jberry's Dingleberry Expo Trailer

So I bump cycled the suspension yesterday and the shackles are too long. I have an extreme love/hate relationship with leaf springs. Mock up and math never seem to be the same as reality. So, soon to be 4" shackles will bring the ride height down a bit, and a much better loaded shackle angle and leaf movement.

Tongue box is secured presently with four 3/8" bolts with nylon lock nuts and large fender washers on the aluminum tongue box to help distribute force. The front skin of the cargo box as well as the tongue skin is 14g steel.

I wanted to keep the water tank reasonably removeable. So here's how I decided to secure the water tank. Fore and aft movement obviously restricted by the cargo box and tongue box. Left/right movement is restricted by some 2" angle iron welded in. Vertical movement would probably be fine with gravity alone...except I'm the one towing this so I added a couple strips of 1"x.1/8" and tied it to both cargo boxes.

 

I'll give it a whirl and see what happens. I put two top straps, one on each side. The weakest spot on the top straps are the mounting points in the aluminum tongue box which i backed with 1.5" fender washers (not pictured). So if it starts elongating the holes in the aluminum, it'll be real easy to tell that it needs more cow bell. If that happens I'll just go all jberry retarded beef on it.
In the event it blows up on trail, it's in a convenient enough spot that I can just wrap a ratchet strap around the whole damn thing to snug it to the frame.

A jberry experiment fucks an aluminum falcon.....this will not end well.

 

The picture is deceiving there. The bolts you see on the backside of the tongue box are what's holding the battery charger in place. They however do not touch the water tank. They cleared minimally and then I hit them with a flap disk and brought them down to about 1/2 thickness of the original size, so I've got good clearance. The friction points will also have that self adhesive foam sealant used for windows to act as a pseudo cushion.

 

Alright...kinda cool stuff.

Got the tongue jack mount welded in. Kinda cool, it's just a piece of .250 wall DOM with some holes drilled in it so I can easily remove the jack and throw it in the tool box, or just rotate it 90* kept in place with a pin and keep it on the frame for on-road towing.





And some bit of the bells and whistles. Outside the toolbox, with the help of a metric shit ton of adapters and a bit of ingenuity, I was able to rig a quick disconnect garden hose setup. The hose pictured is for illustrative purposes only. I'll actually have a small coiled garden hose which will have a showerhead on the other end.





Inside the toolbox you can see it hooks to the output of the RV water pump which is mounted to the wall of the box. On the inlet side there's a prefilter to keep debris out. The water inlet line will go strait out the backside of the box and into the water tank.





Also got a 500 watt inverter mounted on the other side with the other power accessories. Naturally it has USB ports so the misses can charge her phone when we go places with no reception
For a crappy little cheap Amazon inverter, this thing does work! I was able to run my 4.5" grinder off this thing and cut off a bent to shit exhaust tip.

 

I'm sorry?
Didn't really seem that big to me, but I've got a shit ton of room in the tongue box. It's 9"x5"x2.5". I like it because the fan doesn't turn on unless it starts heating up thus keeping power consumption lower.
Also it's 500w continuous. Actually 1000w peak.

 

Thanks bud

Yep. I haven't decided what though. I'm leaning towards dual 6 volt golf cart batteries in series. The cost and amp hour ratings (around 215) you get from that seems to be the best bang for buck, and they sell them at costco. They have thicker plates so they endure deeper discharge/recharge without being as detrimental on the battery. On the other hand, I kind of want to get the same Die Hard Platinum group 31 I have in my tundra. It's a marine deep cycle battery and with one small stud adapter it fits in the taco in case that one takes a shit for whatever reason. The Die hard platinum is bad-ass...it's just not nearly the amp hour rating the golf cart batteries put out. I'd have to buy two to get close and that would be $500 in just batteries.

For now it will be unheated. It's just tank, to pump, to shower. Fortunately the tank is completely black and surrounded by what will be a predominantly black trailer, so the existence of a visible sun itself will warm the water within the tank. I've spent enough money on this build at this point that some of the other nice to haves can come at another time. I positioned the pump such that I can run water line splitters relatively easily as I add to the build.

And while I've contemplated carrying a small flux core welder with a fat ass inverter, it's just not in the cards right now. I'd rather get a fridge and some other goodies first.

 

Given the output of the 6 volts, I would only need two golf cart batteries. But yes...I could get 4 golf cart batteries for the price of two diehards...and have twice the amp hours. I wouldn't do that simply because of weight, but I could. I have the room. There are loads of test results out there on 6 volt conversions on RV's. There's a reason its popular.

Recharge will be a combination of things. A small solar panel. 10g wire thru the 7 pin trailer plug while driving. Also simply jumper cables from the truck if the trailer batteries are that low. In addition my neighbor has a pair of the Champion 2000 watt generators you can hook up to work together. He said I could borrow them any time I want and they have a small 12 volt plug specifically to charge DC batteries. Honestly one would be more than adequate for my needs.

 

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