Touring with a trailer

[lulubel]

Thanks for all the really helpful comments.

I think I'll have a bit of a play around with racks and cheap panniers before I make any decisions. I don't want to get it wrong and end up paying out a lot of money for either expensive panniers or a trailer that will be difficult to sell on second hand for any meaningful amount of money here in Spain.

As far as wheels go, I have my own handbuilts on it at the moment, and I'll be planning to build another set with wider rims for touring, so I'll make sure they're well made and can handle the load. The comments regarding trailers causing wear on the rear wheel bearings were interesting, and something I hadn't considered. I'd really like to not have any mechanical problems that I can't fix myself (although I know you can never guarantee that).

I can see there are a lot of advantages to having all the load on the bike, but I'm planning to be away from home for extended periods, and I can be a bit "girly" at times, so there are some things that are essential to me that you men probably wouldn't even consider taking (or even owning, for that matter)!

 

[BrazingSaddles]

Hi there lulubel.
Husband and I have toured (twice) with our Surley LHTs. I carried two mahoosive panniers (pacific outdoor ones that have a fab fold-away net for drying clothes on the go) whilst husband towed a carry freedom Y-frame trailer. This year he will be using panniers...It took a while to get used to towing a trailer ("surge & sag"!) and it was prone to tipping over on uneven ground - Graham almost ended up in a canal once - I wet myself with laughter. Bad wife! I suspect a trailer with a single or in-line wheels would be more stable. The last straw was when the connecting component failed and left us stranded...it has since been sold. At least panniers & racks are more 'normal' so can be fixed/replaced far more easily.
Advice we have read about panniers is to have a bit more weight in the front ones.
The Surely's are great, but as one person said earlier, they are pretty heavy so mine really only gets an outing for touring holidays or (very) slow, laid-back rides. The LHT is extremely stable when riding with rear panniers only as I was doing (especially up some steep hills such as the Alps!!!).
Hope this is helpful.

 

[lulubel]

The Surely's are great, but as one person said earlier, they are pretty heavy so mine really only gets an outing for touring holidays or (very) slow, laid-back rides. The LHT is extremely stable when riding with rear panniers only as I was doing (especially up some steep hills such as the Alps!!!).
Hope this is helpful.

Very helpful, thanks.

I assume the stability is due to the length of the rear triangle, in which case the Cross Check may be much more suited to touring than an equivalent road or dedicated cross bike. The nominal wheelbase for my size frame (which Surly have pictured on their site with the rear wheel as far forward as it will go) is 989.8mm, whereas it's 1036.6 on the same size LHT, which looks like a lot, but is actually only 4.68cm. Positioning the rear wheel on the Cross Check as far back as it will go in the horizontal dropouts adds nearly 2.5cm to the wheelbase, and all of that gain is in the rear triangle, which will presumably help a lot with stability.

 

[Over The Hill]

Just a thought on this subject.
The posts mainly concentrate on the bike (or trailer) taking a load of extra weight. My thoughts are that if the weight is on one or the other it still needs to be pushed along and so needs gearing to cope.
A full on tourer will have three cogs on the front with the granny being a 26 tooth. Most commuter bikes will not be down to this size (but you can find the setup on some mountain bikes). So I would say make sure you get the gearing right as the hills are the killers.

On the weight side. Depends what you weigh! I am 12.5 stone and think I could take a few stone on my bike without worry but what if I were 16 stone?

 

[vernon]

On the weight side. Depends what you weigh! I am 12.5 stone and think I could take a few stone on my bike without worry but what if I were 16 stone?

I'd not even worry about 16 stone. I've got to lose another six stones before I get down to that weight yet have never hesitated to take any bike out on a cycle tour with full camping load.

There's too many hangups about whether or not the wheels and frames can take the abuse.

Yes I've broken a rear drop out but subsequently found that riders a whole lot lighter than me had suffered from similar fates with the identical model bike. It was a production fault/problem rather than a weight problem.

I've currently lost just over four stone which represents best part of a bike and camping load.

Unless the original poster is a lot heftier than me thaen I don't see any problems with slapping a rack and panniers on the bike.

 

[lulubel]

A full on tourer will have three cogs on the front with the granny being a 26 tooth. Most commuter bikes will not be down to this size (but you can find the setup on some mountain bikes). So I would say make sure you get the gearing right as the hills are the killers.

I've got a 50/39/30 on it at the moment (with a megarange 11-34 cassette). The cassette gives me leeway to go down to a 28 tooth inner ring on the front without losing the 50 tooth big ring, so if I'm going to use the Cross Check, it will just be a case of experimenting a bit. It would obviously be cheaper to just change the inner ring, but I'd be fine with changing to a MTB chainset if I needed to. Considering I'll have to buy all my touring gear from scratch, the cost of changing the chainset, front mech and BB (if necessary) is a relatively small thing.

 

[chrtho]

The comments regarding trailers causing wear on the rear wheel bearings were interesting

I'd certainly be interested to know how that works - move the load on to a rear rack and the weight will be supported through the rear wheel bearings anyway. I would have thought that spreading the load over 3 (or 4) wheels will result in lower average weight (and less wear) on each bearing. A two-wheeler can of course be loaded so that there is no weight on the back wheel.

If you are worried about trains, buy a folding trailer - mine will fit on an overhead luggage rack although I have never had to do that in practice as there has always been room alongside the bike.

 

[Dayvo]

Dayvo on this forum got overtaken by his and broke a collarbone on tour.

I did, indeed!

Started on this -

 

[Dayvo]

Got a wobble at about 40 kph and crashed on day ONE of a three month trip -

 

[Dayvo]

And finished on this just before Christmas -

 

[Dayvo]

Trailers work for some, but I won't use one again.

Could be that I had a completely incorrectly loaded trailer, but panniers feel 'right'.

I had about 20 kg of baggage for my trip - plus my starting weight of 98 (lost 11 kg in 8 weeks) and my Scott hybrid, although probably not designed to travel far with heavy loads, served me admirably. Only suffered two rear wheel punctures (the first after two hours), and the second when I found a nail in the road.