2/12/2011 Update: One month later, this fantastic trailer remains available and the seller would love for it to go to a BaT reader before he lists it elsewhere. Contact us at mail@bringatrailer.com if you are interested.
From 1/10/2011:
This 1951 Royal Spartanette 35-foot travel trailer, originally built by the Spartan Aircraft Company, has been restored and customized as a classic car hauler with adjacent lounge space and bathroom. The exterior is all riveted aluminum, and it has been fully polished. The clam-shell rear doors open to reveal articulating ramps and a 21-foot long and 7′6″ wide garage area that the seller designed for a 1956 Lincoln Continental (it also fits his ‘55 Porsche Continental quite nicely). The details are mind-blowing, and it is available in Farmington Hills, Michigan for $125k.
The seller built the entire trailer himself, and his extensive details of the customization are included below. An amazing 727 photographs of the entire build process are viewable in sequential order here on his CarDomain build thread.
The old chassis was sand-blasted and welds were repaired. The combined chassis were painted with industrial Rustoleum primer and two topcoats. The 10,000# trailer tongue was welded by a certified welder. He also welded the mounting pads for the air suspension. The trailer is fitted with (3) 8,000# Dexter axles giving 24,000# of disc brake stopping power. The hydraulic power is provided by a 1600psi hydraulic actuator that’s powered from the on-board battery bank. The brakes are activated through a relay powered by the tow vehicle’s brake controller or the required breakaway switch.
The garage space is lit with 12-volt fluorescent lights and a 12-volt spotlight for night loading. The walls are FRP (Fiberglass Reinforced Panels) commonly used in restaurant kitchens. The flat belly pan is made of FRP and diamond plate aluminum. The floor is recycled 1/8″ rubber sheathing glued in place. The e-tracks are secured to the frame and deck with hundreds of stainless-steel fasteners. At the nose of the garage are storage cabinets and two door to allow access to the front of the car for tie-down. Above the cabinets is a storage tank for potable water for the cabin. Below the storage is a 10,000# winch that pulls vehicles into the trailer and then pays them out once the front end is lifted.
The ramps are operated with a 12-volt linear actuator that lowers the lower half of clam-shell rear end why paying out the ramps so that they lay on the ground by themselves at the touch of a button. Raising the front end allows the ramps to be in the same plane as the deck allowing for very long, or very low cars. The exterior of the trailer is mostly original, requiring 400 hours of polishing the Alclad aircraft aluminum skin to a high reflection. Speaking of reflection, this trailer disappears at night as the sides are curved. It requires conspicuity tape as a cars headlight are reflected down and out of sight without the strips. The trailer has LED lighting in current DOT configurations with an additional set of brake lights down low for additional safety. The breakaway switch activates this set of lights in case of separation.
Up front is a partitioned air-conditioned and heated Tiki Lounge, equipped with running water, wine cooler and microwave. The original trailer body came off and was suspended from my shop ceiling for a year and a half while I built a new chassis for it. Actually, I welded the old chassis to a new one, adding 1,100# of 1/4″ wall 2″ x 6″ steel tubing, creating an new tongue, substantially increasing the capacity of the frame.
The cabin is done in aluminum trimmed bamboo that fit the curvature of the interior perfectly. Built into the floor are all the mechanicals hidden by a floor hatch that lifts up on hydraulic shocks. The furniture is period-correct as is the fabric for the window treatments. The blinds can be pulled and the doors locked for privacy to use the RV toilet stowed in the cabin. The sills and table tops are a composite material that will last forever. The hanging lamp is a real Herman Miller fixture. The private mementos, nor the ‘55 Cab, are not included in the sale.
The battery bank, currently set up with 4 batteries, is expandable to 8 batteries for extended off-grid run time for the roof-mounted 8,000 BTU air conditioner with 5,000-watt back up heater for on-grid use. I’ve run the a/c off-grid for 3 hours off of 4 batteries. It can be run indefinitely off a small generator to recharge the batteries. The batteries supply a 2-Kilowatt inverter that supplies 120-volts to the wine cooler, microwave, and GFCI electrical outlets, front and rear. The lighting is all 12-volt, tapping directly off of the batteries.
The batteries also supply power to the 4 screw-jacks at each corner that can lift the entire 10,200# trailer completely off the ground for tire or axle service. It also has electrically retracting steps at each door. Power is also tapped for an on-board high-cfm compressor that provides air through a 5-gallon storage tank, built into the frame, to the Dexter Air-flex suspension system that combines their rubber-mounted suspension arms with air bags for a smooth ride. Each pair of air bags are controlled by individual ride height valves that allow the trailer to ride perfectly level and give you negative tongue weight to several thousand pounds, if desired. Worked manually, any of the three axle’s air bags can be deflated for going up steep driveways and over curbs.
The body was lowered onto a platform of (2) 3/4″ layers of T&G exterior-grade plywood with layers running in opposite directions. The deck of the trailer is attached with over 1,000 fasteners. The trailer was jacked up at both ends so that the deck was perfectly flat in tension when the weight of the wood tried to drop both ends. The body was secured to the frame, making it a monocoque structure. The structure was significantly strengthened further by spraying structural foam into all vacant cavities. That made the walls and roof enormously strong. To prevent leakage, a rubber RV roof membrane was installed, making it weather tight, even through a semi-trailer automatic wash. The windows are Lexan sealed with a rubber edging meant for pick-up truck back windows.
The tires are Goodyear’s high-pressure ST trailer-specific tires that run at 110# of pressure for little rolling resistance and easy turning. Tire pressure is monitored by a commercial big-rig monitoring system than detects rate of pressure drop and increase in temperature. The tires are mounted on Alcoa 16″ 8-lug zero-backset wheels that are designed to work with Dexter’s Nev-R-Lube package bearing system. Combined width of all components is just under the maximum 8′6″ vehicle width.
This can be insured under your classic-car insurance as it meets all of their qualifications of no sleeping area and no flammables on-board. It’s inexpensive to insure and easily towed with a half-ton pickup. It has about 500 miles on it. It draws a huge crowd wherever it goes. Check out the Flickr album slide-show for these and more high-resolution photos. Otherwise don’t miss the 727 photos in the build album linked above!
