5x10 Homemade Teardrop

Great gift ideas for the vintage trailer buff in your life

The 5x10 teardrop was sold in 2009.

Background

Back in January, 2005 my son mentioned a way cool tiny camping trailer he saw at a local RV dealer near his apartment. It turned out to be a Teardrop Trailer--actually this Little Guy Deluxe. When I heard the price I figured we could build one for much less and hit the web looking for information. I found teardrop trailer plans available online for free on the Tiny Tears website.

After doing some research I decided to build a 4x10 foot teardrop based on the old Trailer for Two plans from a 1947 issue of Mechanix Illustrated. The excellent PDF file of those plans was created by J.P. Jennings and is included here by permission. Since I can't weld I had hoped to build the tear on a bolt-together Harbor Freight utility trailer and a few design sites confirmed that it could be done. Bitten hard by the teardrop bug, in mid February I purchased and started to modify the utility trailer.

I also started looking for parts for the teardrop, mostly on eBay. Then in mid March, with the utility trailer waiting for paint, I came across the eBay buy of a lifetime--a 5x10 foot homemade teardrop for $500.00 buy-it-now. Within 15 minutes of seeing the auction I had purchased the teardrop, then started to figure out how I was going to get it from its home in Pennsylvania to my home in New Mexico 1800 miles away. I did get the teardrop home and found I had to rebuild it. You can follow along via the links at left.

Consumed by teardrops I found that working on one teardrop wasn't enough so I bought a couple more. Then a vintage bumper-pull travel trailer for when the teardrop isn't as convenient as I'd like. Then a motorhome for when the bumper-pull isn't large enough or air conditioned enough. Then a vintage scooter to carry on the motorhome's bumper for running to town when I'm at an RV park. You get the idea.

Feel free to follow the insanity that is my life through this page. Thanks for stopping by,
Sam

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Great gift ideas for the vintage trailer buff in your life