ZooZooBee, My home built Camping Trailer

For several years I've been thinking of buying or making a camping trailer.

What I did not want was something big and heavy and need a special tow vehicle.
I have a Subaru Outback and that had to be the tow vehicles.

I considered many ready to buy options, see [camping_trailer| my list here].

But in the end I did not find anything that fit my needs for a reasonable price, so decided to build my own as many have done.

I like building things but I'm by no mean a very skilled professional when it comes to woodworking and things like that.

Here you will find a log of my build, step by step.

Research

First you need to do some research and figure out what you need.

For example in my case I wanted a dry weight under 1000# and sleep 2 adults and the 2 young children.

The best thing to get you started and get ideas is to head to this forum:
http://www.mikenchell.com/forums/index.php
Here many people have made their own trailer and discuss everything from constructions techniques to part sourcing etc... you can search all the existing data (tons) and ask your own question.

It's also very useful to look at other people builds and get ideas, also very useful are some free plans, which can save lots of time if you don't want to design everything from scratch (See for example The Benroy plans

You will find there are many many options, for example you could just convert a cargo trailer, or build your own teardrop with wood, or use some composite materials, also you can decide whether you want a smallish "sleep" only trailer, or rather a unit you can fully stand in and so on.

While the forums have most of the infos you need, it can be hard to locate everything, so a book might help.
I got this book: http://www.campingclassics.com/shopman05.html
This is 350 pages of very detailed instructions on building a camping trailer/teardrop by an experienced craftsman - very good to read before getting started

My Build

First, what the heck is ZooZooBee ? My 3 years old saw a drawing of my camper concept and called it that, since It's unique and I did not have anything better, I decided to keep that name.


Here are the steps I took (so far)

First had to decided on what I wanted to do and "design" it - which can take a while.

• ZooZooBee camping trailer - Conception / Drafting

Here is my design / plan

Build Thread

My full build thread with pictures is here:

http://www.mikenchell.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39021&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

---

---