FJ Cruisers of Northern California

Tomorrow is Officially Trailer Pickup Day

So tomorrow at 3:00am the wife and I are headed down to Upland, California and the official office of SoCal teardrops to pick up our Krawler 459. The plan is to make a big U turn in upland and head up by the Kern River and find a site to camp for the night. If there is still daylight out I want to try and get some flyfishing in around little Kern River and see if I can’t tackle one fish off of the Heritage Fishing Challenge List (Little Kern Gold Trout), if all goes well I will get the Kern Rainbow the following morning but I’m a little worried about the flows being too fast. After that we are heading to the Kings River and finally home:

View Trailer Pickup in a larger map

So enough about fish…what about the trailer?

The decision about the trailer came after much deliberation, I think I can say that no stone went unturned when I was doing the research on what was the best fit for me. Here are some my key factors that went into choosing a manufacturer:
1. Quality of Workmanship/History of Quality
2. Simplicity of Design
3. Off road capability (should be capable of a 6/10 rated trail…no Rubicon! :-))
4. Level of comfort
I knew I wanted something small and capable that would provide an enclosed environment to sleep in. I looked at a variety of manufactures including:

SoCal Teardrops
Adventure Trailers
Moby 1
Little Guy
XpoTrail
Plus a few others

While I liked the Vision of XpoTrail, it really appeared to me that it would be a few years before they would have a solid production model that had worked out all of the kinks in the design and fabrications process.

Moby1 Looked pretty interesting but I just didn’t see the attention to detail that I would have liked and I’m not sure they really had a History of Quality. Although they had a very tempting pricepoint which did give me a second…third..and fourth look.

LittleGuy trailers looked like a viable option, but I got a feeling that they were somewhat more mass produced and honestly I hated the guy who they had selling their products on the youtube videos…too much of a sleezeball and not enough adventurer.

So that left me with two viable options that really fit well into my overall criteria – the Adventure Trailer Teardrop and the Socal Krawler 459. As I researched this I could not help but note the similarities, and after asking and researching there is a relationship between SoCal Teardrops (SCT) and Adventure Trailers (AT). Essentially SCT provides AT with the teardrop which AT then drops onto their chassis. I’m not sure who does the additional modifications as the both offer similar modifications to the actual teardrop itself, more stuff comes standard on the AT version, but it also has a higher starting price. Being the excel jockey that I am, I started running the numbers and it turns out after you crunch the numbers and compare everything the AT one is a little more pricy then a similarly equipped SCT.

Why is the AT more expensive? My guess would be their advanced suspension. It is some fancy stuff, but that ultimately ended up being what drove me away from Adventure Trailers….the suspension is much more fancy then anything I need (I’m probably one of the few who has not upgraded to Icons ). Really though it was about simplicity…the FJ is a complicated machine as it is, the least the trailer can do is be simple!

So I ended up getting the SCT Krawler, of course I upgraded a few things. Here are some of the options that I went for:
• LED light Package
• 4 Jerry Can Holders
• Tongue Box
• Interior Vent Fan
• Interior tie Down System (for gear lol!)
• Group 31 battery tray
• Kitchen Upgrade
And probably a handful of other things.

I decided to bring my own battery (Sears Platinum Deep Cycle) and wheel and tires (33 inch so they can swapped into the FJ if needed).

Will post once we pick it up. Happy Trails!

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by DivnGirl on May 22, 2011 at 8:55pm

It sure is purty!

Congrats!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Boss73 on May 20, 2011 at 4:03pm

Very Nice indeed !!!

Congrats!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by PBn'FJ on May 20, 2011 at 4:35pm

Very nice!

Did you match rims and tires to your FJC?

I'd be interested to see how heavy the trailer is and what your mileage is towing it. I take it the trailer has brakes?

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Estysalinas on May 22, 2011 at 7:25pm

I could not get an exact match. Waited as long as I could for my rims to show up on craigslist but nada. I did match the size of them though(285/75/16). The rims are from wheelers off road and are designed to fit the fj, I got 3 of them all with the same backspacing as my stockers, so in a pinch they should a be interchangeable.

Trailer weighs 1250 dry, my guess is about 1400-1500 loaded up with 19 gallons of water, 20 gallons of fuel, food, fridge, etc.

Milage on the trip down and back up was about 2-3 mpg less then normal I normally get about 16-17 freeway and was getting about 14 mpg....that was an average though and included mountain driving. I need to reset my scan gauge to get you a more accurate number. Up in the mountains though I needed the extra power and ended up filling with premium.

It came with brakes, I had the pleasure of wiring up the 7 pin harness and brake controller a few weeks ago.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by PBn'FJ on May 22, 2011 at 7:51pm

Yeah, I need to wire up a 7 pin harness and brake controller for the 80 now that I picked up an AT Chaser.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Estysalinas on May 22, 2011 at 8:31pm

I got my stuff from e-trailers.com. The install was pretty easy...just tedious (and not cheap!), one of those things you just feel should be done from the factory :-).