level and steady the tent pretty well. without the rear trailerjack the tent will tilt backwards from level if you overload the tent at the back. I maybe could have set the tent a little further forward to avoid that but with the potential for stuff to get moved around in the bed anyway I thought it was better to get the trailerjack anyway. i am also going to use the hitch point to carry a bike rack.
the siderails are 1.25" .125" steel and are plenty beefy enough with little or no flex. I got a set of kwik rail artificial rain gutters for the yakima cross rails (cheapest place is a truck canopy shop) and mounted them so the tent is 2" forward of centre. the rails are 12.5" above the bed which seems like a good height. I can get into the trailer very easily with the tent mounted and was even able to load it with crap for a run to the dump without removing the tent. The side rails also mean I can mount some plywood boards and increase the bed capacity big time. In fact I am going to mount some hooks on the boards and use the canopy on top!
the tent does seem to make the trailer sway side to side a bit even with the bed loaded but with the spare mounted (65 lbs) that went away and it tracks nice, even though it is tilting backwards because my truck is way taller than the trailer. the tire also seems to cut down on bounce. I've never seen my trailer before while towing and was amazed to see how much the side rails in my rear view mirror bounced on bumps when the tent is off and the trailer is unloaded. one nice side effect of the rails is i can actually back the thing up for the first time and actually see how it is tracking.
when I get home I'm going to looking into shackle extensions to get the springs parallel to the ground. As long as I run 33s on the truck I think an SOA would be too much, as well as looking weird on stock rims.
anyway, no shots with the tent open but it works great and passed the kid test. the front and rear trailerjacks allow me to level and steady the tent pretty well. without the rear trailerjack the tent will tilt backwards from level if you overload the tent at the back. I maybe could have set the tent a little further forward to avoid that but with the potential for stuff to get moved around in the bed anyway I thought it was better to get the trailerjack anyway. i am also going to use the hitch point to carry a bike rack.
