Star Dreamer

9 minutes ago, lappir said:

I didn't see your rig last night, but as I think about it this morning I don't think I've seen your new rig and was looking for the old one.  Are you all by yourself on the NE?

Rod

 Yes, we are the all white set up straight out from your rear.

1 hour ago, lappir said:

Are you camping at the Rally or just doing the Car Show? 

 

Rod

We are at the rally until Wednesday when we have to leave to head for another show in Wisconsin.

We will be entering a vehicle in the car show on Friday and Saturday, may be a bit cold but we will survive hopefully. If you come by the show and see us by our custom van be sure to say hi.

We will be at the rally later today but cannot stay for the whole rally. 

On 8/11/2023 at 8:38 PM, Danfreda1 said:

Anyone have any pictures from the crossville rally this year?

There were only a few of us there this year. We arrived later and only took one picture of our setup. I believe NTPA did take a few earlier in the week before we arrived.

We had a custom built Toyhauler made by Dune Sport in 2019 for under $100k. We have over 50k miles on it behind our HDT. We put either our SUV or a full size van in garage and can carry our smart car on the bed of the truck. We typically go out for 3-4 months at a time.

Since e-bikes seem to be accepted, you might want to consider doing an e-trike. 

In reviewing the video, you can clearly see the semi in the left lane is closing the distance on the semi in the right lane. The motorhome came quickly up on the right. The article on CDL life indicated the motorhome driver was ticketed, so clearly law enforcement thought he was in the wrong and I agree to.

11 hours ago, rickeieio said:

Agreed Steve.  That's why I favor shortening the pin box.  Much easier and cheaper, especially if/when you need to reverse the process later.

The setup that would require the least amount of space for turning to a full 90 would be a pin in line with the front edge of the trailer assuming a squared off front for the trailer. Rounded fronts change the calcs. A straight down pin box with the pin under the gooseneck area actually needs more room as you have to figure the distance from the pin to the farthest front corner which will be larger that just going straight to the side. An extended pin box gives you more clearance up to the point of 90 degrees and may even allow a little beyond 90 on paper but it will be such a small amount that it isn't worth the time to calculate it.

On 4/14/2023 at 7:20 PM, RV_ said:

Star, you can contact them directly via the link in the OP for specifics. As I said up front lots of these startups fail and this one may too. However the folks involved are all EV enthusiasts so likely got started trying to tow a trailer without losing all they range.

Some of your questions are answered in the videos too.

I hope they do succeed but if not, no issue, I'll just be disappointed.

So get back to us here if you find your answers.

I didn't see or hear anything in the videos that indicates how it communicates with the tow vehicle. I am sure they are working on a solution but the retrofit to an older tow vehicle may be costly. For less than their base model, we had a trailer built that is twice the size of theirs. We purposely went with slideouts because our previous trailers didn't have any and we were tired of doing a dance to get past each other. As with anything in RVing, it is all about what you are willing to compromise one. I think there is a market for it and will have people that want it, just not us as I do not see it meeting our needs. 

Most parks will allow emergency repairs as this is not a maintenance item. Check with the park management. It is possible to do the repair in the field with the right equipment. I would rather have that done there where you can still use your RV vs taking it to a shop where it might be tied up long enough that you have to get a place to stay like a hotel which will not be covered. (Check your warranty, it probably shows that full time use is not covered only recreational use.)

Once Lippert has done the onsite repair, now you should be safe to move the trailer to a repair facility if you feel they did not do a good enough job.

They look like they are mounts for some rear rollers for a trailer so they don't drag the rear bumper. We made some similar ones for some 5" rollers.

Does one vehicle have the towing capacity to tow the other one on a dolly or open car hauler? When we moved from Indiana to MN we had 5 vehicles and a trailer to move and only 4 drivers.  We pulled the trailer with one vehicle and the car went on a tow dolly behind another vehicle.

It also depends on what you final goal is. If all you want to do is haul a 5th wheel RV, you only need to do a few things to a class 8 truck. Add a Jackaloppe for the wiring converter. Add a brake controller like a Tuson Direct Link. Add fenders to protect the RV, either move the commercial hitch towards the rear of the truck so you can turn the trailer without hitting the truck or better yet replace the commercial big hitch with an RV style air ride hitch and mount it at the rear between the frame rails. This part may be the hardest as you typically have to add a little bit of frame to do it. 

Anything else you do is just extra like making a hauler bed, carrying a smart car, adding extra water tanks, adding a generator, adding storage compartments, etc....

I didn't see anything about how you control the self driving feature of the trailer. In other words where is the software and connections that sends signals to trailer to start the motors for the wheels and maintain the same speed as the tow vehicle. Same for braking and is an ABS system built into it? What about slippery roads and bridges, what keeps the trailer from pushing the tow vehicle around. How are turns handle so that the tires on one side turn faster than the other side.

Since it is not motorized does that mean a new class of license plate and registration is needed as it is not really a towable but it is a non steerable motorized unit. 

What is the towing capacity of the Class C you are looking at and have you weighed your Toyota? According to online the Toyota might be around 4500#. You can buy a lightweight aluminum car hauler trailer that weighes around 1500# or less. This puts it at about 6000# total weight.

The only other option I could suggest but you said no to a travel trailer, would be to go with a Dune Sport Toyhauler trailer which makes trailers that can haul vehicles like jeeps and SUVs (ours hauls our 5700# full size van), put the Toyota in it and then buy a truck to pull it. The cost of the Toyhauler and tow vehicle may be cheaper than your class C you were planning on.  

Otherwise RVing is all about what you are willing to compromise on and give up. Good luck in your search.

On 3/3/2023 at 7:29 AM, runaway parents said:

 I do have a question for you what do you do with your waste oil? When I used to change my  my pickup oil. I used to take it back to the automotive stores. After being burned on my last oil change I'm going to start doing it myself. Our automotive store don't take large quantities of used oil Any ideas?

Our recycling center takes used oil, but I only did mine when my son had a shop that burned waste oil. 

The 10 gallons filled up a large tote which then he pumped into his storage tank. If I did it at home, I would have to buy a pump and smaller containers just to be able to carry it out to transport it some place. 

We will be there for a few days arriving on Thursday April 27 and leaving on Monday May 1st.

It looks like we will be stopping by for a few days, arriving mid week on Thursday and staying until Monday morning.

We have a Freightliner Century that we have had for over 10 years now. It was singled short, with the rear axle being moved to the location of the front axle. If I were to do a new truck, I would single mid and put the rear axle between the two axle locations, of course this depends on what wheelbase we are starting with.

In many cases, you still will need to do a frame extension or move an axle in order to have space for an air ride RV hitch that might need to drop between the frame rails at the rear of the truck in order to clear rear suspension equipment. This depends on what hitch you use and what hitch height you want to have. Finding a specific wheel base in a used truck is very difficult. Now if you are ordering the truck new, then you can also specify what frame length you want so even more so you don't have to have a long wheelbase. We have a very short wheelbase but still carry a smart car, it works for us but if I had a much heavier pin weight, I would go with a little longer wheelbase. 

Alot depends on what your bed or area in front of your hitch looks like. On ours, I just mounted an L angle on a horizontal tube part of my bed structure and used the standard Camera U shaped bracket to bolt to it. This put the Camara at the right height to see the hitch. 

42 minutes ago, Kirk W said:

That won't do the job as he needs 240V. "Quickly connect two generators together with this 120V, 50A parallel kit for double the power at RV sites,"

Actually it should as it will give you two legs of 120 volt power to give the 240 volts he needs. Same as in a house circuit. The big question would be if they are in phase or out of phase and if that makes a difference. 

Use something like this  https://www.harborfreight.com/rv-ready-50-amp-inverter-generator-parallel-kit-58374.html

50 amps at 250volts is 12000 watts minimum, are you sure you need the full 50amps to power your heating system in your unit? You may be able to go smaller and keep it more portable or tie two smaller ones together with a parallel kit to give you the 50 amp plug.