Star Dreamer

We have a spot reserved with Kim but are waiting till we have a surgery schedule from the wife's doctor to verify we can make it and make our rally registration. Hopefully by the end of the week we will know something.

Dave (& Deb)

A couple of comments, first quality construction usually comes at a heavier weight so you also need to be prepared to replace your tow vehicle. As far as appliances go, you can do custom builds with residential appliances and specified the way you want it. This is a trailer we had built last year and at over 46' long we were under $100k and that is with a 20' garage. 

We would do a wine tasting/tour while at the rally. We did at least one before with the group and enjoyed it.

3 hours ago, remoandiris said:

Common practice for who?  I've been doing this a little while.  Never needed to do it and never seen it done.  But I don't have one of those bikes that sit too low, either.

We have seen it done quite frequently on the car show circuit and yes it is for low clearance vehicles and bikes. Like others, we have not needed to do that with ours as our trailers always had a beaver tail and long ramp door. Our new trailer sits much higher than our old car hauler type trailers so I use a set of race ramps under the end of the ramp door and it prevents us from high centering or scraping the front end. We never use our rear Jack's and are always hooked up but we are loading a much heavier vehicle than most.

Some people have used jack knife sofas, conversion van seat, made their own, and in our case, I simply made a fold up seat back that I can use the bed as a seat or still as a bed. We added four sets of seat belts to the back wall with extra long belts to use for the seating. On the Freightliner's watch out for the AC/heater unit under the passenger side of the bed, that may cause issues with trying to fit a generic seat in the back.

5 hours ago, Bikertap said:

What is the 5700 vehicle?

Full size custom van!

Our manufacturer said to never have our rear Jack's down during loading and unloading but that may be more because we have a 5700# vehicle. 

The signs at the Maverick fuel stop in Holbrook, AZ showed "Light Class" and "Heavy Class". They had separate truck pumps for the heavy class too. Just don't exit straight out from the truck pumps as the angle looks bad and we were afraid of trailer damage! We backed up and headed back out the way we came in but it was not busy either.

On 12/23/2019 at 11:15 AM, Jack Mayer said:

The ET also has had a number of enhancements in the last year. Including an upward dampener to reduce any oscillation that "could" occur on an unbalanced trailer (too light a pin weight and axles too far forward). Also, a longer release arm is now available, if required. There have been a number of technical improvements that make manufacturing easier and more precise. 

 

Jack, do you have a picture of the extended arm and how much is the extension or total arm length? With the new Pin box we got from RVH, I could probably use an extension as it has a larger base plate than our original pin box and is hard for me to attach our releasing arm.

Dave

Our ET has a 32000# weight limit and an 8500# pin weight limit. Our pin weight varies based on what we have in the garage of the Toyhauler and with a Comfort Ride you have to add or remove air cells to adjust for pin weight. The ET does it automatically. Also the ET SR. comes with it's own mounting plate. The JR can be installed on your existing plate if you have one. I also have a picture of a failed Comfort Ride hitch head so they do kinda scare me on their ratings.

Thanks for sharing, for a moment I thought they were using an unusual air bag which looked like a tire on a wire wheel, then I realized you were using it as a work bench!

On 11/27/2019 at 7:19 AM, SuiteSuccess said:

Thanks Dave.

Here is the email response from Sailun:

Dave, thank you for your inquiry to Sailun tires. I checked with our engineering group and the 6.75” wheel width is allowable for the 215/75R17.5 Sailun S637.

2 hours ago, SuiteSuccess said:

Have one other question after more research.  Says recommended rim size for Sailun 215/75/R17.5 is 6 inches while G114 is 6.75 inches.  Could the 215 Sailun be mounted on my 6.75 rim?  or is this another reason to go with the 235?

When I went with our 215/75R17.5 Sailuns, we ran into the same issue on the rim size and we checked with someone either Sailun or the dealer selling the tires and there was no issue with the larger rim width.

Dave

Try contacting Exide customer support or claims center and see what they say.

2 hours ago, mr. cob said:

Howdy Jon,

Those are some nice looking seats.  My local Peterbilt dealer is about worthless carries next to nothing other then what is needed for the simplest maintenance.  I did stop in at the local Freightliner shop today and they have a very nice selection of National brand seats, one called the Commodore has just about every type of adjustment you could ask for on a seat about 1,000 dollars per seat with out shipping.  I asked if they could give me an out the door price a pair with the low seat brackets and any adapters that might be needed to install them in the Pete, I will make darn sure I am sitting down before he gives me the price.

Dave

For $1000 per seat, I will try to find you some seats like mine, and if you want to drive my way or come to the ECR next spring, I would even install them for that price!

1 minute ago, mr. cob said:

Howdy Star Dreamer,

Those are some nice looking seats.  I never though of mounting another seat to the truck mount, did you take any photos of how you did this?

Dave

I don't think I have any pictures. It will probably vary based on the seat and the seat base, but on ours if I remember correctly, I used a 1" steel square tube running side to side at the front to transition from the seat mounts to the seat base which also helped to tilt the seat up the front. At the rear I used 2 steel angles on each side that made into a Z shape to do the rear mounts. I do not recall which seat tracks I used but I think it was the ones that came with the seats.

Here is passenger seat

23 hours ago, mr. cob said:

Howdy Star Dreamer,

Can you post some photos of these seats, where did you get them?

Dave

We got them off of Craigslist. I mounted the air ride switch to the plastic trim on the seat base and modified the mounting to work with our seat bases.

We prefer 2nd row GM cloth mini van seats with arm rests! $50 is what I paid for the pair and I was able to use our air ride bases. One even came with a drink holder which I use on my driver's seat.

Did this happen on the way to the cat scales or on the way back? If on the way to, then he just saved himself $12 that he would have had to pay for the weigh and maybe even got individual wheel weights which typically cost even more when you can find someone to do them. If on the way back, he already knew he was overweight or could have pulled the scale ticket to show the officer what they scaled it at if under weight.

On 10/2/2019 at 8:09 AM, palmeris said:

What a great idea, nice looking rig too!

Thanks, One other nice thing about those wider doors, is they have door screens just like the smaller doors so we can open them up and have a large cross ventilation system going. Regular escape doors are typically just a large door opening without a screen.

11 hours ago, noteven said:

I waffle between a high in the wind rig for ground clearance and a low out of the wind rig for better fuel mpg, comfort and handling...

oh and my baby 8 KW tow dually is just a little fella... 

Definitely the lower height has it advantage and disadvantages, advantage is it the truck has height clearance the trailer will too! Disadvantage is the head room clearance above the bed in the gooseneck.you do alot of crawling up there unless you are real short!

On 10/2/2019 at 2:57 PM, noteven said:

Star Dreamer - did you sell the trailer shown in your profile picture?

The one in our profile picture was a 2005 44' Vintage that we traded in on a 2017 48' Cargomate. We still have the Cargomate and it is for sale. There is a picture of it in my post on August 31st which looks very similar to the one in our profile picture. Let me know if you want some information on it.

12 hours ago, orca said:

Just curious....why the door on the drivers side?

They are specially located so we have escape doors when loading the vehicle in the garage. Our custom van that goes in there is 84" wide and there is no way to get out the door and walk down the side of the van to get past the vehicle.  We have a similar door on the passenger side , located differently, to allow us to use it if we load our SUV in the garage. They use these same doors, just lower to the floor for their handicap lifts that they use when doing a handicap accessible trailer.

15 hours ago, jenandjon said:

You got solar on that thing or just a generator?

We have 400 watts of solar panels on the roof. So far it has been keeping up with the inverter while we have been traveling during the day but we have had sunny days too.