DIY Teardrop Trailer: Top 5 Frames | Pros and Cons

What people will do is they'll come up to this utility trailer and they'll say, I'm going to slap a teardrop on that. And so they come in and they cut this top rail off, which is welded to the fenders. So they remove the fenders, they remove the back gate, and sometimes they'll take out this wire mesh that's on the deck of the trailer. But what just happened to the structure and the strength of the trailer by doing all of that? Hi campers, Mark here from overlandtrailer.com, and in this video I'm going to cover the five most common DIY teardrop trailer frames and the pros and the cons of each one. I'm not just approaching this from the angle of this is what people do. I'm also approaching this from the angle of this is how much work they have to have done to them over time. Let's get in. The very first one I think is the one that hails back the longest. Nobody knows who built the very first teardrop trailer. We do know who built the first manufactured trailer, but the first teardrop trailer I suspect was somebody who built one in their barn, pulled together with repurposed materials. And there are still people who build their trailers this way. Maybe you have an uncle who's, you know, a little off and he's always the guy that shows up to the family events and never wears a shirt, but when he passes away, he leaves behind in his will that you get his boat trailer or that you get his utility trailer. And then you're like, cool. And then you go see it and it, it needs some, it needs some TLC. Or maybe you just have scrap steel sitting around or you find scrap steel on Craigslist or something like that. And you pull together these materials that have served a purpose somewhere else in the world and you figure out how to put them all together into a frame for a teardrop trailer. That is the repurposed teardrop trailer frame. Now it comes with pros and cons. The pros are that usually you save a lot of money doing this because you may start with a trailer frame already, or you have an axle already or something like that. Or you're just buying materials that are inexpensive from somebody else who just has it sitting around. And so you can do a fair bit of savings on this. You also have total creative freedom with this. So you're building kind of from scratch and you can make this thing fit custom to your teardrop trailer design and idea. The cons of this is that usually these materials come in some sort of dilapidated state. So they may be bent the wrong way if it's a boat trailer or if it just got hit or something. The, the material finish may be rusted or damaged or scraped that it takes a considerable amount of time to repurpose these materials and to figure out how you can make them all work together into a trailer frame that you can put your teardrop body on. Now if you don't already have metal working tools, then you're going to have to have a bunch of those to get this job done as well as the skills and the comfort to do it. So that could be a con. However, if you're looking for an excuse to buy some tools, then this is maybe a pro. The second most common approach to the teardrop trailer frame is some sort of bolt together kit. These bolt together kits are by and large imported trailer kits that come off a boat and then you go to a large imported tool store and you buy them. Now, ideally I would be able to show you one of these kit trailers. However, right now there is a big supply chain snarl and getting one of these trailers takes about four months in my area here in North Idaho. So I don't have one to show you, but you've seen some pictures and hopefully that is good enough. The advantages that they have for the DIY builder is that you don't need to have metal working skills or much experience with metal to be able to make a trailer. And that is probably the number one advantage of these. Another big pro for this trailer is that it is very quick to assemble. It's the fastest of all of the trailers in this list. You just have to have some basic hand tools and you can bolt this thing together and have it ready to go within an afternoon and then just move on with the rest of your teardrop build. So a definite plus on the saving of time. The other thing that people will say is that they are inexpensive. That is true. The upfront cost is less than the rest of this list. However, it does have a long-term cost that people usually forget about. The cons of these, these bolt together kits is that the quality control of them is kind of all over the place. The long-term durability of the finish on them, which is usually a paint, typically red or black is usually not that great. I've seen a lot of these that are very corroded or rusted. The gauge of metal that they use is fairly thin and it's not forged metal. It's a sheet that they cut into chunks and then fold it. It's not going to have the same durability as a forged piece of steel. The bed size of the trailer is often fixed to a four foot by eight foot, which fits the vintage style size of a teardrop trailer. If you want to do like a historic size, but the most commonly produced teardrop trailer and the size that most people want nowadays is a five foot wide by eight foot trailer. And there are ways to make that frame work, but it takes some figuring out. And the axle placement on this trailer kit is usually set up for a utility trailer and not for a teardrop trailer. It usually needs to be moved back. A teardrop trailer is heavier in the galley area where all your food is, your cooler, often haul water back there and stuff. And then the sleeping area is fairly light. It's mostly empty space that is a bed and maybe some of your clothes, which are typically toward the back over the axle. And so the axle placement for this, uh, bolt together kit trailer is not correct for a teardrop trailer. Now another con is about the axle, and I know this isn't a video about axles, but the axle comes with the kit. So we're going to talk about it. Anyhow, their recommended maintenance for the axle and hubs of this kit is that you repack the bearings with grease every two to 3000 miles that you put on it. When you're looking at a travel trailer, that's kind of an unrealistic number. And I would say most people don't actually do that, but it will help an axle that has all, you know, quality control. That's kind of all over the map. It will help that last longer. But the idea of tearing the hubs apart, pulling the bearings out, cleaning everything, repacking it with grease and putting it back together every two to 3000 miles just does not seem like it's worth it to me. Another thing in the user's manual is that they recommend you don't pull this trailer faster than 45 miles per hour. The reason for that is you do not have highway rated tires on this trailer. And that's what makes me really nervous about these is somebody who will buy one of these kits, put it together, put their teardrop on it and go down the road at 70 miles an hour on the freeway without realizing that the tires they have are not rated for that. And it is then unsafe. So if you buy one of these kits, just count on replacing the tires and perhaps the wheels to whatever combination you want, but be sure you get something that is rated for highway use. And then as far as longterm maintenance, and this is where my experience has kicked in, bolts need replacing or they need some sort of thread lock on them or they need nylon locking washers to keep the frame held together. These bolt together trailers are very common in the teardrop community and people like them, but they do come with those certain trade offs. And like I said, some of them as a kit, um, are pretty good and others are not good. And it's hard to know when you're just buying that and you can't call anybody to ask customer service because it is just an imported product. Now for the third trailer, we're actually going to get in the car and go just look at one. So let's do this. Okay. So I'm at the big box shop here since I am here, there's some traffic around, so hopefully you can still hear me. Let's look at the pros and the cons of building your teardrop trailer on one of these big box trailers. I'll start with the pros. There's some definite pros here. First of all, it's a welded trailer frame. You're not going to end up with any of those rattling loose issues you have with that, that bolt together frame. And so long as you don't, you know, break it in some way as you're putting your trailer together, uh, it should be fairly sturdy. I'm going to have one caveat to that in just a second, but it should be fairly sturdy. The second thing is it's already painted or powder-coated. It is already finished. You don't have to do that. That saves you a lot of material, waste, smells, work. The third thing is that they usually have highway rated tires on them. It is already vinned. So it already has the registration numbers and everything that you need for the government. You can just hook this up, sign some papers and drive away. So that's really nice as well. The last thing is probably something that most people don't think of, which is most of these weld together big box trailer frames are made somewhat locally. So in the case of this trailer, it's made in either Virginia, Nevada, or Texas or Iowa or Georgia. It's made in the United States, which means if you have any issues with it, you should be able to call this phone number here and get an actual person to help you with, you know, whatever your issue is. It is at least nice to be able to make contact with the people who manufactured your trailer frame. Now that we've covered the pros, I want to tell you how most people in my experience utilize this trailer for a teardrop. And so they come in and they cut this top rail off, which is welded to the fenders. So they remove the fenders, they remove the back gate, and sometimes they'll take out this wire mesh that's on the deck of the trailer. But what just happened to the structure and the strength of the trailer by doing all of that? This trailer is made out of two inch by two inch angle iron, and it is typical for these trailers to be made this way. This top rail actually supports this bottom rail. They work together to provide the strength of the trailer. So by removing this top rail, which is also tied to the fenders, the fenders are providing strength as well because it's all welded together. By removing all of that, you have significantly weakened this trailer. So this trailer was 1,650 pound capacity. I don't even know what it would be anymore after that. So you need to take some of this material and weld it in to provide more support for this frame, or you're going to have a floppy trailer going down the road. Now, the cons of using this for your teardrop trailer. First of all, it's almost always modified, which weakens the trailer frame, which is a lot of extra work, and it ruins your paint job, which was one of the pros that we had. The second thing is that it can be too wide. If you want your trailer to slip down over the outside of the frame and cover up the frame, this is exactly 60 inches wide, which means you need to make your trailer body 60 plus the width of your plywood. But then if you want to put metal over the top of your trailer, the metal is going to come in maximum 60 inches wide, or you're going to have to cut it into several pieces, which puts more holes in your roof, and then you have to consider your galley hinge. Are you going to find one that's long enough? Thankfully, you know, Overland Trailer, we have some that are longer. Those are all considerations. What starts at your foundation will translate to the roof. So think about those things. And when I'm looking at long-term maintenance of this, there are two areas that I'm really going to look. What are the things that are going to wear out? One is the axle and the other is the coupler and the chains. But the axle to me is a big deal. To have an imported axle on this, these have quality control that's all over the map. So you could get one that's really great and it lasts forever, or you could get one that just doesn't do a great job and dies within a few years. So that's just the risk that you're going to have to take because these are made locally. Sometimes you can find them and they will have an axle that's made by Dexter or Lippert or, you know, some company that's somewhat local that you can call and say, hey, I want replacement parts for this. And you can get those replacement parts. Now I want to add one more thought and comment on this. This trailer is made out of steel. They have these that are also made out of aluminum. They don't have one here. I would show you, it looks basically the same, but it's made out of aluminum. Now if you cut the top off of this and do all the modifications that I was talking about, it weakens the steel one. It desperately weakens the aluminum one. And you need to certainly reinforce that for it to be safe to go down the road is a little bit more tricky because most people are more comfortable welding steel than they are aluminum. And so they're going to bolt aluminum pieces in or something like that. Those can easily fatigue over time. All right. I'm in the middle of editing this right now. And I thought, ah, you need this piece of information. If you buy this aluminum utility trailer and then you decide to bolt pieces in, don't bolt them in with stainless steel hardware. A lot of people have done that and then they are like, what the heck is happening? The reason for this is because aluminum and stainless steel chemically react with each other in a process called galvanic corrosion. Basically the electrons from the aluminum leave the aluminum and go into the stainless steel. A short version, you're putting cancer into your trailer. It will eat away the aluminum and then your frame is destroyed again. So use a different type of hardware and make sure that it's not going to actually react to the aluminum. All right. Back to the parking lot. Now, I will say some people use this trailer. They'll pull a teardrop body in here. Their doors open above this rail and they don't really modify this too much. So if you like that look, it works. It really does. Back to the shop. Number four, the DIY welded trailer frame. This one's pretty straightforward. You purchase the raw steel brand new and you weld it together yourself. The pros of doing this is you have total creative freedom over what your teardrop frame ends up being and it has one purpose. You're building it for the purpose of putting a teardrop trailer on it. You're not trying to make a boat trailer work or a utility trailer work. You're not trying to, you know, shove a round peg into a square hole, so to speak. You're building it for the purpose that it is going to serve. So that is a definite plus. And the frame, once it's welded up, if it's done correctly, it should last longer than the rest of the entire trailer. In fact, there are frames that were welded together by manufacturers and individuals right after World War II that are still on the road. And those are the ones that I really, really am just inspired by. The cons are that this type of trailer takes longer to assemble and design than a bolt together kit. The other thing is that it requires some level of metalworking comfort and skills and tools in order to make this DIY welded frame. Another con is that it typically costs more than the bolt together trailer frame. However, it's long term maintenance is a lot less than the bolt together trailer frame. So I would probably say that's a wash on cost over the lifetime of the trailer. The last thing is that it has to be finished. So you have to somehow powder coat it, paint it, something like that, which really isn't a big deal. But compared to a pre-finished bolt together kit or the utility trailer that we just saw, you're going to have to put some paint on it, some primer paint, or take it to somebody and have it powder coated and baked. Point number five is more or less a sub point to point number four. And that's just something that we've started doing at Overland to help the DIYer at home, which is still a raw steel trailer frame, but it's a raw steel trailer frame kit that is cut by lasers to our manufacturer specifications. And the pros of that is that it saves a lot of time and design drilling and cutting. Another pro is that it is also something that builders have purchased and then hired a welder to come and just weld it. They don't have to hire the welder to design it, cut it, drill it, and then weld it. They just hire the welder to weld it. And then the number of tools that they need to finish this is actually less because really all you need at that point is an angle grinder and be willing to grind down some welds and clean it up. The disadvantages of this are essentially the same as option number four where you have to finish it yourself. You're going to need some metal working tools, but not nearly as many as option number four, and it's going to cost more than a bolt together kit. Now I know what you're thinking. Which one do I prefer? Well, I'm going to go all the way back to my very first teardrop build in 2007 when I decided to do option number four, which is to weld up my own teardrop trailer frame for the specific purpose of putting a teardrop trailer body on that frame. And if you want to see more about that build and my designs and all that, it's all free. It's down below. There's a link to my free plans, I guess is what we call them. I would rather camp than do a bunch of maintenance on my trailer frame. So those are the five most common DIY teardrop trailer frames that are out there. And if you want to see more about teardrop trailer frames, I have a playlist right here of all the videos that we have on teardrop trailer frames. And remember, this is your foundation. This is actually the trailer itself. Make sure it's built right and it's built once, and I will see you in the next one.