DIY Teardrop Trailer: Frame Design | 5 Do's and Don'ts

All right, I've got it. I've got it. Let's design your custom teardrop trailer frame. Hey campers, Mark here from overlandtrailer.com, and in this video, I'm going to give you five steps that you need to hit in order to design a great teardrop trailer frame from scratch. Now, there's a bunch of different ways to do a teardrop trailer frame, and if you want to see all of those, I have a video for it right here. But in this one, we're going to make one from scratch. We're going to buy steel, we're going to weld it together, we're going to put a teardrop body on it eventually. All right, let's jump right in. Step number one is to determine the key design elements that you want in your trailer. This is a custom build, so you can put whatever you want in it, and you need to do a couple of things to make sure everything works. First of all, you need to decide what the intended use for your teardrop is. If it's going to be on-road or off-road, that changes a lot of different things with the frame. For instance, the axle is probably the most important part. If you're going to do an on-road teardrop trailer, you can make it lighter, lighter construction, lighter steel, all of that. But you can also design it to fit with a spring axle or a torsion axle. Those are usually the two main options that people go with. If you go off-road, you're going to probably go with more steel in some form or another, different gauges, or thicker, or different dimensions to make sure that the frame is more rigid. And you're going to design it for a stiffer suspension. So that, again, could be a spring axle. It could be a torsion axle. Perhaps the best off-road axle there is is an independent suspension like a Timbrin or something like that. Another part of the key design requirements is to figure out the overall dimensions that you want, the overall length, the length of the tongue, the width of the trailer, the overall length of the trailer. If you want the trailer body to slip down over the outside of the frame, then you need to make sure that you have enough room for that with maybe an eighth of an inch gap on either side. All of those things need to be determined up front. And think about your vehicle too. If you have the back gate of your truck opens up, let's say, or you have the back hatch of your Subaru, or you have a Jeep and the back of it swings open gate style, make sure there's enough room between the trailer and your tow vehicle. And that includes if you're putting a spare tire on the front or a battery box or something like that, make sure there's enough room to access the back of your vehicle. Now, another thing to think about as you are planning the design requirements of your trailer is to design as much as you can for wiring. So if you're using a channel style, put holes in it and you can run your wiring through that. And that's a way of keeping your wiring very secure under your trailer. That is the wiring for the battery. That could be the wiring for your running lights, your tail lights, side markers, that sort of thing. A big part of designing your trailer frame is designing mount points for the teardrop body. You're going to put a teardrop camper on this thing. How is it going to mount? Is it going to mount through the sides? Is it going to mount through the top into the frame? Is it going to go through both? I recommend a minimum of eight to 10 mounting points. Our kit trailers and the trailer frame kit that we offer has actually, I think, 14 or 16 mount points in it. So there's more than enough to keep that body secure, but I'm always a fan of overkill. So if you're like me and just make sure you have plenty of body mount points in the trailer so that when it's welded up, all of those points are already there and you're ready to go when the body gets dropped on. You can just drop some bolts in and you're done. Now, of course, the last thing that I can't really give you a lot of detail on is anything extra or custom that you want in your teardrop trailer frame. That could be you're putting a tongue box on it. You need to have some mount points for that. You're going to put a spare tire mount on the tongue or on the back or whatever it is. The first trailer I built, I went to a wrecking yard and I pulled some tow hooks off of 1980s Blazers, I think they were. They're big, beefy, way overkill for my teardrop, but I put them on the front and the back because the first one I built was an off-road teardrop and I just wanted more places to be able to throw a strap on it and pull it out of a ditch if I needed to. I don't know that I actually towed off the trailer with those, but they were great for keeping the dog leash. Step number two, make a drawing of your teardrop trailer frame. The drawing will save you time, money, and definitely frustration. There's nothing like doing a DIY project where you get started, you don't have a drawing for it, and then you end up going to the store 300 times because you're just figuring it out as you go. It's a lot more efficient to make a drawing because you'll know very close to exactly what you need and you will be able to have all those supplies on hand, use your time efficiently. Here are the plans for my first teardrop trailer which was an off-road teardrop trailer and you can see it's just a really basic sketch, but it gave me a great start. So that brings me to the two different options that you can do when you're drawing this out. One is to do a hand-drawn version like you just saw. The hand-drawn version is great because it's fast. The downside of this, it's a lot harder to show how all of the joints of the metal will work together without doing a lot of little detailed drawings and that ends up taking a lot longer. Another downside of this, it is a lot harder to envision what the body will look like when it comes and seats on top of your trailer frame. Which takes me to the second way of making a drawing which is a CAD drawing. The advantages of the CAD drawing is that it gives you a very detailed design for your teardrop trailer frame. You can get all of those angles that you want to see in a virtual space. You can print them out so you have the paper when you go to cut your metal or weld your metal. The other thing that is great about is you can see exactly how your teardrop body fits on top if you design your teardrop body in CAD as well. The disadvantages of this is that it is slower than a hand drawing, but the trade-off of that is of course you get more detail. And then another disadvantage of this is just the learning curve of the software. There's a bunch of options out there. The two that I always recommend to DIYers is to go with Fusion 360 is absolutely my favorite. There's a home version of it that is free and I highly recommend that to people. The other version that I know a lot of people use is SketchUp. So at this point it's worth mentioning that we do get a lot of messages from builders who are designing their trailers in Fusion 360 and although we use Fusion 360 we are not experts at it. So we've started sending people over to Kevin at Product Design Online. He has worked with very big companies using Fusion and he is a Fusion wizard. He also does a lot of online teaching. There's a link down below if you sign up for one of his classes you can learn Fusion 360 from one of the best and you will also be supporting this channel as well. Now let's finish up our drawings. Maybe you're just not super excited about making your own drawings and you're not sure if you're going to get everything that you need to get. You can go out there and buy a set of plans for a frame then you can just work from those plans cut all your pieces of metal out drill all the holes all that sort of thing and put it together based on that set of plans that somebody's already figured out. We have a set that's available you can click down below and find those take a look at them whatever or you can look at the free plans that I put up on the screen before. So no matter what I've got you covered in one way or another. Step number three pick your steel material. Now this one kind of goes with step number two when you're making the drawing but sometimes the drawing especially if you're drawing it out by hand you're just making you know a rectangle and you haven't yet determined what type of steel you plan to use. Generally what I would say is if you're going to do an on-road trailer you can go with a one inch by two inch by three sixteenths steel frame and that will be more than enough for your teardrop trailer. The alternative would be if you're going off-road there's a couple of options you can go a two inch by two inch by one eighth inch walled tube or you can do a two inch by three inch by one eighth inch tube if you want the walls of your teardrop trailer to come down and still have you know room for some of the axle systems to be able to attach below the trailer body. Another thing about choosing your steel is to choose your steel shapes. There are so many options there's the channel, there's the tube, there's angles, there's all sorts of things but if you have your design and you can figure out how to do it with one or two or three shapes and that's it it will save you time it will save you money. Definitely go with as few shapes of steel as you possibly can just because it forces a simple design and you can buy in bulk so it'll save more money. The last part of your steel shapes is to plan your cuts efficiently and that's something I've always loved about you know getting magazines and you look in there and they have all the cut diagrams but when you're designing your own you can't figure out the cut diagrams super efficiently and that's where I love this tool that's online. They don't sponsor me or anything it's just something I like it's called cutlistoptimizer.com again I'll put a link to that down below and you can put in all of your steel shapes and your steel lengths you can also account for blade thickness then you can put all of the parts that you need for that shape into cutlist optimizer and you can say go and cutlist optimizer will lay them all out in the most efficient way with the least amount of waste and then you have a cut list you also have a picture of it you can take both of those go cut those things out and you'll be as efficient as you possibly can with a free tool that's online now I believe cutlist will only let you run like 10 simulated cuts a day but if you're patient you can run 10 one day learn a bunch of stuff run 10 the next day and you'll get it you'll get down to where you're like this is exactly what I need step number four is to get professional feedback on your trailer frame design now probably the most important place to start is with your government authorities these are the people who will approve and inspect your trailer frame to make sure that it's good to go down the road you want to make sure that you are meeting all of their criteria so that you don't have to go in for multiple inspections which is a pain because often it'll cost more money or at least more time go through your local jurisdiction whether it's a state or province or whatever find what it takes for a home-built trailer to be passed through inspection and some states or provinces will also have criteria for home-built RVs for instance when I built my first teardrop trailer in the state of Washington in 2007 at the time Washington did not have a home-built RV category they just had a home-built utility trailer so I was able to take the trailer frame with a deck on it and with some temporary lights in they inspected it they punched the VIN code into the tongue and I was able to take it back and after that point I could have done anything with it I could have turned it into a utility trailer or turned it into the teardrop trailer since then they have added a home-built RV category so in Washington I would have to have a body on it and all that other stuff to get it passed through inspection here in the state of Idaho it's the exact same thing I have to have a body built and put on the frame in order to take it in for inspection the second person that I always recommend you talk to is a professional welder even if you're not going to them to weld the trailer for you pay them a little bit for their time and have them look at your designs and get their feedback on it these people do this stuff all the time they know all of the shapes of steel they know all of the best processes and the best practices and you can get their feedback in 20-30 minutes it's invaluable sometimes for what you are planning to do and professional welders are also great at helping you source materials as economically as possible often you can just buy from a local welder because they buy stuff in massive quantities and they can get a price point that you can't just get when you walk in somewhere else and you're helping them out and it's helping you out it's a win-win now I mentioned steel providers you can go to your local steel places and ask them what they think too you can talk to them about the different shapes of steel because sometimes it doesn't make sense like a two inch by two inch by eighth inch may cost more than two inch by three inch by eighth inch steel tube it just depends on the market and what's happening the other thing that I love about steel providers often they will do cuts for people so if you want them to cut things into shorter lengths if you buy a 20 foot stick they will cut them down and sometimes they have cut offs somebody came in and they bought something but there's an extra five feet of that that they put on a rack somewhere and they're selling it at a discount it can save you a ton of money on your build so it's definitely worth talking to the steel providers as well now another professional that I always recommend people talk to if you're planning to have your trailer frame professionally painted or powder coated talk to those people because they can give you tips that will make it easier for the finish to go on your trailer the main one that I always have heard is to make sure that you don't have any like really hard to access places for powder coat or paint to get into make sure that everything's open you can get to all sides of it and be able to seal all those surfaces off but be sure to talk to those people go through your space that you're planning to build this in and make sure it's safe make sure you have all the tools you need to actually execute your design that's not really a design thing but part of it is if you're going to be you know having to compensate for a small space like I built my first one in a garage that was so small you couldn't even open the doors of our Subaru in it I had to design the trailer in such a way that it was easy to move out in the driveway and back even though it was just going to be me just go through and make sure that what you're designing will actually work in the space you plan to fabricate it in okay so now you have a jump start on your design hopefully now you've got your brain going sit down make a list of things you want to put in your trailer and start figuring this out so that you have a design on paper and then we can go into the next step which is actually getting started building it this is where things get exciting if you're enjoying this series on teardrop trailer frames you're probably going to like the video I made on the different types of teardrop trailer frames right there and then I have a playlist that I have where just all teardrop trailer frame related stuff is right down here thanks for hanging out with me and I'll catch you guys in the next one