One of my numerous "coming back to haunt me after 30 years" injuries I have, is post-traumatic arthritis of my right hip. While my other creaks and groans all make riding more difficult, this one is the worst as it affects how far I can actually walk, but is fine when I ride, which is part of the reason why I started riding again as it's actually way less painful riding 5 miles than it is walking 1 mile, especially when i go shopping. Currently i'm dragging one of those old dear 2 wheel trollies 1 1/2 miles to the supermarket and then back home with around 30lb of stuff, this takes me out of action for at least the next day!
So I started looking at bike trailers and quickly discovered that none of them would work for me when it comes to getting everything back into my flat, the closest I found was a Burley Travoy, but they're a little out of my budget, even 2nd hand and most importantly, it's still too wide to fit through the doors of the stupidly small lift in my block, which will be a problem when it comes to being fully loaded. I even looked at sack barrows, but those were too tall, too heavy and had bespoke fittings that I would struggle to replace if they broke.
This led me into building my own version of a Travoy, minus all the folding parts and narrow enough for the lift. I also needed to be able to hook it onto a supermarket shopping cart so I can pack everything straight into the bag when I checkout, I've been able to use the original trolley bag as it's quite strong, waterproof and will mount via the 2 upright tubes the same as it does on the old trolley. While looking for tubing to use, i found a place online that sells tubing and fittings for handrails etc with everything cut to size and used their parts list to knock up a basic mockup in Blender, using the dimensions of the original trolley as I know that currently fits where I need it to.
The design is based on using 27mm tubing and 10" wheels, I did originally have the axle tube as adjustable so I could put bigger wheels on it if I needed to, but at the moment I'm just having the axle running through the bottom corner tube as having the wheels too far up the main upright tubes means the trailer will be too upright while being towed, which isn't ideal.
I'm going with a mini-towball type of hitch although i'm not 100% convinced it'll be any good, but I'll know for sure once I start testing the trailer. I have had to fit a rear rack to the bike as a way of keeping any towing arm as short as possible, the alternative being a stupidly long arm over the rear wheel to the hitch attached to the seat tube which will cause collisions with the wheel itself, again, not ideal.
I bought the tubing and fittings a few weeks ago, I did originally make the mistake of being too overeager with tubing strength and ordered galvanised steel, which was tough as hell when put together, but just weighed far too much, so I reordered the tubing in Aluminium and now it's a more realistic weight.
I've got it all built as a test fitting and am currently going around and marking all the grub screw points on the tubes, so I can drill them in order to partially screw the grubscrews into the tubes for a more secure fit rather than just pressing against them.
Here's where it is so far!
I still need to figure out how I'm going to mount the wheels, the ones I bought do come with individual axles, but to use those I'll need to drill through those and the axle tubes and that's a little more precision drilling than I'm equipped to do, the other option is i buy a length of 20mm bar, thread each end and use some washers to compress fit the 2 wheel bearing races to the axle tube.
As it stands right now, with the price of the Alu tubing, fittings, wheels and towball gubbins with VAT & shipping, I'm into it by about £120. I'm not counting the cost of the original galv tubing as I have another plan for that anyway.
I'll take more pics once I have everything drilled and assembled properly, including the slightly dubious looking solution I came up with for the hitch!
So I started looking at bike trailers and quickly discovered that none of them would work for me when it comes to getting everything back into my flat, the closest I found was a Burley Travoy, but they're a little out of my budget, even 2nd hand and most importantly, it's still too wide to fit through the doors of the stupidly small lift in my block, which will be a problem when it comes to being fully loaded. I even looked at sack barrows, but those were too tall, too heavy and had bespoke fittings that I would struggle to replace if they broke.
This led me into building my own version of a Travoy, minus all the folding parts and narrow enough for the lift. I also needed to be able to hook it onto a supermarket shopping cart so I can pack everything straight into the bag when I checkout, I've been able to use the original trolley bag as it's quite strong, waterproof and will mount via the 2 upright tubes the same as it does on the old trolley. While looking for tubing to use, i found a place online that sells tubing and fittings for handrails etc with everything cut to size and used their parts list to knock up a basic mockup in Blender, using the dimensions of the original trolley as I know that currently fits where I need it to.
The design is based on using 27mm tubing and 10" wheels, I did originally have the axle tube as adjustable so I could put bigger wheels on it if I needed to, but at the moment I'm just having the axle running through the bottom corner tube as having the wheels too far up the main upright tubes means the trailer will be too upright while being towed, which isn't ideal.
I'm going with a mini-towball type of hitch although i'm not 100% convinced it'll be any good, but I'll know for sure once I start testing the trailer. I have had to fit a rear rack to the bike as a way of keeping any towing arm as short as possible, the alternative being a stupidly long arm over the rear wheel to the hitch attached to the seat tube which will cause collisions with the wheel itself, again, not ideal.
I bought the tubing and fittings a few weeks ago, I did originally make the mistake of being too overeager with tubing strength and ordered galvanised steel, which was tough as hell when put together, but just weighed far too much, so I reordered the tubing in Aluminium and now it's a more realistic weight.
I've got it all built as a test fitting and am currently going around and marking all the grub screw points on the tubes, so I can drill them in order to partially screw the grubscrews into the tubes for a more secure fit rather than just pressing against them.
Here's where it is so far!
I still need to figure out how I'm going to mount the wheels, the ones I bought do come with individual axles, but to use those I'll need to drill through those and the axle tubes and that's a little more precision drilling than I'm equipped to do, the other option is i buy a length of 20mm bar, thread each end and use some washers to compress fit the 2 wheel bearing races to the axle tube.
As it stands right now, with the price of the Alu tubing, fittings, wheels and towball gubbins with VAT & shipping, I'm into it by about £120. I'm not counting the cost of the original galv tubing as I have another plan for that anyway.
I'll take more pics once I have everything drilled and assembled properly, including the slightly dubious looking solution I came up with for the hitch!
