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Campers, Tents and More Brands, styles what do you want to make your home away from home?



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  #1  
Old 26-02-2014, 07:15 AM
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Camping Trailer Thread

Well, after going over numerous ideas and combinations, we've decided we're just not going to get what we want so I'm going to have to built it myself...... well...... some of it any way.

We're loving the freedom of tenting and have heaps of gear, just how to better use\store it and still be able to get a decent ali boat on top as well.

The solution I'm looking into is an 8x5 tandem trailer (fully closed), capable of off-road, with a rack on top and the internals redesigned with a slide out kitchen, slide out bbq and more. We do a lot of 1-2+ week trips so it needs to cater for enough gear for a family with a few comforts. Set the power up so we can use park power as well as a gene when out bush. LED lights to keep power use down and batteries enough to be off-grid.

Add awnings off the top for some protection and it should be the ideal unit. Anyone tried something similar that they have pics or ideas to share?

Thanks,
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Last edited by Bear; 26-02-2014 at 07:18 AM.
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Old 26-02-2014, 08:42 AM
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Hey mate.

Before I got back into breaming I made a camp trailer to carry the tinny up the Monkey Mia. I started with a brand new single axel from Active trailers. Cost about $700 fully licenced. Of course I had to do some modifications to get it suitable for of road. I flipped it up side down and cut the short draw bars of and replaced the with some 3mm 100x50 RHS and made it twice as long as the old draw bar do it had room to mound a tool box and a spare wheel. It also made it a lot easier to tow and back up. Swapped the standard hubs for some 6 studs and a set of land cruiser rims which I later changed to rodeo rims so I had the same rims on the car and could share spare wheel. Boxed the top of with some marine ply and mounted one of the 30 second oz tents. Made a nice rack over the top with nylon skids to carry my 3.5meter tinny. The rest of the stuff was all cosmetic. Storage lights fuel tank and gas tank mounts and a camp trailer was born for less that 3k. Did the job and still doubled as a normal trailer if it took the flat to of. I guess if you have to pay someone to do the fabrication, the budget can blow out fast.

No pics unfortunately
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Old 26-02-2014, 08:57 AM
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I hope not to have to pay too much for fab. Got a few guys I can barter with. I just don't have the set up yet to do welding. There is other work I can do so it shouldn't be too over the top.
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Old 27-02-2014, 08:47 PM
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brad mcdonald brad mcdonald is offline
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hi mate - i went through a similar planning process before buying our camper. happy to share what i found.

we compared 3 options.

1 - buy new off road camper

2 - build from a heavy duty trailer

3 - buy basic second hand off road camper and "improve" to our specs.


option 1 - found this to be too expensive, not through the base price so much but by time we up speced it to meet our wish list it was a little scary. we look at the imported models as well ..... lets just say they were cheep .....

option 2 - once again the price just got out of hand on this option, but in hind site it probably would have give the most customised result.

option 3 - this is the one we ended up going for.

we searched for locally made heavy duty trailers which were basic but strong. which we could then customise to our needs. we could never find the right combo of tent size, brakes, elec systems, water tanks etc so we had to compromise on a few points but it was most important to have a strong base to build from.

in the end we found a "follow me" camper made in wangara which had an oz trail ten fitted, twin water tanks and a basic 12v elec system. most importantly from my point of view it already had 7 leaf eye to eye greaseable spring packs fitted (good for just under 1t per side), with 6 stud LC rims (same a patrol 6 stud)

from there it was fairly easy to add gery can holders to the draw bar and also we added a hydraulic override brake system, mostly because when i got a bit shocked once i started adding up the weights, , also i thought the elec system would be ok but the closer i looked the more i was surprised that it was still working .... so that got the heave ho and i replaced the wiring and added some led lights, a fuse box and isolator, and re used the trolling battereys from the boat (bit of a pain swapping the over but not too bad)

that was fairly much it before we hit the road for our trip. since we've been back i split the twin water tanks to be two stand alone systems, should have done that before we left. so if i hole a tank again we wont loose all the water only half ....


so to cut a long story short, i reckon your on the right path the only things i'd consider are ;

why tandem? unless you're expecting to be up around 2t i'd stay with single axle, heaps easier off road and more manouverable in and out of tight spots.

make the boat rack removable if you can. for the trips when the boat doesnt come along.

get as much awing space as possible, i was for ever stringing up tarps for extra shade on our trip, complete PIA!


i'm starting to dribble on a bit so i'll stop ... ... happy to answer questions if i can or post pics if needed.
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Old 27-02-2014, 10:32 PM
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Old 27-02-2014, 11:12 PM
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Bear I went through the process of building a camper from scratch with the help of a retired boiler maker.

I combined a Cavalier top with my own design trailer. I went with independent suspension, hydraulic disc, Hyland hitch and generally the toughest gear at the time (eight years ago). I ended up discovering that i built a tougher, well setup trailer that what I could buy at the time for the same money. I spent $17 000 vs $35 000 for the nearest specked trailer.

If I was to go down that track again I think I would now look at second hand models like the Trak Shack or Camprite as cost of campers have dropped considerably over time and there is a lot of good second hand gear available.

I am currently having modifications done to my camper ready for our trip north in May and a mate of mine who is a boiler maker has already copied a few of the commercial folding boat racks available for camper trailers and added them to existing campers. Personally I think this is the best way as you can get to everything easily and load/unload the boat quite effortlessly.

When you say off-road do you mean corrugated tracks or full on tracks like getting into Mitchell Plateau etc? If you want bullet proof tough you will need to look closely at chassis and components.
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Old 28-02-2014, 12:45 AM
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Thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated. I'm not really looking at campers so much, but more along the lines of making the camping a more organised experience. I have all the tents, gazebos etc I need and the real drive behind this is to have something that will take around 200kg on top for the boat.

The boat I've gone for is the Boat n Easy 4.1 Barra Topper:

http://www.flipneasy.com.au/boatneasy.html

Once decked the weight is just too much for any camper I've come across and the cost of a custom camper was putting me off. Thus the idea of blinging out a trailer.

Stu, it's more for tacks than anything else. Get too far from the water and I get the shakes

I also want to set up a few slide shelves for easier access for storage and BBQ etc. also looking at getting a kitchen on a slide as well. Something along the lines of:

http://www.drifta.com.au/UteCarback.php

Sort of thing I'm looking at is along the lines of below:

http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/glen-...ler/1037625797
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Last edited by Bear; 28-02-2014 at 01:01 AM.
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Old 28-02-2014, 01:46 AM
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The is a fully set up camp trailer at one of the big tackle chains that has everything you have described and more. They had a special on with free tool box and stone guards for 5.900 if your looking to save some time.
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Old 28-02-2014, 01:48 AM
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I think that is an MDC and I can't say I'm sold on them yet. If I do get a camper again, it will be a step through as well.
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Old 28-02-2014, 01:56 AM
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Not sure of the brand, just remember the kids playing in it when I was there last and I looked at it and though, I could build it better but it would most likely cost me more even if I was doing the fab my self.
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Old 28-02-2014, 05:13 AM
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Well Bear I just bought the MDC Stepthrough so we will see how it stacks up.I think they have made a lot of improvements since they began and I gave it a pretty good going over and the value for money got me in the end. Will hopefully pick it up in the next few weeks so will post up some pics and give it a bit of a work out. Hopefully I wont be sorry but looked the goods on inspection.
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Old 28-02-2014, 05:32 AM
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The exact one I've been thinking about Mate. Only thing that puts me off them is the boat rack and the lack of ability to change much. They've pretty much used every square inch of space.
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Old 28-02-2014, 05:34 AM
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We have an mdc camper gal extreme with chequreplate toolboxes right the way around with 18 foot tent,can't say enough about it we have 4 kids n over the last o months have spent 11 weeks in it. Mine has the removeable boat racks,the motor n fuel tank go up on front of the tool box up front, it ties beautifully behind the cruiser. We bought it to do the cape in for 2 months this year but we have now decided to do 13 months on the road starting December.
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Old 28-02-2014, 08:46 AM
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Didnt see the boat rack because i didnt want one. With 3 girls no one wants to go fishing so surfing it is now and getting fit and loosing a few kegs in the process.Heaps of storage in the lockable side boxes plus the front toolbox is huge and theres all the space under the bed. Will be interesting once i get all the girls DohDohDohDoh in there how much room will be left .As long as theres room for a wetsuit and a towel i will be happy. Also got them to add another room on the front where the drawbar is the same as the one at the kitchen end to use as the kids room on longer stays.
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Old 13-03-2014, 07:45 AM
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Well, ordered the kitchen today. Wanted something I could check in the Triton if we were doing a Morrison style weekend so bought a Drifta DCB kitchen.
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