Fleetwood Cobalt Tent Trailer
Custom modifications and accessories

We've selected to modify a 2007 Fleetwood Cobalt to accommodate our need for a tent trailer that can handle off road exploration. The off road adventure trailers which are becoming more and more popular are more suited for four wheelers traveling down black diamond trails. Our needs are a bit more modest with a focus on deep inland support. The Cobalt has a higher profile giving it more ground clearance than the average tent trailer and it is much larger than the off road adventure trailers. With a few custom modifications this Fleetwood will fit our basic operational needs just fine.

The first thing we did was to add some cargo space to the stock frame by installing a basic rack on the tongue. This gave us the room to add a second propane bottle, carry a large 5 day cooler and relocate the spare tire from the back to the front rack. Moving the spare tire is in preparation for a trailer extension and rear cargo box.

We ran the calculations and felt that we could easily add another 325 lbs.behind the rear axle. The frame extension needed to be 20 inches in order to receive an aluminum under body tool box by Northern Tool. A regular pick up truck tool box (top loading) was not functional since it doesn't allow for access when the trailer is open. It had to be a box that is used commonly on semi-trucks (60" x 18" x 18") with a side opening access door. Stainless steel was ruled out since it weighed nearly twice as much. The aluminum box we selected weighs in at 67 lbs. There were many items that needed modifications to make this modification work. Here's a list of the main items;

• Move the spare tire to the front of the trailer
• Extend the existing rear frame and bumper
• Extend the crank shaft for raising and lowering the tent system
• Rewire the electrical stop, tail and license plate lights
• Cut the bed support struts and reposition the landing points
• Build side framing for adding second battery and one 5 gal water can
• Rewire for secondary deep cell battery
• Install anchor hooks for strapping down more gear on top of the cargo box

Another obvious modification is the noticeable telescoping antenna mast afixed to the side of the trailer. This is a 30 foot fiberglass mast which has been mounted firmly to the side body of the trailer with an attachment point at the top of the trailer roof when it is opened fully. Regardless of its lower stable mounting, this mast with the antenna needs a minimum of 1 set of 3 guy wires for stability. The mast supports a 10 foot X300A Diamond dual band (144/440) base antenna. So the highest point is about 40 feet off the ground. The antenna will handle up to 200 watts of tramission power although we usually run 65 watts with our Yaesu FT2000M. This has been adequate for reaching most moutain repeaters and even talking simplex over mountains to base stations a hundred miles away.

For those of you who are not familiar with Ham radio, with this set up we can usually talk to people throughtout the United States including Alaska, as well as other countries such as Canada, the U.K. and Australia. If you're on one of our trips you will definately get a demonstration. The audio is not crackley and full of static like you hear in the movies. Ham radio has become very high tech using repeaters as well as internet linking. With a little knowledge about using repeater networks and you can get your signal to transmit from a mountain repeater just about anywhere in the world. The result is clear, reliable conversion with better audio than a cell phone. This is the power we need to talk around mountains and into valleys in order to stay in radio contact with expedition parties. As much power as we have with these radio systems we still run into dead spots when talking within 50 miles because of mountains and valleys.

The Diamond X300A is actually a base antenna which is typically mounted to the top of radio towers and building roof tops. You don't normally see this large of an antenna on a vehicle. It takes a few minutes to deploy each time, but it serves it's purpose well. We venture into areas where cell phones are not reliable.

The Fleetwood Cobalt as modified serves as a tactical support vehicle for deep inland adventures.