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During
the first test drive and our maiden voyage
camping trip I noticed that the trailer
didn't pull as nicely as I had hoped. It
felt squirrelly and unstable at times,
simply scary. While I had measured with a
shipping scale that the trailer had about 70
lbs. of tongue weight, I read that it should
be 10-15% of the complete weight. Since the
camper weight in at 1100 lbs. on a truck
scale, that would be around 110-160 lbs. of
needed tongue weight. |
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For
a test I loaded steel plates into the tongue
box and went for a test drive. The trailer
behaved much better. That meant I had to move
the axle of the trailer further back. After
some calculations I came up with that I would
need to move the axle back by about 12". I
really didn't like the idea of modifying the
trailer, but the simple design of the Harbor
Freight trailer made it relatively easy to
unbolt the axle, drill new mounting holes and
bolt it back in place. |
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With
this modification the tongue weight changed
from 70 lbs. (100 lbs. with added steel
plates) to 150 lbs. and made the trailer very
stable and easy to pull. The hitch of my
little car (Honda Fit) has a maximum load of
200 lbs., so still well within the limit. This
is a very important point to get right, as it
is simply not safe otherwise. |
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I
converted one of the inside lights and one of
the exterior lights to red using red plastic
foil. This modification helps greatly with
night vision in a completely dark campsite.
I also installed interior lights with USB
outlet as reading lights right behind
where our pillows are. This makes reading a
book much easier and we can even charge our
phones or tablets while being in bed. |
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I
often get asked what I used for a mattress. I
got a trifold
full size mattress, which allows us to
use it as a mattress as well as a couch. While
it is only 4.5" thick, it is very comfortable.
To have a soft surface when we use the
mattress as a couch I put in a 4'x6' 1/2" thick tile mat,
which is a nice addition and much softer than
vinyl on plywood.
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We
are very happy with how the whole camping
trailer turned out. It sure was a lot of work,
but I actually enjoyed most of it and we got
exactly what we wanted for a price that we
could afford. It's not off-road capable, but
neither is our car. Both will do gravel roads
just fine.
The only caveat was that we didn't have heat
for really cold nights if we didn't have shore
power at a state park, where we then could use
an electric space heater (the battery could
not support the load all night with an
inverter). To remedy this issue I purchased a
Chinese
Diesel Heater and installed it in a box
to make it portable. Read
more about it here.
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