DIY Bike trailer

[jonescg]

Hi all,
Don't normally post in the e-bike sections, but I thought I would share my latest backyard construction efforts.
The ill-fated crate which carried Voltron over east and back has been cut up and re-purposed for many things, landfill was one of them. But I salvaged all the steel I could from it and stuck it in a pile. Some of the plywood was made into a small crate to send my dead Agnis back to Jozzer (and fingers crossed it's actually left the country by now) but the steel was just hanging around waiting for a project.

I have always used my bicycle to carry stuff home. My goal in life is to never own a car, but I'm OK with hiring them or getting favours from friends (paid in the universal currency of a case of beer). Sometimes when the stuff I'm carrying is just a bit too big, and the distance I need to travel is a bit too far, a trailer would be really handy. In the past I have made use of an old lady's shopping cart with bushed wheels. It sure worked, but the small, bearingless wheels were rather noisy and slow.

I bought a welder for $90. It only welds steel, and not big stuff, but that was good enough for me to learn on. I was going to being it back home on the bike but the guy selling it to me offered to bring it over

So I started putting my former-crate steel to good use, as well as a couple of front wheels from kids bikes. The Balcatta dump is a great place for this sort of crap. It's as close to free as you'll get. Looked a bit funny bringing two bikes home on the back of the Blackbird :lol:

These wheels are piss-weak, so I couldn't use a common axle. The bearings are free-floating, and there might not even be the right number of them, but who cares it's free. I figured I can make use of the forks by welding them to the sides of the trailer.

The headstems work as convenient handles for moving it around

I put some more ex-crate plywood in the base and we're nearly done!

Only thing left to do is weld a 20 mm square steel section up the middle so it enables slightly heavier loads, as well as providing a nice long tow-hitch. I want to come up with a good way of hooking it onto any bike, so the universal clamp stays with the trailer. I plan on turning my old steel framed Trek into an e-bike eventually, with one of my 5P10S Turnigy LiPo packs. 1 kWh of juice at 36 V should get me around town and back even with the trailer attached

 

[Nehmo]

I have always used my bicycle to carry stuff home. My goal in life is to never own a car

Not a bad trailer. You have my appreciation.
But on the "goal" comment, I don't applaud as much. Sure it's commendable to get by with only a bike, but a car or truck have obvious advantages. The best system is to have both a bike and a full-size truck (perhaps an e-truck would be acceptable to your philosophy).

 

[jonescg]

Well I've done OK without a car for the last 9 years, so I can't see any future issues. It just involves a bit of planning. In fact one of the reasons I can afford all this e-moto malarkey is cause I don't have a car to keep burning money with.

 

[deVries]

Nice trailer build. Love the fork ideas but might want to put plastic, cork, rubber, tape, reflectors, turn signals over the ends of those head tubes to prevent scrapes, cuts, or worse.

 

[jonescg]

Cheers, I thought about keeping the My Little Pony stickers, but alas they had to get ground off

It's not complete yet, but close to it. I'll spend an hour or so grinding off rough bits and painting it for a bit of rust protection. I'm still trying to come up with a universal means of connecting it to a bike. I'm thinking the left hand side seat-stay is the best option, since most bikes don't have cables or wires there.

 

[jonescg]

I was thinking this might make a good seat-stay hitch for the trailer:

It's ambidextrous, so if you have phase wires hanging down one side you can always try the other side. Then the trailer needs to be able to accommodate either one... Hmmm. I think the right side is probably better in case a rear wheel hub motor is in use.

 

[amberwolf]

Don't forget to put the crappy caliper brakes back on those forks, then cable them up so you can use them from the bike, *and* make a handle on the trailer you can lock in place that pulls the cable, too, so you can lock the wheels up while loading/unloading. Best is if you can *also* do this from the bike. Locking brake levers are common on baby buggies of various types, mostly the "jogging stroller" versions.

None of my trailers have this, and all of them need it. Chocking the wheels doesn't work well most of the time, especially when dogs are wiggling around in the kennel trailer. :lol:

 

[Nehmo]

Well I've done OK without a car for the last 9 years, so I can't see any future issues.

You've simply adapted to going without a car. In many situations, that's possible, even laudable. But it doesn't mean you aren't constantly overcoming (as you put it) issues.

It just involves a bit of planning.

You see, there's an adaptation.

In fact one of the reasons I can afford all this e-moto malarkey is cause I don't have a car to keep burning money with.

If you had a car or truck, the idea would be for you to profit from it - not burn money with it.
I'm not much familiar with your situation, but I surmise cargo capacity is something you could use. E-bikes don't do well in this capacity, but trucks do.
And in a more philosophical vein, buying energy, either via gasoline or house current, and then converting it into your own sustenance or pleasure, is a tremendously good deal. You can only do this on a small scale with an e-bike. With a car or truck, you can do this on a larger scale.
(I'm getting off subject.)
Ok, you're making a trailer. Proceed.

 

[jonescg]

Amberwolf- way to complicated for me mate! This is basically so I can cart crap to and from the dump, and occasionally bring home a few bags of potting mix or cases of beer. I wouldn't expect to load much more than 30 kg into it, and rarely ride much further than 8 km. If the welds fail then who cares, it cost me practically nothing and entertained me on a day off.

Nhemo - All good points, but I won't be buying a car or truck

 

[Racer_X]

Looks good so far, looking forward to seeing how you attach it to your bike.
I have a heavy duty bike type trailer with moped type wheels but no way to attach it to the bike so I hope to learn something from you.

 

[amberwolf]

Amberwolf- way to complicated for me mate! This is basically so I can cart crap to and from the dump, and occasionally bring home a few bags of potting mix or cases of beer. I wouldn't expect to load much more than 30 kg into it, and rarely ride much further than 8 km. If the welds fail then who cares, it cost me practically nothing and entertained me on a day off.

Well, it's not all that complicated, but it's up to you to decide if you need them or not. You can leave out the lockable handle on teh trailer itself to simplify things, if you like. THen again, most of what I do would probably make Rube Goldberg proud. :lol: So "simple" is relative, I guess!

Some of the lockable brake handles on those jogger strollers are the kind that mount with a removable-back clamp on the handlebar, so you don't have to take everything else off in order to put them on. So you could easily just add it onto your handlebars when using the trailer, and otherwise just coil up the really long cable from the trailer brakes and lay it on the traielr when it's just stored.

I'm just suggesting the brakes because even with small laods on short trips, I've often really wished I had brakes back there! There's been more than one situation in which the trailer kept pushing the bike's back end forward and sideways becuse I had to stop really suddenly for various reasons (usually sudden maneuvers by cars), and the rear bike brake is useless in those situations, cuz the rear wheel gets lifted off the ground enough to skid.


But on my trailers I would have to first add forks like you have, or some sort of bracket to mount the brake to, since the two I still use are single-ended axles so there's nothing on the outside to moutn a brake arm to. That's a lot more complicated than you have it there, since you already have the fork and the mounting point for the brakes, and probably all the bits for them, too. You'd just need a Y-splitter (which a bike shop can probably provide, as they're used on some BMX bikes), and a really long cable from the splitter to the bike's handlebars.

To simplify the brakes if you don't need a locking lever you could replace one brake handle on the bike with a dual-cable lever, like the one AussieJester used on his trike build (which I think is the one I now have here), and just install the cable from the trailer to the top adjuster on the lever when you need to use the trailer, and take it off otherwise. That's been my plan for a while now on the trailer brakes, but of course I never get around to it.

 

[USAEBIKECO]

Cool trailer .. More food delivery companies should be doing this to save on gas.

 

[jonescg]

Amberwolf, yep, good points. If you are hooking it down a hill, or motoring along on an e-bike, 30 kg in the back will affect your stoppability pretty seriously. It's kinda convenient that I can still fit brakes - I should have kept them when I stripped the bikes down!! oh well, it's probably still at the dump if I go back for a look :lol:

I think I will use a seatpost mounded system for simplicity. More bikes will be amenable to towing this way.

 

[jonescg]

OK so in the theme of e-bikes, I borrowed Katherine's e-bike and towed the trailer up to the irrigation shop to bring some PVC pipe home. It's a pain to have to move the seatpoast each time, but I don't use the trailer all that often either.

I also used my own non-e-bike to bring three bags of potting mix home. 45 kgs. Not bad, although the brakes could use an upgrade

I like my trailer It cost me a welder and a trip to the dump. Awesome

 

[dogman dan]

Looks good to me too. I like it. You should be able to rig a QR of some kind, so you can leave part of the mount on the bike seatpost.