Got a new Toy...........A Toy Hauler.....

Thanks Nick.....and I hope all is well on your end. Hope to see you back on the track soon.

 

Thanks Shaun, we are anxious to try it out.

 

No interest in travelling that far to a track I don't like.......Sorry!

 

Peggy and I were just talking about that same thing. I've been working on mine off and on since we brought it home. I've added a clothes pole in the garage for hanging a suit(s) on, a rollaround tool box (minus the wheels and bolted down), figured out a way to mount the Baxleys to the floor without drilling more holes, made a nice location for the paddock stands, a fuel jug holder so it doesn't move around. Then, up front, I spent considerable time building a 20" wide by 5' long slide out for the storage compartment under the front bedroom. There was no way I could utilize all that space under there without some sort of slide, so I built one. I'm going to take the upper queen bed in the garage and turn it into my storage area for two sets of spare tires and wheels....one set with fresh rubber and the other with the rain tires mounted and ready to go. Smaller stuff will include a TPMS system for the trailer that I can monitor on a Android phone or tablet, and a Levelmate Pro with the Anderson leveling wedges. I should be able to monitor when the trailer is level as I'm backing it in place and then use the leveling wedges if needed, all the time monitoring it from a phone app until it's level side to side. I'm staying pretty busy with all the stuff, and fortunately, we've had some pretty good weather this winter so far.

 

Right now it's winterized, so no water hookups until it comes out of hibernation. We did do a PDI walkthrough at the dealership when we bought it and they had a city water line hooked up and we watches everything work, then with the water line disconnected, we watched it work from drawing water from the fresh water tank and using the pump. Most likely, we are going to take it on a "test run" to a campground about 10 miles from our house before we start using it this spring. That should expose any issues that may be there. I'm getting anxious.

 

I guess camping trailers and Toy Haulers are somewhat like motorcycles.........Ya gotta do some mods to them. I've been working off and on, over the past couple of months on a mod for the T.H. and pretty much finished this mod this weekend.

Here are a few pics of a project/winter mod to the new Toy Hauler. The only baggage/storage compartment that the trailer has is in the front of the trailer and there is access from the outside through a pretty small baggage door and from the inside by lifting up the hinged bed in the bedroom. The compartment has enough room for me (I think), but access to the area makes it hard to use very easily. So, a few months ago I started a project of making my own sliding storage tray for the compartment. From the outside baggage door entrance to the other side of the compartment was about 66" and certainly not something that you could just reach into and grab something.......so I made a wooden sliding tray for the compartment.

The first pic is of the tray itself after I built it in the garage. It is approx. 20" wide and 61" long. Peggy wasn't particularly happy with me bringing it into the house (kitchen/dining room area) to screw and glue the tray together, but I don't have a heated garage and I wanted the glue to dry at room temperature.......in the house.....


This pic shows the slide tray as well as the mounting/side guide pieces that I built. 2" x 6" lumber for the sides, with a 5' long piece of Unistrut bolted to the boards. The slider tray itself has a piece of 3/4" x 3/4" aluminum square tubing attached to it, which fits into the opening channel of the Unistrut.



This pic shows the side guide boards with the Unistrut attached as well as the bottom roller/casters that the tray will actually ride on...


This one shows the slider tray installed in the baggage compartment in the locked in travel position....


Here are a couple of shots of the tray slid out and ready to use....



Probably the only other thing I'm going to do is put some very light weight indoor/outdoor carpet in the tray to help keep everything in place and to keep from scratching the painted tray. The spring latch on the front of the tray locks it in place for travel, and the back end of the tray is up against the generator compartment with a rubber bumper between it and the generator housing...

 

Thanks Marc......it's been a little more of a job than I thought, but I think it will work pretty good for it's intended purpose.

 

I'm on three a different RV forums and it's kind of mind boggling looking at all the different mods that folks do to their RV's. I've added several things already...the slide that is pictured, a TPMS system for the trailer, and a Levelmate Pro system for finding level for the trailer very easily. I have already discovered that the room slides work much better when the trailer is level....both side to side and front to back. Hope I've got enough money for tires for the 2017 season!