excellent work sir.
I’m in love with this trailer
Thank you very much.
You could have built one from a kit... if Gr8Tops had decided to market it. Here's the history...
The trailer camper top was part of my original design plan for the LJ/TJ Safari Cab hardtop, I did this concept image in 2010:
View attachment 341113
In 2011 when Gr8Tops licensed the Safari Cab design from me and was making their first set of preproduction parts, I assembled a prototype camper top for my Jeep-tub trailer using some of their early parts and a few parts that I made. They displayed it alongside their first LJ Safari Cab at the York, PA All-Breeds Jeep Show in 2011. After that show, I disassembled the top and the parts have been sitting here for 11 years, until a few weeks ago when I decided to complete the assembly. This photo was taken at the show in 2011:
View attachment 341114
Also in that photo is Gr8Tops first LJ Safari Cab out of their molds (the red one) and my LJ with my homemade Safari Cab made from my molds (this was before I built the CJ Grille Kit that's on the LJ now). I do still have the original Safari Cab molds and more trailer camper tops could be made in those molds if there was enough interest and someone wanted to make them.
As for the bottom half (the Jeep tub), I made my yellow trailer out of the back half of the LJ I cut in half to make my pickup and the back half of a YJ tub I got from a friend.
View attachment 341115
View attachment 341116
It was so much work to make a nice trailer out of those parts that I thought there had to be a market for an easy-to-assemble fiberglass Jeep-tub trailer kit, so I made molds for a kit. The prototype fiberglass trailer kit:
View attachment 341117
The first trailer I built from those molds:
View attachment 341118
It is designed so that it can be built on an affordable Harbor Freight frame.
The trailer kit was licensed by Compact Camping Concepts and has been marketed ever since under the name Dinoot (www.dinoot.com), so you can build the base trailer from a kit. They sell them in two lengths - the "Compact" pictured above and a longer version called the "Extended".
After that, and since Gr8Tops wasn't going to offer the camper top parts for sale, I decided that there needed to be a way for people to easily build toppers for trailers that matched the curves of the Jeep tub, so I designed a line of fiberglass parts I called "TrailTop" parts...
They can be assembled, along with 1/4" plywood, into a number of camper configurations. Like this proof of concept teardrop:
I used those parts to build this proof of concept pop-top camper shell, which I pictured earlier in this thread:
A few photos of the pop-top shell under construction, you can see how the fiberglass parts form the curved corners and the sides are simple 1/4" plywood.
View attachment 341119
A couple of years ago a company licensed those parts and they sell them under the name Trailtop: https://trailtopcampers.com/. They don't offer the complete selection of parts yet but they do offer the parts needed to build the pop-top above.
Probably way more history than you wanted to know, but if you really love the trailer as you say you do, you can build a pretty close version of it using parts from Dinoot and Trailtop .
Thank you very much.
You could have built one from a kit... if Gr8Tops had decided to market it. Here's the history...
The trailer camper top was part of my original design plan for the LJ/TJ Safari Cab hardtop, I did this concept image in 2010:
View attachment 341113
In 2011 when Gr8Tops licensed the Safari Cab design from me and was making their first set of preproduction parts, I assembled a prototype camper top for my Jeep-tub trailer using some of their early parts and a few parts that I made. They displayed it alongside their first LJ Safari Cab at the York, PA All-Breeds Jeep Show in 2011. After that show, I disassembled the top and the parts have been sitting here for 11 years, until a few weeks ago when I decided to complete the assembly. This photo was taken at the show in 2011:
View attachment 341114
Also in that photo is Gr8Tops first LJ Safari Cab out of their molds (the red one) and my LJ with my homemade Safari Cab made from my molds (this was before I built the CJ Grille Kit that's on the LJ now). I do still have the original Safari Cab molds and more trailer camper tops could be made in those molds if there was enough interest and someone wanted to make them.
As for the bottom half (the Jeep tub), I made my yellow trailer out of the back half of the LJ I cut in half to make my pickup and the back half of a YJ tub I got from a friend.
View attachment 341115
View attachment 341116
It was so much work to make a nice trailer out of those parts that I thought there had to be a market for an easy-to-assemble fiberglass Jeep-tub trailer kit, so I made molds for a kit. The prototype fiberglass trailer kit:
View attachment 341117
The first trailer I built from those molds:
View attachment 341118
It is designed so that it can be built on an affordable Harbor Freight frame.
The trailer kit was licensed by Compact Camping Concepts and has been marketed ever since under the name Dinoot (www.dinoot.com), so you can build the base trailer from a kit. They sell them in two lengths - the "Compact" pictured above and a longer version called the "Extended".
After that, and since Gr8Tops wasn't going to offer the camper top parts for sale, I decided that there needed to be a way for people to easily build toppers for trailers that matched the curves of the Jeep tub, so I designed a line of fiberglass parts I called "TrailTop" parts...
They can be assembled, along with 1/4" plywood, into a number of camper configurations. Like this proof of concept teardrop:
I used those parts to build this proof of concept pop-top camper shell, which I pictured earlier in this thread:
A few photos of the pop-top shell under construction, you can see how the fiberglass parts form the curved corners and the sides are simple 1/4" plywood.
View attachment 341119
A couple of years ago a company licensed those parts and they sell them under the name Trailtop: https://trailtopcampers.com/. They don't offer the complete selection of parts yet but they do offer the parts needed to build the pop-top above.
Probably way more history than you wanted to know, but if you really love the trailer as you say you do, you can build a pretty close version of it using parts from Dinoot and Trailtop .
Having recently made a tailgate prop using Jeff's plans, I have a bag of the plastic bushings left because McMaster-Carr sells them in large bags:
View attachment 345722
If any forum members are building their own prop and want a pair of these, let me know. I'm happy to send 'em.