Travel Trailer to Tower Trailer conversion

[mainah-SUN]

My T1700 has a metal roof when I bought it it had some water damage I pretty well pin it down to the stink pipe but the PO covered the roof edge with standard roof tar. There is aluminum finisher on the edge that I had to remove to get rid of the tar to see why he covered it and that's when I found out it can't leak there! The edge of the roof material is hammered over the edge about an inch at 90*. After they did that then they had at it with something approaching 200 staples and then for good measure they screwed the finisher on with with 2 dozen screws.

 

[holmzie]

UNIXdude Axle answered plus comments on above

Hey UNIXdude, I read your thread about the Sunny Axles and your Field Day event, you really got'er done, I'd say. You may have some parts I'd be interested in, but for right now, I'm going to sit tight. And... you have TWO doors on your Sunny? Did it come that way? Wowzer.

Reading mainah and JohnB comments with interest. What a learning curve i'm in. And my further comments may be beyond the purview of this forum, but I'm gonna stick with it unless I get complaints. I will alway refer to this as a Sunline Star-Ray trailer!

For now, I will use the axles and suspension I have. The commercial unit I'm fashioning after is 7"5" wide, and mine is about 7' wide, that's pretty close. If I load the trailer or build a box on it, I may not have a comfortable amount of head-room weight capacity-wise.

I was wrong about the tower tilt-over for the stowed/travel position. The triangle will be pointing down, not up, and the highest part of the tower will be the eyelets for the tilt-over boom at the 8' level from ground. Add a few inches for clearance? Maybe. But this puts the center of gravity quite a bit lower. The outrigger jacks will also raise the trailer a little when deployed.

I have plenty of time to think about this, as I am back on the job in Summit during the week days. I will have to wait till spring next yr to work on the project.

Our OMARC Hamfest is this Saturday, at the Spring Lake HEIGHTS Fire Department, FYI.

See ya on the forum, fellas.

holmzie N2EXG

 

[JohnGB]

I was wrong about the tower tilt-over for the stowed/travel position. The triangle will be pointing down, not up, and the highest part of the tower will be the eyelets for the tilt-over boom at the 8' level from ground. Add a few inches for clearance? Maybe. But this puts the center of gravity quite a bit lower. The outrigger jacks will also raise the trailer a little when deployed.

Hi holmzie,

Not knowing exactly what you were thinking with the outrigger jacks, I'll add a few comments to help the cause.

If these jacks are the ones that came on the camper, heads up. They are really stabilizers and not really jacks to lift anything. While they can handle a little sag, not really a lifting device. They cannot handle the load.

That said, if you are installing a real lifting jack, like a tongue jack rated at 2,000# or more on each corner of the frame, well the jack then can handle those loads. But... heads up. These camper frames are thin and very flexible. The actual wood flooring system helps stiffen up the frame from flexing. Point being, if you actually jack the camper up at each corner, assuming you are doing this one jack at a time, be careful for frame twist. If all 4 jacks were roller chain tied together so they all 4 move at once, then you may have a chance of lifting the camper even. But even does not help if you are on unlevel ground.

Having dealt with failed camper frames, just a friendly heads up, these camper frames are not built like utility trailer or flatbed trailer that can handle some twisting loads in the corners and still be OK. To level out the camper, we drive up on wood or plastic blocks under the tires on the down hill side, then put the stabilizers down to help take out some of the trailer wiggle just walking around inside.

Hope this helps

Thanks

John

 

[holmzie]

Outriggers vs stabilizer jacks...

Hey, JohnB and all,

Yah, get a load of some outriggers below. The pic is a tower over 100' tall, with an antenna on top of it. My outriggers would be less substantial. Both the single and double axle CT-70 cuts are of the Tri-Ex LM470 tower of mine. I have sources for HD jacks at Fazzio's, but always looking for ideas...!

My tower presently is laying flat on the Sun-Ray trailer, and there is about a 1/2" bow on the side frame members from the weight! The timbers in the middle are over the "z" channel which provide little support, so it's no wonder they have flexed under the load. Bouncing around like that would definitely fatigue the frame over time. Not ME. (The Star-Ray's weight was evenly distributed over the whole platform and the decking helped.)

Looking at the two cut attachments, the dual-axle cradles the center of the tower over the axles, while the single axle unit cradles the tower closer to the front, nearer to the trailer's fork. Lots of possibilities here. Both are from Tri-Ex at different times.

I would first weld up a 8' high "uni-frame" tilt-down cage, like the attachments show. This is the "Tilt-Over" base, upon which towers of this sort are supported. This base assembly can be then be adapted to the rear of any suitable trailer. But for now, since I have the trailer's title, It may make sense to utilize this trailer, and just modify it to my needs.

My suspension and axles should be beefed up and re positioned someday, (and possibly attached to a slide-able section of framework to allow adjustment of tongue weight according to load). But note, the idea is just to have a tower on a registered trailer, to have at home, and to be able to tow it to a local event. It doesn't have to be perfect.

holmzie N2EXG

 

[JohnGB]

OK got it. Your stabilizers are something totally different from those that may have been on the camper frame. Good. This large outriggers look much more substantial and long enough to help.

Thanks for explaining.

Thanks

John

 

[holmzie]

Outriggers vs stabilizer jacks...continued

JohnB, always fine to hear from you.

My outriggers have to fit on the trailer so they could be up to 15 - 20 feet long, shorter than the collapsed tower at the stowed position. But the weight adds up quickly.

Hey JohnB: Get a load of the anchors I found, mite be useful for Sunline owners. They are made of heat treated aluminum, and real light.

For me, I would install 1 or two through each pad a the end of the outriggers and a few at the tower base. Getting info from my engineer-ham buddy. This would quadruple the stability of my outriggers and tower base.
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So, I am off to another project, and putting the tower/trailer on the back burner for a while. Ya will hear back from me now and then.

holmzie N2EXG


Anchors for my outriggers?