Camper Details and Hauling
So, the camper was remodeled from a lightweight centercar framing and the axle you see is only a 2" pipe and not even as thick as a 2" galvanized pipe. Then I ran into the problem of the centercar frame was designed with an open part for the back of the motorcycle in it to move freely up and down. If you look at the page "The Humble beginnings you'll see the framing. When the time came and I realized I had to move the axle forward and re-balance the camper weight, I also had to lengthen the axle which presented a new problem I would not find until I started pulling the camper down the road. Because the new length stuck out about 10 to 12 inches beyond the mounting and even though I tried to support the extra length by putting a coil spring after the leaf spring,it still caused the axle to bend at the end. You can see it in the pictures when we were on the road.
The axle casing is a three inch pipping and called in the Philippines a Dumbbell axle. Don't ask me, I just call it what it is a floating axle.
On this page I will cover the axle transformation. The center-car originally had an axle that was 54" (inches) long. After having had the camper weighed and the tongue weight done, The tongue was way heavier than I wanted. It was 240kg which if you convert that to pounds is 529lbs.
That's just way too heavy for a tongue weight. So, I had to lengthen the axle and move the tires outside the camper for a width of now 74" (inches). If you look closely I welded in a 20" piece after cutting the axle exactly in half and then welded in a double piece of 1 & 1/2 inch flat bar sideways with a piece of 3/8'(inch solid square bar welded to it for a horizontal stability bar.
I have to add that the original leaf springs weren't strong enough to hold the weight of the trailer once I converted it, so I built my own spring combination after research on the methods on the internet. You can say everything about this camper is a custom build! Can you see the coil springs I added on the outside of the leafs to help keep the extended axles straight? All of the leaf spring wedges in between the leafs and the axle, and the coil spring mounts are all custom made.
The very left picture shows the curvature at the end. Thank god it wasn't enough from preventing us getting the camper to it's final location and I stopped a few times to make sure it wasn't rubbing or breaking. I have prepared a 3 inch thick steel U channel to clamp over the entire length of the axle at some point in the future and hopefully that will solve the slooping axle problem.
In these two side by side pictures, you can see the drastic difference of changing wheel position and axle width! And of course, I wasn't satisfied with the wheel rim either so I hunted around Tuguegarao City for a couple of Aluminum mags. You learn things when doing this. In the Philippines, unlike America, no dealership will sell you just 2 rims. Otherwise I'd had bought 2 of a number of different new mags I had seen. So I had to find a dealer that dealt in used wheel rims, then I could buy only two. I then painted the mag part purple to match the trailer facade. They were black.
The difference between unfinished on left, and finished on right! These two pictures show the rough make to the final sealed against the rain finished build. On both the sides and the front I used the real sticky roof seal tape you can buy in Lazada that has an aluminum face. It worked very well for ascetics and sealing the crevices.
Some alternate pictures of the phases of the front of the camper.
These four pictures reflect the changes in the back of the camper around the entrance door. And the newest version of the entrance steps. On the left was the old configuration, and on the right, the new!