Under frame cooking table storage for travel trailer
As I'm sure a lot of you do, I travel with a cooking table to do most of our cooking outside. However, having a travel trailer, storage of a six foot long cooking table is a bit of an issue. I got tired of carting the table in and out of the camper, as I had to store it on top of the bed when traveling.
I considered getting a folding table that folds to three feet. After looking at them, I realized I would never be happy with how they don't open up perfectly level. After all, how are you supposed to cook a killer batch of bacon if all the grease won't pool up where you need it to on the griddle?
So, I started brainstorming on a way to carry the table. Really, the only place that would work was under the frame of the TT. The trick: how to do it with a minimum of weight but strong enough to not give any problem?
I searched the internet over for ideas. Found a few that stored their spare tire, and other odds and ends under frame. However, my TT has an enclosed underbelly, so I wasn't going to be able to use any of that space.
I decided that slotted angle would be the best bet. I would make some drop brackets and bolt them to outside lip of the ibeam frame. Then run a six foot piece of angle to the other side of the TT. I even considered using the angle to make a sort of underbelly box that I could store other things in, such as chairs, etc.
As I started sketching it up, I began to realize that it might be more cumbersome than I first thought. My plan was to let the edges of the table rest on the angle and basically slide it in and out kind of like a drawer.
As I was brainstorming with a friend, he remarked how neat it would be if it could be on rollers, kind of like a garage door. Just so happened, I have rollers, and garage door rails!
Now, I was cooking. New plan.
Drill into the side of the table, and stick garage door rollers right in to the table. I drilled through the soft plastic and then into the metal frame of the table, like so:
image by 93Cobra#2771, on Flickr
Mount garage door rail instead of angle. Much lighter weight. Plus, if it can hold up a 300# garage door, I imagine it will be OK with a ten pound table. I drilled four holes per rail. I had to mount to the outside lip only, as the inside lip wasn't accessible without cutting into the underbelly, as well as notching a piece of channel that the underbelly is retained by. *Note, in this photo, the angle and the rail are temp mounted for mock up purposes.
image by 93Cobra#2771, on Flickr
Once I got the rails spaced correctly, and mounted (I used grade 8 hardware on all of it), I then fashioned a removable piece of slotted flat, with pins and clips, to retain the table in place while traveling FYI, the table is 6'. The distance from the outside edge of my driverside ibeam to the outside edge of my passenger side ibeam is exactly 6'. Happy accident. The below picture isn't great, but you get the idea. And, even though it looks like it is crooked, it is actually perfectly straight - curvature of the lens on the camera makes it look bent.
image by 93Cobra#2771, on Flickr
I have close to 1000 miles on this mod, and everything looks as good as the day it was installed.
I was originally going to paint it black, and my do that in the future. However, I'm so dang proud of it that I'm leaving it as is so people will see it and ask about it. :-)
Hope this helps someone in their quest on how to transport their cooking table.
I considered getting a folding table that folds to three feet. After looking at them, I realized I would never be happy with how they don't open up perfectly level. After all, how are you supposed to cook a killer batch of bacon if all the grease won't pool up where you need it to on the griddle?
So, I started brainstorming on a way to carry the table. Really, the only place that would work was under the frame of the TT. The trick: how to do it with a minimum of weight but strong enough to not give any problem?
I searched the internet over for ideas. Found a few that stored their spare tire, and other odds and ends under frame. However, my TT has an enclosed underbelly, so I wasn't going to be able to use any of that space.
I decided that slotted angle would be the best bet. I would make some drop brackets and bolt them to outside lip of the ibeam frame. Then run a six foot piece of angle to the other side of the TT. I even considered using the angle to make a sort of underbelly box that I could store other things in, such as chairs, etc.
As I started sketching it up, I began to realize that it might be more cumbersome than I first thought. My plan was to let the edges of the table rest on the angle and basically slide it in and out kind of like a drawer.
As I was brainstorming with a friend, he remarked how neat it would be if it could be on rollers, kind of like a garage door. Just so happened, I have rollers, and garage door rails!
Now, I was cooking. New plan.
Drill into the side of the table, and stick garage door rollers right in to the table. I drilled through the soft plastic and then into the metal frame of the table, like so:
image by 93Cobra#2771, on Flickr
Mount garage door rail instead of angle. Much lighter weight. Plus, if it can hold up a 300# garage door, I imagine it will be OK with a ten pound table. I drilled four holes per rail. I had to mount to the outside lip only, as the inside lip wasn't accessible without cutting into the underbelly, as well as notching a piece of channel that the underbelly is retained by. *Note, in this photo, the angle and the rail are temp mounted for mock up purposes.
image by 93Cobra#2771, on Flickr
Once I got the rails spaced correctly, and mounted (I used grade 8 hardware on all of it), I then fashioned a removable piece of slotted flat, with pins and clips, to retain the table in place while traveling FYI, the table is 6'. The distance from the outside edge of my driverside ibeam to the outside edge of my passenger side ibeam is exactly 6'. Happy accident. The below picture isn't great, but you get the idea. And, even though it looks like it is crooked, it is actually perfectly straight - curvature of the lens on the camera makes it look bent.
image by 93Cobra#2771, on Flickr
I have close to 1000 miles on this mod, and everything looks as good as the day it was installed.
I was originally going to paint it black, and my do that in the future. However, I'm so dang proud of it that I'm leaving it as is so people will see it and ask about it. :-)
Hope this helps someone in their quest on how to transport their cooking table.
