Today marked the maiden voyage of the bicycle trailer that I built this summer, so I thought that it would be an appropriate time to update this thread with what I ended up doing and my thoughts so far. First, a picture.
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Construction
Now for some details. For the base of the trailer, I picked up a used Aosom kid's bike trailer. I stumbled across it by happenstance, and picked it up right away because it had a suspension. It's only rated up to about 50 lbs, so I won't be using it for any extreme hauling, but it should be able to handle a tuba. Two tubas may be pushing my luck though.
Once I had the Aosom trailer, I stripped it down to just the base frame and made a few modifications to allow room for a wooden crate to mounted on top of it. I wanted to keep the price down for this project as much as was safe, so the materials that I picked up from the hardware store were generally cheap and did not require much additional processing before construction. Speaking of materials...
Base: 2' x 4' x 1/2" ACX Handi Panel Plywood
Front and Back: 2' x 2' x 1/2" ACX Handi Panel Plywood (trimmed down to 18" x 2' to reduce unnecessary height and help clear the currently attached crate on my rear rack
Sides: 1" x 4" x 4' pine planks
For the most part, I was able to screw the box together with these parts as is from the store. A few bits had to be cut out with a jigsaw to make room for the existing hardware on the base frame (you can see the cut out for the suspension in the picture). I used two different stains and a polyurethane coat to protect it from the elements.
To mount the box onto the frame, I bolted them together using the already available holes in the frame. I had to drill them out to a larger size to fit what I had. I also had to drill all the way through the tube since the original trailer only screwed into the tube.
I lined the bottom of the box with a 15mm thick yoga mat that I found at Target (they normally are 4-6mm thick, so I was happy to find this one). The mat was 1.5x the length i needed, so I cut the excess and put it underneath to give 30mm of padding where the bottom bow of a tuba would rest. It seems like it should be enough padding.
All said and done, the trailer has cost about $250, which is significantly less than anything that you can find on the market. I still have a few more additions to make, so that number will probably change.
The First Journey
Today was my first chance to use the new trailer for a concert band rehearsal at a local university. I loaded up my B&S MRP CC tuba and went for a 4.5 mile ride. Fortunately the weather was beautiful and the rehearsal was early enough that the sun was out the entire time. All in the all, it was fantastic. I did not feel like the extra weight of the tuba and the trailer made a significant difference in how tired I was when I got to rehearsal. I rode slower, didn't expect to accelerate as fast, and generally took my time enjoying our beautiful river walk and the fall leaves. It was an incredibly pleasant way to get to rehearsal.
Ok, it wasn't perfect, so here are some things I noticed on my ride:
- if South Bend didn't have what little bike infrastructure it had, I would never even have considered trying this. We have some painted bike lanes and a multi-use pathway along the river, which accounted for most of the 4.5 miles
- We could still benefit from more bicycle friendly upgrades. My biggest concern was crossing three busy streets (stroads, if you will...). They were unsignalized intersections, and I knew I would need a large gap to get safely across. Thankfully, traffic is not really that bad in South Bend (despite what some individuals around here seem to think...)
- Residential neighborhoods make up the remainder of areas that I rode, and although there was little to no car traffic to interact with, road degradation made it tricky at times. I agree with the notion that we don't need dedicated bike infrastructure in neighborhoods and we can allow all forms of transportation to mingle (if speeds are actually slow enough), but the infrastructure needs to be held to the standard appropriate for the most vulnerable road user, not the least. That is to say, a pot hole that a car doesn't notice can throw a cyclist off their bike.
- Hills suck extra hard. I live on a pretty big hill, so it was definitely leg day at the end. It was definitely manageable though, and would be much better with an eBike.
Future Upgrades
There are a few things I would like to upgrade before I call this project completely finished.
- find better hardware for attaching the trailer to the bike. I used the original bike trailer hardware, which uses a locking pin and is sprung loaded, and works well. The problem that I have noticed is that the weight of the trailer can cause the hardware to shift a bit and throw off the alignment. Particularly if the load is balanced well, the spring can cause the trailer to constantly sway back and forth...and squeek...
- visibility flags
- custom German license plate in honor of buying my bike while stationed in Germany
- led lights on the trailer
- possibly a battery charged by a dynamo to run the lights
Things I would do differently
- higher quality materials
- actually make the thing square (it's functional though)
- make it shorter (getting it to clear the crate on my rear rack was a pain)
- shift it further back on the frame (it also needs to clear the rear tire, as it turns out)
Final Thoughts
I love this thing, and I'm super excited about the next opportunity to use it, which will probably be in the spring. Hauling a tuba in the cold, possible snow/ice, and with limited daylight is a bit too risky for me. For me, this project reinforced the idea that most people don't use a bike for transportation because they haven't found a way to overcome the numerous obstacles in their way. In the end, a vast majority of the obstacles can be overcome individually, or with help/investment from your community. It takes surprisingly less effort than you realize, if you just give it a try.
...with a song in my heart!
