A Week of Welding in the Bag

It’s still raining on and off, but the camper is safely parked with her tail snugged up to the workshop door.  There are are still a few things to complete externally, and the goals for this past week included mounting the fenders and fabricating a dual spare tire carrier.

Here’s the tire carrier, designed to carry two 11R22.5 tires on rims (some assembly required)…

And after a bit of CADD and that small detail of “required assembly”, the almost finished product…

The above photo does not show the completed carriage system for the tires, nor the upper support structure which locks the tires into place when the lift is raised.  The carriage is electric winch lifted and lowered, so the heavy truck tires only have to be wrestled around from a few inches off the ground.  When the tires are lifted up to the stowed position, they are locked tightly in place and cannot be removed unless the carriage is lowered.  Locking 5/8″ (~16mm) hitch pins hold the load in place and prevent theft (from hot-wiring the winch or cutting the cable).

 The entire system is modular and the carriage is built to accept a motorcycle carrier, extra toolbox, or anything built later to plug into it.  Below the carriage, there’s another set of receiver tubes which accept a tow bar I built previously when I conceived the system.  It’s lacking a couple pieces of triangulation, needed for towing.

 The fender mounts are also finished now, and secure a set of Minimizer 100 poly fenders to the bottom of the camper…

The above goodies are now safely at our powdercoater in Casper, Wyoming.  In a week, we’ll pick the pieces up and mount the components to the camper.  We’ll post something again next weekend (hopefully with video) when the stuff is installed and working.

This entry was posted on June 19 2009 at 22:07 and is filed under AATREC Construction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.