Advice on building a camper trailer needed

K 'n' N,

Visit as many camper trailer retailers as you can.
Have a look at as many setups as you can.
Get the pencil and paper out and include everything you want and disregard those features you dont.

When I built mine, over a period of time, made so many changes and alterations it looked like a 'pickled' welder had gone nuts.

Cheers.....Lionel.

Kevanancy

Can't help you with plans but I went down this road a few years ago looking for an offroad trailer at a reasonable price.

I looked at trailers from a variety of manufacturers in Melbourne but could not find one to suit my needs. I finally tried closer to home and found one in Adelaide. The trailer is aHeavy Duty Chequer plate 7x4 Modern Offroad Trailer fitted with 16" rims. Then I had to make some alterations like fitting a Treg Hitch, doing a spring over axle on the suspension and fitting Nissan studs to the hubs so that all wheels and nuts/studes are interchangeable with the tow vehicle.

The trailer has done around the 40,000km now without any stress fractures or weld cracks. I have observed that it has not been 'overwelded' giving the body some degree of flexibilty. The trailer has done some extreme treks and well over 1000km of cross country driving. I have made a steel canopy frame for it and my local upholsterer made a canopy with suitable awning for shade or incelemnt weather. The unbraked payload is 750kg though it might go a tad over that at times. Next time I will make sure that I buy one with brakes fitted.

I think that the biggest problem with building your own trailer is to that you might 'over do' your building. Too many welds and too heavy steel sections. I have a friend who is an expert welder and he set about building a camper trailer and by the time he had finished it weighed in at 1300kg and that is unladen weight.

Hope you get some good answers off this forum.

Cheers

Have a look on myswag.org
Loads of usable information.
cheers

It's worth the money to buy Rivers' 'The Camper Trailer Book'. Has plenty of design criteria to evaluate retail units.

But the bottom line is you have to be clear about what you intend to use the unit for, and then build to suit.