My Camper

[OzJeeper]

I hear what your saying but - bear with me.

To raise the bed, bring the tyres etc underneath, would mean raising the kitchen bench at the back by a similar amount.
The Teardrop has to have the feet under the kitchen to work for it's size.

If you raise the tyre size, raise the bed, then the whole shootin match is pushed up by that increase in rim/tyre size.

For a hot-rod towing a teardrop, it's not an issue. For an Off-Road unit it becomes a problem. Remember, the early teardrops were based on a 6' x 4' sheet of plywood and that is where they got their "track" from.

The teardrop is a lightweight alternative for off-road use and, dare I say it, the T Van is a well designed derivative of the original teardrop.....

still building mine....

[Gildo]

Yeah weather they admit it or not the TVan is definetly a direct decendant of the old teardrops. And all the good ideas were update and over engineered the way Track build all their stuff.
I think it was Wen on here once said "Its UGLY, It looks like the arse end of a garbage truck"

[junglejuice]

If the base is 6x4 then it is definitely achievable to have the wheels inboard, the track the same and the bed at the same height as I have built my offroad trailer to be a 7x4 and it has the same track as the xj so why not use the space between the walls and the bed in front and behind the wheel arches for storage.
The outside dimensions will be wider but the track will be the same and the bed can still be right down low so the cog won't change at all, so you would end up with say a 6x6 and then you could use xj flares on the outside to tie it in nicely with the xj towing it.
That is what I would do, I would even use xj tail lights as well and xj wheels and xj suspension.......

[Steve F]

Originally Posted by junglejuice

If the base is 6x4 then it is definitely achievable to have the wheels inboard, the track the same and the bed at the same height as I have built my offroad trailer to be a 7x4 and it has the same track as the xj so why not use the space between the walls and the bed in front and behind the wheel arches for storage.
The outside dimensions will be wider but the track will be the same and the bed can still be right down low so the cog won't change at all, so you would end up with say a 6x6 and then you could use xj flares on the outside to tie it in nicely with the xj towing it.
That is what I would do, I would even use xj tail lights as well and xj wheels and xj suspension.......

4' wide is too skinny for me, I want a queen sized bed, the dimensions of the trailer frame in the pics is 5' wide and almost 9' long. It has to sleep two of us in comfort, have the kitchen etc. Too be honest for what I plan to use it for I dont think I'll have a problem. Sand might be a bit of a struggle but I'll cope with that I probably will look at bringing the wheels in a bit and see if I can tuck them under the frame a bit. Maybe a thinner mattress at the leg end will give me enough room to tuck the tyre underneath but I wont worry about it too much if it isn't done easily.

Also bear in mind this will hopefully be under 500kg so with 31" tyres it should float well on sand and I wont be pulling it through big ruts etc.

Cheers
Steve

[junglejuice]

Make sure you post some pics of the progress, it will be interesting to see this one go together...

[Steve F]

Still mucking about with this, I've decided I do want the track the same as the Jeep so moved the wheels inboard a bit and have wheel arches to deal with. Since they are down around the knees I think I can deal with a 4' wide section there (Most of the width is needed at the shoulders) and with the thickness of the mattress if I can keep the arches low I may even have some mattress over the top of them.



Cheers
Steve

[Jeff]

If the mattress isnt high enough you could always make those into some mini shelves or something.