Off-road Heavy Duty Casita Build

Trixxx

Well-known member
My wife and I have a fair amount of trailer experience over the years. In 2013 we bought a new, 42’ Toy Hauler and lived in it full time for 5 years. During this time, we learned what we liked, and what we didn’t. We also learned how poor the build quality is of *most* traditional American made trailers. Most are not designed to last, nor for full time usage.

In 2017, a project I was on ended abruptly, so we bought a M416 with RTT and did a 2 month, 8000 mile North American camping trip. We slept in that RTT every night except for 2-3 nights. We also had a 4 month old German Shepherd with us. That threw quite a bit more planning/coordinating into the trip.

With these two trailers, we learned the the extremes on both ends of the spectrum.

Last year, we decided we wanted the best of both worlds. The Casita has all the amenities of most full sized trailers, with the smaller size and robust build quality of many smaller trailers. It has AC, shower, toilet, fridge, freezer, microwave, stove, sink, side dinette, full sized bed, tv and dvd.

There are many big advantages to a full fiberglass trailer. With the full fiberglass body, there’s minimal seams in which it could leak. The interior cabinets and appliances are also built in molded fiberglass. This means in all the cabinets there’s not wood/screws that are going to start to warp and fall apart after many miles on rough roads.

There are some downsides to the Casita in general. While it has incredible build quality, it’s designed to travel on roads and not rated to carry much weight. The c-channel on the frame is wimpy, to say the least. The torsion axle is rated for 3500#, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for extra carrying capacity.

We knew with this trailer that we were going to beef up everything, and turn it into an off-road build.

Last summer, we picked up a 2016, 17’ (Total length from bumper to hitch) Casita with the Spirit floorplan. The day before we were headed to the Casita factory to order a new one (about 4 hours away) when I stumbled upon a slightly used one, right on our route. We figured we would check it out on the way. We met the owner in the enclosed storage unit, and it was clear that it had barely been used and was in near mint condition, loaded, with a lot of tasteful upgrades. She used it by herself to go to horse shows a few times a year, then left it stored the rest of the time. The trailers retain their value incredibly well and are very hard to find used, but we managed to get a pretty reasonable deal on the trailer.

Here she is stock when we brought it home last summer. We’re mostly finished with the build now, but I have a million pictures of the build along the way, so I’ll update this thread with the progress periodically as it’s far too extensive to make in one post (If we want to make this thread detailed).

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D

Deleted member 9101

Guest
Love it! I always wanted one of those before I had a family.
 

Trixxx

Well-known member
After a lot of research, we started getting ideas for the direction we wanted to take the trailer. I am a fairly skilled welder, but I also work 55-60 hrs a week and the opportunity cost of taking too much time off work to work on the trailer, wasn’t worthwhile. I have a degree in welding technology and welded full time for a couple years. I eventually moved into inspections about 10 years ago (I’m 32) and am now a quality manager on major oil and gas projects. My entire job consists of everything fabrication and quality related, so needless to say I have a pretty decent attention to detail. Also, since we live in an apartment, we only have an attached 1 car garage that doesn’t fit the Casita. We do have a nice 25’ enclosed storage unit that we eventually put to good use, but I’ll get to that later.

I found a shop a couple hours away that had some experience with Casita’s, and were able to swap the 3500# torsion axle with a 5200# axle, add some bilstein shocks, lift it 4”, and add off road wheels/tires. The lift was added by putting a 2x4 piece of rectangular tubing between the axle and frame, approx. 4’ in length.

They did an excellent job, as you can see from the photo’s. Of course, on the way home I was rear ended by a young girl in a huge truck, and I somehow escaped with just a crushed bumper and cracked tail light. I planned to replace the bumper anyways (the stock was paper thin and just intended to be used to hold the sewage hose). I think she paid me around $500 as I agreed not to turn it into insurance. The replacement cost was pretty cheap for the new 4x4x.125” square tubing that I replaced it with.

While we dropped the trailer off at the shop, my wife removed all the interior doors and cabinets and painted them grey. She’s done a lot of interior work to make it look more modern (curtains, pillows, etc.) We also replaced the old tv with a bigger, lighter, LCD screen.

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Trixxx

Well-known member
We have driven from Texas to Arizona to see my family over Christmas more times than I can remember. In 2018, we brought the M416 and camped in Gila National Forest along the way. A nice ranger gave us directions to a very very desolate location down in a canyon. We knew we wanted to do the same thing with the Casita in 2019 over Christmas, so we had to get to work.

I wanted to replace the bumper and beef up the frame before we left. We started the first week of November and had approximately 6 weeks. During those 6 weeks, the weekends consisted of waking up at 5 a.m. Saturday and running 10-12 miles, working a half day, going and renting a 5500 watt generator from Home Depot for the weekend, and using it to power my TIG welder at our storage unit where we fab’d and welded the second half of Saturday’s and 10-12 hours on Sundays. We did this for 5-6 weekends. During this time I also spent a week in Europe with a buddy, and raced a half marathon. Needless to say, this was a very exhausting couple months.

I picked up all the steel and did some rough drawings on what I wanted to do. For the bumper, we used 4x4x.125 square tubing. For the rest of the frame and cross members, we used 3x2x.125 rectangular tubing. While I am the best at TIG welding and it’s all I have, it’s also a very very slow welding process compared to GMAW (MIG) or SMAW (Stick).

I should also mention that when I say “we,” my wife is a fricken beast and was there with me helping on the trailer nearly every minute of every day. Be it holding steel while I tacked it (she has her own welding hood), helping to measure, cut, move welding leads, etc. I could not be more fortunate to have a wife that gets involved in all my projects and hobbies.

Welding started off a bit rough, had welded maybe a handful of times over the last decade.
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We added extra steel around the black/grey drains. The steel now runs a bit lower than the pvc line.
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Trixxx

Well-known member
We finished the bulk of the structural work just in time for our Christmas trip to NM/AZ. We weren’t able to get the frame coated, rear platform built, etc. but that’s fine. Since the bolt pattern on the trailer is the same as the 4Runner, we were fine doing the trip with just one spare between the two vehicles. We weren’t getting too far off the beaten path. We also hit up the beach again as soon as we got back.

Overall the trailer towed really well. Since it didn’t have the rear spare, it was a bit heavy on the tongue but not too bad. We had to lock our 2017 4runner out of 5th. In 4th gear it towed fine at around 70 mph, we averaged around 12 mpg. Out in west Texas it gets a bit sparse between gas stations so we were filling up pretty soon when the light was coming on every 200 miles or so.

It got pretty dang cold at night, both in NM and AZ. It dropped into the upper 20’s on several nights. We had a Mr. Buddy heater but didn’t feel comfortable sleeping with it on. Otherwise, we’d use our 2000 watt Yamaha generator which would run our small electric space heater.

One item that is pretty amazing, is that our 2000 watt generator will also run the trailers AC when it’s hot. It makes camping in the summer a breeze. One gallon of gas runs the AC for 5-6 hours.

There is a propane furnace option from the factory. Our doesn’t have it, but Casita can install one for about $850. We are considering taking it up to have it installed this fall. Running off our two 20lb (soon to be two 30lb when the current run out) will be a huge benefit for the cold weather camping. Have many more cold weather provisions planned, but will get to that in a later post.

Around this time we also got Kermit chairs and table for our Christmas gifts to each other. If you haven’t looked into them, they are very nice. When my wife called to order, the owner answered and told her a lot about the history of the company. He said he still uses his original Kermit chairs from 15-20 years ago. I originally heard about these when I was huge into building up our old Yamaha Super Tenere for a big trip (we did 3000 miles over 3.5 weeks from PHX to the southern tip of Baja, camping on the beach every other night)

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SDDiver5

Expedition Leader
Nice build. But I loooove your GSD- 100% will be my next dog. Looks like a high quality bred GSD. Sable DDR line? Did you get him/her from a breeder?
 

Trixxx

Well-known member
Nice build. But I loooove your GSD- 100% will be my next dog. Looks like a high quality bred GSD. Sable DDR line? Did you get him/her from a breeder?

As much as this is sometimes frowned upon in “certain” GSD groups, he actually comes from a very well bred show line. Both his parents have won many shows, but beyond that, her dogs also do agility and tons of other competitions. Our breeder is a veterinarian as well, so we know she takes a lot of pride in her dogs. He came with a 2 year hip and elbow guarantee. If we x-rayed his hips and elbows at 2 years and sent them off to be certified and came back with any type of hip displaysia, we would get a full refund. We had him x-rayed at 2 years (he’s 3 now) and his hips came back good and his elbows at normal. With hips being rated in like 6? Different categories, “good” is the second from the highest.

I will also add that his work, drive, and focus, is as amazing as nearly any dog I have seen. I can go to a beach or a park filled with hundreds of kids and dogs, and he can be 100% off leash and as long as I have a ball in my hand, he ignores every person and every barking dog. He will fetch that ball until i make him stop, and could easily chase it into heat exhaustion.

At home, he is just the same. Constantly bringing toys to throw. I can throw a dirty shirt in the bathroom, tell him “laundry” and he will pick it up and put it in the laundry basket. We play “hide and seek” with his Kong (empty, so no food scent) and I can lock him in the bedroom, and hide it anywhere in our apartment and he finds it 95% of the time. We never trained him to do this, we just started playing it as a game and he picked up on it instantly. We let him out of the room and he drops his nose and just goes to town searching. I can wedge it deep down in the couch cushions out of site, and he’ll sniff it out.

That being said - his drive is incredibly high and he has to be well managed. He can certainly turn it off plenty at home and isn’t a nuisance, but for example, one of his brothers can’t be brought in public or around other dogs, which I’m sure is due to improper training and lack of socializing. Our dog (Neo) is completely indifferent towards people most the time, or occasionally a bit uneasy at first. He usually warms up eventually, but really has no interest in gaining their attention at all.

Here’s a few photo’s, since you brought it up. I could go on forever lol. I had a chocolate lab for 13 years before, and while I don’t know that I could ever love a dog as much as him (I had him from 16-29) our GSD is on an entirely different level in terms of intelligence and drive.

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Are all Casita's carpeted on the walls and ceilings?

They are. While it seems like it could be odd, it’s actually not annoying at all, kind of nice, and a little extra sound dampening/insulation. Some people seem bothered by this, but usually prospective lookers. I’m in a few Casita groups and it’s not anything that people ever complain about.
 

SDDiver5

Expedition Leader
Dude gorgeous dog. I love them and have wanted one for at least 2 years. I've been reading about them and studying how to train them and I always watch them when I am out and see them. I follow tons of dogs/trainers/breeders on IG too. Might take some convincing by the Mrs. to get a dog that sheds like they do but I think I can win that by bringing home a puppy haha. I want a great family dog that will protect and monitor my house and family when i am not around and I feel like they are the best ones out there!
 

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