Residential module on a trailer, like a do-it-yourself caravan (18 photos)

8 August 2017

Like many travel lovers, our family has a desire to ride in relative comfort. Without spending the family budget on hotels and rental housing. After weighing all the pros and cons, it was decided to make one rather than buy a ready-made trailer. As happens with people who are not entirely sane, there are 23 days until vacation, and we begin to think about...

Reasons not to buy ready-made:

1) our poverty :)
2) 25-30 year old trailer for 250,000 thousand, it’s more like candy...expired. Beautiful, but with rotten walls and floors, with a rubber-band suspension. In our Russian realities, and even with my desire to drive not only on asphalt, we need springs and more ground clearance.

Reasons to do it yourself:

1) large margin of safety.
2) limited budget.
3) My hands were itching to do something like that :)

The trailer was purchased "motorist kit 3000mm x 1500mm" i.e. frame, axle, drawbar and PTS. The quality of this set was a poor C grade. It's welded ugly, the paint job is disgusting. I had to do everything the right way. I cleaned the super paint down to the metal, which flew off in flakes when touched like a petal circle. And he dragged this structure to a friend, from whom he painted it powder.

The proposed axle from “it’s unclear what company” was rejected... I would have welded one myself. I bought a complete suspension up to 750 kg, from a company (I won’t write the company, in case they say it’s an advertisement). Started assembly. Along the way, introducing wiring and dimensional optics.

Finished the trailer

Then I moved on to the module. I didn’t have any drawings, everything was from my head and roughly by eye. The main thing is that the module fits between the sides of the trailer. The height was arbitrary. So that after assembly it would be possible to take it out of the garage. Therefore, the external height turned out to be 176 cm, inside from floor to ceiling 170 cm. I painted the structure in two layers with “3 in 1” fence paint

10 After the Wife covered all the sheets of plywood with impregnation, she laid the plywood on the floor and future shelves, because after installing the outer panels, this will be more difficult to do. I fastened everything with rivets.

I used an aluminum composite panel as the exterior finish. I glued it with glue and sealant from the skeleton of the module. For corners, it was more profitable for me to buy a sheet of stainless steel “not full grade” with a thickness of 0.8 mm. I chopped it up and bent it from a friend. I riveted everything with stainless rivets. I’ll write right away... not having a very powerful device for installing rivets... you can tire your hands. I was lucky, I had air tools. Almost 2000 rivets were used. I found the glass on the internet. The longest and most tedious thing was the invention of seals and the introduction of locks. I used locks from “Loaf” on the back door. Because locks for campers...started at 4,000 rubles for 1 piece. I used locks from slot machines on the tailgate. Having slightly modified the locking mechanism.

Loading the module.

6 days before vacation

I'm putting up the door. At the same time, the wife is insulating the van with polystyrene foam. Lays linoleum, sews curtains. Then, together with my wife, we rivet the cheapest fiberboard (the budget is over).

1 Homemade faucet, took a stainless steel tube, bent it and welded it to a stainless steel pipe. Diaphragm type water pump. On Ali express 400 rubles. There are no photos of how the interior decoration was done; there was no time for photos. If it weren’t for my Wife, there would be no photographs at all.

1 day before vacation

Test drive. We stopped at the weighing station, paid 100 rubles and were told how much the trailer weighed. Weight without shmurdyak 520 kg. Of course, I wanted up to 450 kg... but even this result suited me quite well.