Trailer

I’ve been wanting to modify the B.O.B. in a few ways since I picked one up. I love that trailer, I use it three to four times weekly, so this isn’t to say it’s lacking in any way. It does a great job exactly how it’s designed, it’s just that when you don’t have a car, and rely on bike for hauling cargo, sometimes modification is something that needs to happen.* This accessory offered from B.O.B. brings many other ideas to mind. The most recent mod I’ve been tinkering with is introducing the ability to tow a bike or two. 

I’ve tossed a bike in the trailer before, but it always required a few too much futzing with bungee cords and usually resulted in a little too much of a balancing act. Even with a folding bike it was cumbersome. Installing a fork mount to the trailer and allowing the towed bike’s rear wheel to trail behind seemed like a viable solution.

Last week I built a prototype that worked pretty well. One of the features I’d like this modification to offer is removal. The assembly should be removable because when it’s installed, it adds clippable width to the trailer. Clippable meaning running the risk of the arm clipping and catching onto objects on the road that I may ride too close to. Manageable when towing a bike, but the extra width could be easily forgotten when not.

The other issue I’ve foreseen and experienced is when only towing one bike with the wide option is the resulting swing of the trailed bike going into the B.O.B.’s wheel. I countered this swing reasonably well by wedging the bike’s separated front wheel into the trailer, pushing outward onto the towed bike. The random pothole or the like caused this remedy to not work so well. Surprisingly however, ’’the towed bike recovered it’s track and stayed mostly in the correct position. Never did I have to dismount and correct, hence the wedge remedy working “reasonably well”. The best solution that I’ve considered so far is using a bar across two bikes—or from the towed bike to the trailer itself. Something like Saris’ Bike Beam would be an easy store-bought solution for this. This would make the towed bike more rigid to the trailer, preventing most undesired swing all together.

My next plan is to limit the cargo to a single bike only. Probably mounting the fork hitch at the top of the B.O.B.’s suspension tower, or down next to it somehow. Should be interesting when I get this figured out. I plan mostly on being able to tow an extra bike to polo, but this will also be helpful in bringing an extra bike to the shop for repair, or that new bike I’ve been neglecting to build and bring home.

* _{I’ve considered the consequences and am pretty sure these modifications void whatever warranty came with the B.O.B. trailer. Keep that in mind yourself if you plan on trying any of these “modifications” yourself.}

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