I friend of mine has approached me about building an enclosed trailer for him. After checking at the rental places I see the roof supports are shaped like a U with wings. Something like this --__-- does anyone know of a source for this and how do I make a gentle curve to it so the roof will shed water.
each end to fit down into a couple of screweyes or eyebolts. Ken.
try lucky b
LSMW
An awful lot of enclosed trailers, including my own, have flat roofs. If you think about it, the odds of the trailer ever being parked level are pretty slim, and water sheds off just fine. they also are typically one piece aluminium for the top - no seams.
Brian
First a giant no to Ken's concept. Nobody would consider trying to drill and rivet rebar for a roof arch. It is absolutly the worst structural shape for the application. Roof arches are usually done on a three wheel ring roller and just a little crown is put in. Brian has a very interesting piece of aluminum on top of his trailer. 8' x 20' with no seams. I think he needs to look again because this would be tough to buy. I have seen the arch tubing bandsawed in a notched configuration and then bent. Looked absolutely awful and I walked away from that trailer builder figuring if he didn't know what he was doing in the roof area I sure didn't want his frame. I don't know where to send you for bending square tubing but be careful about listening to bad advice on RCM. Leigh@MarMachine
IIRC aluminium roof sheets for trailers are made up of low profile corrugated (1/4" max.) sheets running the short way, lock seamed and sealed along the joints and supplied to the builder in a roll. The roof sheet is unrolled onto the slightly arched plywood, mastic coated deck and secured around the edges. At least this is how my suppliers used to do it before we started specifying membrane roofing. Gerry :-)} London, Canada
Gotta reply - nobody said anything about drilling and riveting anything - or for that matter even what the roof was going to be made of. I only mentioned the rebar as a shaping medium to get the gentle crown needed to make the appearance right. The rebar can be used under a tarp, plywood, sheet steel, sheet aluminum or whatever. The simplicity of it is that the rebar only has to be slightly bent to provide the shape and the ends of the rebar can be mounted inside the trailer in any fashion that will support the bows vertically. Ken.
Leigh, I guess the concept of a roll of .032" aluminium, 8' wide, is something you havn't considered. One piece roofs are the standard in the industry for quality car haulers, at least. This is pretty close to what I have:
Note the spec - "one piece roof". There's actually a good shot of the roof bows, too.
Brian
on
The trick to bending aluminum square tubing it to first, using two pieces of round stock ( say 1/4 inch) place one on each side of the area of the square stock where the bend will be made, one on the "top" the other on the "bottom" of the bend, put this is a vice and squeeze the square stock so you have a concaved impression in both sides of the stock, now you can place the square stock in the tube bender and bend the square stock without it buckeling or splitting. Just so you know, I have seen it done at a trailer factory, I have talked with repair people at the factory and specifically asked how to do this, this is what they told me....I have yet to try it....but I believe it works great and is as easy as it sounds....
Good luck.
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