T@B 320 Storage Box Modification

Bayliss said:

Interesting and unique, @grassgd.  Do you have any photos of what it looks like on the inside that you can share?

It is just an open box inside, 36" wide x 18" and 24" tall.  Manufacturer is "Buyers Products".  I'll post a picture tomorrow when I can take it.

ScottG said:

Nice design and craftsmanship, @grassgd!

It looks to me like your sewer hose access is on the side opposite your drains. I'm curious if there was a particular reason for that.

The access is from the side with the drains - the drains are just not quite in the picture.  To remove the sewer pipe, you pull the pin shown in the picture and pull the hose out under the back edge of the silver plastic tub.  I used a 5' piece of PVC sewer pipe so it will hold longer hoses if I get one - right now I'm still using the original short one that came with the trailer.  The PVC sewer pipe has an upset on the one end for connecting to another section of pipe and the sewer pipe connector just fits in the upset end with a little filing of the tabs.

Denny16 said:

Thanks, that costs as much as the new NuCamp TaB box.  I was looking for a less expensive solution.  So going with the new TaB box.
cheers

https://smile.amazon.com/Buyers-Products-1705420-Aluminum-18X24X36/dp/B01ASXUDLO/ is the correct link to the box I bought, but when I bought it, it only cost $314 with free shipping.  Mine had a small dent on one edge of one of the doors.  I suspect that was the basis for the low price although the add did not state it was damaged.  You could use any cheaper box as long as the dimensions are not bigger (especially the width).  With the 36" width and the original plastic box cut in half, it just clears the handles on the body of the trailer to open the plastic half top doors.

gspdx said:

Wow - I would love to do something like this with the 400 BDL box.  Maybe get a rectangular diamond plate box - or have someone make one - and do something similar.

Cool idea.

All the custom made boxes I looked into were very expensive.  I especially wanted a smooth aluminum box and would not have paid $600+ for this one.  I guess I was lucky to find this one at the price I paid.

It was quite a bit of work to figure out how to mount the box using a single aluminum I-beam I had on hand. 

I cut like this:

Then cut to slid over the trailer frame as shown in these pics:

Note above the two pieces of unistrut used in front of aluminum I-beam to support the front of the battery and propane frames and the very front of the plastic tub where it joins to the new aluminum box.

Above you can see an aluminum late used to join the two I-beam sections together and the cut out required to slide each I-beam section over the trailer frame.  I used only the original holes in the trailer frame in mounting the box in my modification.

I had to be very careful splitting the original TaB plastic box/original angle iron frame since there was no room for error; one mistake on the plastic tub and things would have gone south. I did some minor additional bracing on the original angle frame since it was allowing enough movement mine developed some cracks in the base flat iron and the plastic tub had a few cracks at the bottom attachment points.  Basically I added a extra brace on the vertical angle iron members.  I repaired the plastic tub cracks using a soldering iron and carefully melting the crack closed which worked good (repaired crack cracks can be seen in second picture above.

Propane tank retaining ring is the original with modifications to re position it on the base and I inserted a piece of plastic cutting board as the base for the tank.  I removed the original powder coating from the frame which already had severe disbondment and was rusting in many places.  Where powder coating was good, it was very difficult to remove.  Appears they do not do a good job of prep before powder coating.

It took a bit of figuring to recreated a hinge point for each half door on the original tub where the top was cut in half but it came out very good in my opinion - no  pics of this at the moment.

Hope the above provides some idea as to how I mounted the boxes.  You could use other materials and methods to mount, but I used materials I had on hand that I knew would be strong even if a bit of overkill using the large aluminum I-beam.  There was a lot of figuring and measuring to make sure everything fit up like I wanted it to (to look like a factory job).  

Here is a picture with solar panel stored behind the storage box with heavy cover.