Building A Trailer For My Tdm

[Norwegian]

I've been wanting to build a bike trailer for some time. Like when we go visiting my inlaws in the mountains I usually want to bring the bike along, there are some great gravel roads up there as well as an abundance of narrow twisties. The three hour ride to get there gets tiresome, though, and the weather isn't always too motivating, either. Not to mention the poor economics of driving the car and the bike in parallel. 

 

So I scored this old (1981) trailer for 50 £ and got to it.

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Stripped down:

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I bolted on an old fiberboard, made four anchor points and bent some old galvanized tubing to support the front wheel. The tube bending was a bit of a learning process. I borrowed a hydraulic tube bender, and after a number of kinks and collapsed tube walls I developed a feel of the minimum radius achievable. Filling the tubes with compacted sand before bending yielded a lot better results, allowing smaller radii. 

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Sandblasted and painted rims:

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Loaded and ready to go. Good balance, with 40 kg on the ball. Plastic fenders saved 5 kg over the old steel ones.

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Got new taillights and made a lightweight, hinged and easily detachable lightbar. 

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Test ride was good, it seems to be quite stable with a low center of gravity. Fun also to have those angry looking headlights so close up in the rear mirror.

 

Left to do:

• Change a possibly dodgy wheel bearing, a teensy bit of slack in it.
• Fabricate or buy a loading ramp.
• Trim off a few non-essential bits and pieces to get the total weight safely below 300 kgs, then it can legally be hauled in 80 km/h instead of 60 (due to no brakes). 

Total cost of build just shy of a 100 £, not including wheel bearing(s).

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

This post was last modified: 07-05-2020, 11:14 AM by Norwegian.