Camping trailers

[DonkeyApple]

I’ve managed to find a few threads regarding trailers on PH but none have gone into much depth.

While I am not the world’s greatest fan of camping my two girls have reached the age where for them it is a lot of fun and a lovely experience. I am also set on them having a natural appreciation that staying in large hotel rooms, in fancy hotels is not normal and never sits in their heads as such. Ergo, camping over the next few years I have deemed to be the way forward.

I’m not going to go and live in a field for a week at a time but instead plan 2/3 day breaks by the coast whenever the weather looks right.

So far we have had some fun choosing the tent, chairs and other basics and we’ve done two trips with great success.

Anyway, to cut a long story short and get to the point, if I use a roof box then the children cannot help pack and unpack it and Indont agree in them not being involved in that aspect. There is a similar issue with regards to loading and unloading the boot which is that it requires a bit of science to get everything to fit. Also, I have nice cars and I don’t really want them wedges full of kit doing damage to the trim or grinding mud and muck in etc. And finally, the tent is enormous and needs to be lain out to dry once home and is hard work to get into its bag on your own so in terms of packing up, I just want a simpler approach.

I want the whole thing to be simpler. All the main kit and the tent to simply live in a hard top trailer that I can hook up and go and that we can all pack and unpack.

I’ve shortened the list to three brands, Erde/Daxara, Lider and Brenderupp. I don’t want any of the little ones and they need to be at least 110cm wide internally anyway, so for the Daxara this is the 167/8 upwards, the Lider, Venise upwards and the Brenderup the 1205.

These all seem like good quality trailers with hard top options and the plan is to find a good used one that if looked after will hold its value until the girls grow out of camping and it can be sold on.

Ebay doesn’t throw up all that much, Google is mostly dominated with new sales and other brands marketing under other keywords, I’ve looked a bit on Gumtree but there doesn’t seem to be a lot about.

Is there a market place that I am missing? Or are there simply not many of these larger trailers ever up for sale, or is it seasonal etc? Could someone educate me as to this market place and if there are better places to look? Thanks.

[DonkeyApple]

snake_oil said:

There's loads on eBay?

Yup. Lots of the small ones like the Daxara 107 or 127 etc.

The 168 and 198 are the two that are wide enough internally for the kit that have to fit width ways, leaving enough space to the rear to lift in the 6/8 man bohemoth of a tent. They also have an A frame and will be more stable and less bouncy in transit.

[DonkeyApple]

snake_oil said:

The above will do you different sizes. This however seems ideal?

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2...

Thanks. I’ve already elongated that brand on the grounds of tying up £2k for this project is too much. Especially as I have a 100% tax to pay on top of these types of purchases (Whatever I spend on non essentials I give my wife the same!!!).

The Daxara ones seem to be just as good and in a more sensible price range for the job at hand.

[DonkeyApple]

Well, as of about 15 minutes ago I am now the owner of a Brenderupp 1205 via eBay. It seems in good fettle and the price seemed fair at just under £500. It doesn’t have the side extensions but I don’t require them at this moment in time and don’t think I will going forward.

Thanks for all the tips and guidance.

[DonkeyApple]

Thanks. I reckon that at £470 it was a good buy. It’s now all cleaned up and come Spring I’ll grease it up like a Texas pig.

Thatnks for the tip re the bulbs. It might be problematic as I once fitted LEDs to the rear lights of the car and they stick the front lights on permanently!!

[DonkeyApple]

Ok. Getting to that time of year when I need to start thinking through the summer ahead and what’s needed.

The first step is that I need to fit load bars so that the bike racks can go on top of the ABS lid.

I had just assumed that I would simply google Brenderupp 1205 load bars and be proffered a long list of options but nothing at all comes up.

Are loadbars pretty generic with most fitting the same way?

[DonkeyApple]

Thanks. That’s what I’ve been doing. My trailer has the ABS lid so logically you need to attach the bars to the lid as opposed to the trailer sides.

I’ve found noting on eBay which is why I began to think the industry just used generic third party bars and there was some kind of standard that fitted all trailers etc. But I have found a website that claims to have Brenderupp load bars and that these bars fit to the sides or the abs lid. I’ll try and talk to them tomorrow.

[DonkeyApple]

have t exactly rushed to get the load bars fitted but the end solution has been to buy a pair of Dacar ones and use countersunk bolts to fit them to strips of one inch angle iron. That in turn sits on the ABS sill with bolts through the side to fix firmly.

The top rails are BMW roof rails so that the roof box and the cycle racks can hop on and off between the car and the trailer as I leave them fitted to their own whisper bars for simplicity.

[DonkeyApple]

They’re the standard Daxara load bars. I just got two strips on one inch angle iron and drilled and countersunk so the bolt heads were flush with the underside. I’ll take a closer picture.

[DonkeyApple]

Hopefully this is a better image.

You can see that the bracket and the angle iron does sit proud of the lip but the length of angle iron means that it’s all rock solid. The full weight sits on the lip and is secured by a series of bolts through the side.

I had originally planned to drill up through the angle iron that forms the frame for the ABS lid but it isn’t really thick enough to countersink the heads into plus it doesn’t line up with enough space against either the edge of the lid underside or the inside edge of the load bar plate to allow either M6 or 8 nuts and bolts to fit.

The other plan was to cut off the base plate of the bars and braise a new steel plate made to measure to fit the lid and then replate it all. However, not only would that have been more work it would have ensured the whole thing was bespoke to this trailer and this roof bar set up. I chose to fit it all to a pair of angle iron strips as it can all come undone and all the components are as original and the lid would just require 6 M6 gromet plugs.

Edited by DonkeyApple on Thursday 27th August 07:43