Rate my dolly

D

deezlgeezr

Advanced Member
Joined
Jan 31, 2018
Messages
68
Location
New England
2X6 frame, screwed & glued (3" deck screws), metal corner brackets & joist hangers; Harbor Freight castors (6", 600 L:cool:, 3/8" galvanized bolts. 51" X 80".

Non-carpenter designed & constructed. (HA-HA-HA!) Based on a 1500LB camper, I calculated approx 56 lbs/sq ft weight pressure, should be enuff. :eek:
 

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Looks good. Mine design is similar except I have 1 more cross beam and the casters are located under the frame. After I push it into the garage, I lift it off the doll slightly using the camper jacks to take the load off the dolly.
 
Worked very good; the camper sat on it for several months while I installed other mods on it & truck. I left the jacks attached and used them to stabilize the camper.
 
Do you have any bumps you wheel over? I have about a 1" lip between the driveway and the garage slab and have been hesitant to do this project because I am unsure about what size wheels to get. The driveway is sloped enough where I would be concerned about the camper making a break for it, and I can just hear the Benny Hill music playing when I imagine fighting the camper over the lip. There is a 3" steel pipe filled with concrete in the back of the garage to protect the furnace and water heater from vehicles parking (silly, this is California, no one parks in their garage), so I have always imagined anchoring the camper/dolly to that with a come-along while pushing it in.
 
Same here. Six inch hard plastic rimmed, locking, swivel casters rated for the weight plus reserve capacity. Pneumatic wheels would roll over the gap better but I couldn't find any with the weight capacity.

I had a 2 1/2 to 3 inch gap. I put 1 x 2's in the gap where the caster went and rolled the cart (with camper) over. I always used two people and momentum to get it in the garage. I didn't have an anchor to use a winch.
 
We scoured the forums for dolly designs and took up all the advice we could. We just brought our 2018 used Grandby home and spent the next saturday building this.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/vrtey8XfZ68e5Pee7


We used 2 x 8" x 8' (two) and 2 x 8"x 45" joists and end pieces for the frame. Used 3" screws and nails. Then we put 4 x 4 x7" lumber in the corners to mount the wheels. We put 3/4" plywood, 4' x 8', top and bottom.

We bought 6" wheels at Harbor Freight. Two rigid, and two swivel.

We were afraid we wouldn't be able to move it, but with the Grandby on it we just push it around. Two of us can do it easy. We have a level driveway into the garage. We didn't account for the extra inches on the lumber, or the depth of the wheels, but when we pushed the Grandby and dolly into the garage, it cleared the door by 6 inches. We were delighted. Thanks all for the advice.
 
I did about the same, but didn't use a top sheet and just left the studs supporting the camper directly. I figured the bottom of the camper was plywood and should handle it ok. Any particular reason you guys used plywood top sheets?
 
I made my 1st dolly with 8" casters - 2 swivel and 2 non swivel- 4x6 pressure treated I already had, and no floor. I couldn't move my Hawk around very well on my uneven asphalt in front of the garage. I found a 5x8 flatbed trailer for $200 on CL. It was probably a boat trailer originally. Now I can move it anywhere on my 5 acres or hitch it up in case of a fire evacuation.
 
We used two sheets of plywood because we read it on another thread. Something about shear or twisting out of square with the weight of the camper on it. We could have put more joists for strength but ended up with just two as that's the amount of lumber we had. At any rate it works great and fits in the garage.
 
I could see the shear argument, i plan to install eye bolts and be able to turnbuckle it down to the dolly, i think this will effectively use the camper as the structure to keep it from twisting. Plus, it's not like I'm adding a trailer hitch to the thing and towing it behind the truck or anything.
 
Wittmaster 512, funny! We didn't even consider that the dolly wouldn't be tall enough with the jacks completely recessed! Could have been a fiasco elevating the dolly with more lumber to reach the bottom of the camper. As it turns out, it all worked out. Dolly height, jack height, garage door height. What newbies!


Willthethrill 11: I think the concept of the plywood top and bottom is to make the dolly resist shear so the camper doesn't twist out of square. Using the camper to prevent the dolly from twisting out of square is reversing the logic. But, who am I? Could work given the weight of the camper?
 
Willthethrill 11: I think the concept of the plywood top and bottom is to make the dolly resist shear so the camper doesn't twist out of square. Using the camper to prevent the dolly from twisting out of square is reversing the logic. But, who am I? Could work given the weight of the camper?



You may be right about reversing the logic, but a piece of plywood for shear in that direction isn't doing a lot for twisting either, it'll potato-chip. The plywood would take shear and keep the rectangular shape from becoming a parallelogram (when looking top down). If you want it to keep from twisting build a platform higher and use trusses to connect it (basically a box). But the camper already is a boxed truss structure, so I think it's probably fine...plus these things get bounced down roads bumpier than most people's driveways at higher speeds than most of us can push one.
 
eav said:
Wittmaster 512, funny! We didn't even consider that the dolly wouldn't be tall enough with the jacks completely recessed! Could have been a fiasco elevating the dolly with more lumber to reach the bottom of the camper. As it turns out, it all worked out. Dolly height, jack height, garage door height. What newbies!

So what what the actual height to the platform? Or, maybe a better question is how low do the jacks go and how high is the bottom of the camper when the jacks are lowered all the way?
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