Outlast the Rest: Trailer Built to Last 40 EXTRA YEARS!

Hi, I'm Drew and I'm taking you to the place where they rewrote the rules on the longevity of Teardrop

trailer

s. Imagine this, while most small camper

trailer

s are lucky to make it through their first decade on the road. Camping is creating wooden tears with an amazing projected lifespan of 40 to 50

years

and if you are a tear maker and you are watching this you better take notes welcome to RV camping my name is Craig Edible and I am Carrie Winch we have been building our camping motorhomes now, for 22

years

, and we are coming to be considered a bit like the grandfathers of the business, let's see how they are made, everyone sees all the aluminum in a safe Drive camper like ours with all the aluminum, They assume it's an aluminum camper it's actually a wooden trailer and we start here with the CNC machine it's a computer controlled router that we use to cut most of the parts we can load a full sheet of plywood in here and then the machine chooses a tool and the program runs and cuts the pieces out of the wood, even though it is actually specially made to our specifications, it is all marine grade wood, we specify the cores and veneers and how they are glued together, just so We can maintain constant Quality Control.

You can see a couple of trailers here that are under construction. The closest one here is already assembled. It is ready to go to the varnishing area. This is one of the Raindrop 560 models that the entire trailer is made of. marine grade plywood or solid hardwood, there are some softwood gussets to reinforce the pieces, but no particle board, no chipboard, no masonite, we have slots

built

into the sides, this is where we run all the wiring and then , once the skin is put on, here it captivates you and gives you a very clean look on the inside.

All major body joints are reinforced with wood reinforcement. It makes for a very strong body. It makes it very resistant to twisting and damage, and they do not come apart easily even in an In case of an accident, if you can also have a little fun in our carpentry workshop, the finished trailer, once the body is assembled, enters this area and it is completely sanded and then it moves on to the next room, which is our finishing area, and this is where the trailer is assembled. in a rotisserie that allows us to pivot the trailer body and move it to any position we need to obtain the best quality finish on all surfaces.

It allows us to varnish it inside and out. Each surface of the wood is varnished. up and down inside the cabinets and we use a high quality marine urethane finish that we bring from Italy. One of the reasons we do this is because we are a 100% formaldehyde free product and we have to go abroad to get one for our wood finishes. One of the advantages of building it from the frame is that we can coat the entire body, not just the visible areas, so the entire underside receives an undercoat before placing it on the frame, so even the areas on the top of the frame are completely sealed. tends to build things that are of an outdated design so they are supposed to

last

many years and we build to marine standards so we are aiming for a 40 to 50 year lifespan with constant exposure to moisture and water, You have to constantly seal each wooden part because people are going to use them in the most difficult and unimaginable ways you can imagine.

Yes, we actually have a client who has lived in his trailer full time for 17 years and he actually spent the winter in Minnesota and Maine, but he spent a lot of time on the west coast, in Washington, on an island in the state. from Washington, which of course is a very humid environment, although the body panels and aluminum are sealed, we want to seal the wood, so if water does get in. it enters even from the inside with the condensation of your body on your breath that that condensation does not find a way into the wood no, no, many of them use prefinished wood that they cut and then cut to size so that the edges are all raw, the body is its own strength it is a monocoque body as you can see the whole trailer is supported by two points and works well structurally that way so the frame is basically added as a way to connect the axle and tongue of the trailer and here you see an example of the frame that goes under the trailer now it looks pretty basic, whereas a utility trailer might use you know you could be hauling an engine block or a garden tractor or a bunch of leaves on a trailer in teardrop shape, you're hauling a bed so it doesn't need to be a huge sturdy frame and because our body is so strong we just have a frame that basically connects the axle to the body and connects the body to the hitch, yeah, most of the others. travel trailers rely on the frame for all support and then place a somewhat flimsy body on top of that frame.

We do the opposite: we place a rigid body on top of a frame that is allowed to flex. Yes, it is actually somewhat articulated because of its ability to turn left and right, but not bend this way. If you look here you'll see these support rods which are an inverted truss job that provides flex strength to the trailer tongue with very little weight, so once the body is married to the frame we start doing things like add wiring in those side channels, we also added solid foam insulation to the roof, you want to fill those cavities as completely as possible because if moist air gets in, it will condense on the aluminum skin and that's in a lot of travel trailers, that's what What causes rot and mold and damage is water that condenses inside the walls or inside the ceiling.

In this one you can also see that there is a place where the air goes. We have a drain pan that goes in here and that drain pan collects the rainwater that comes in through the vents and also the condensation that overflows into the air conditioner collects there, but then there is a drain that goes through the trailer and comes out. At the bottom, as they go, we add to the axis now a couple of things that we do differently. You'll notice that we have stainless steel fenders placed on stainless steel fenders because they never need painting, they won't chip, they won't rust. and they're a little expensive, but they're there for the life of the trailer, as you could say well, yeah, I could get on it, which we do all the time, it's part of the show, so yeah, they're caliber 14. stainless, they're not going anywhere, although they will lose in a fight over one of those poles at the gas pump and many have, and then inside the trailer you notice that there are two holes in the floor that are for the basement stairs, uh, but we actually put in a storage tub that's made of p

last

ic and we used the same plastic that's used in snowmobile skis, it's made for high impact and for impacts in cold weather and That way they will hold up even if something goes under the trailer and hits that plastic tub and that's where we put the spare tire in one of those storage compartments, so we originally came up with the 560 raindrop design to answer the asks what do you do with kids and so the raindrop actually has a bunk system that converts into a couch, we designed it so two adults and two kids could sleep in a ten foot long teardrop, so when we started we

built

just the 550 teardrop and now as you can see, On our production floor, the 560 Rain Drop has become our most popular model, probably around 75 percent, yeah, so you can see they're moving forward slowly and the pieces are added as you go, so for years we didn't like using it. standard door hinges, so we had to design our own door hinges and have them custom made for us just to get a hinge that we liked and that was in keeping with the teardrop theme and vintage look of the trailer which one is the philosophy behind that?

What is seven gallons of water? Eight eight and a half What is the philosophy there? So originally we only had a built-in five gallon water tank and there was no gray water tank or gray water and we received a request from For many customers, there are many national parks and parks that require that if you have a water system, you must have a way to collect gray water, so when we looked at that we decided we would have to design our own water tanks. and I don't know if you can see it here, but they're under the trailer and those water tanks are eight and a half gallons each and one of them is for fresh water and the other one is for gray water. and by collecting the gray water, so that's more environmentally friendly, you don't attract bears or bugs, or you know, we also offered road shower units on the roof rack and that's been very popular for someone who just wants to carry an

extra

10 gallons of water this it's one of the first ones where we put the composite tables in we used to make them out of wood now we use a fully composite material and what that does is it allows us to leave them out in the rain without being affected by the water so you have a dining table on one side, you place the cooler on the other side.

I have this, the fire extinguisher is outside where it is accessible in case there is a fire in the kitchen and then we take out the cooler and transfer it to the cooler holder, then we slide the stove out and the kitchen is set up and the storage compartments under the mattress or under the counter that have a small storage compartment with lids in there and you can see everything. of the storage are deep and then you are ready to roll the sofa has a few different modes this is the standard sofa mode with a raised knee in the front here you can drop it flush which essentially extends the bed so if you measure around six feet six inches or more, you can put the pillows up here and make the bed much longer.

You can take the cushions, thank you, and you can move them up. Sorry, I'm probably in the way of the camera there, but. you can flip this down and put the cushions back and then you have a little raised bench that you can sit on. There is storage in the front, which is the front bumper of the Raindrop giving you additional storage with AC and DC outlets. A very popular place where customers who have a CPAP put their CPAP machine here, run the hose here and it gives them good access there, they can plug it into AC or DC to set it up on a bunk bed that moves.

Take off the cushions, grab this frame, lift it up, put it on the windowsill and then where there are a couple of latches that lock it in place, we're going to lift up a headboard that separates the main mattress from the bottom bunk. We have a cushion there, a small pillow for that level, then we put another cushion on the top level like this with your pillow and then at night when it's time to go to bed, we slide on this little one, we call it a protector childish and that. keeps kids from falling out of bed at night good place for you kids is a good place for

extra

cargo maybe your dog can sleep on the bottom bunk keep them out of your bed although dog owners know that won't last too much They like to come up with you and inside you see we have air conditioning, there's a heating option, there's a full stereo option on this one to show it off, there's a handicap access option, the one thing a lot of people forget.

The teardrop trailers are because they are at ground level and the kitchen is outside. These teardrop trailers are generally handicap accessible. We have an extra three foot wide door that allows for easier access for everyone, but you know if someone is transferring from a wheelchair, you have the handicap bars to transfer when you sit down, you know that's something you can grab you and then when you move over to the couch it can help you up and you have plenty of head room here and a little reading light yeah all the lights on. to red at night for night vision control and you can turn it down and just have a little night light glowing dimly here we have our 550 series which is 5x8, it's eight feet long and it has the same queen size mattress throughout.

Your cabinet air conditioner has the LP furnace so you can camp off the grid and in cold climates and for you, know people who maybe are doing some off road adventures or something, it's pretty ideal. It's actually built like an off-roader. -road trailer with a forged trailing arm axle independent suspension system uh flexible articulated frame strong mono rigid monocular body they really are made to be off-road trailers uh, it's just that that's not very good, it's represented when people see that don't They see it right, that's the bold style of the retro style and all that, we have a lot of customers that tow them anywhere an original SUV, even an original Jeep Rubicon, these trailers will go if a wooden teardrop doesn'tis the right one.

For you either the price of these trailers or the weight is too high you should check out the Road Toad for camping, this economical lightweight composite trailer is just what the industry needed. I have two videos for you here on the left, one is a walk through. -through tour and the other is a great tour of Lynn's camper that she modified on a budget, as usual stay safe on the road and I'll see you in the next episode.