Trailer in a Bag

When I moved from my house into a townhouse a couple of years back, I had no where to keep my bike trailer. I know, I know, some of you guys say a bike should never be on a trailer unless it won't run but I disagree. Sometimes Wifey and I attend group rides that may start hundreds of miles from our home and more often than not, we're leaving for the ride the night before after we finish work. Wifey is a great gal but asking her to get on a bike for a 4 or 5 hour ride after she's been on her feet all day, just isn't right. So, we do sometimes trailer the bike. For that and other reasons I find owning a trailer to be beneficial.

My "big" trailer is now kept at my niece's place about 40 minutes away. So, when I need it, it's 40 minutes up, some chatting for a bit and 40 minutes back. Usually this becomes a 2 hour trip. Not the end of the world but not all that convenient. So, I decided to go for a foldable or take apart trailer. A lot of research on the web lead me to conclude the granddaddy of them all, Trailer in a Bag, was the one for me. www.trailerinabag.com

The TIAB isn't cheap and I know sometimes they list used ones for sale, so, I called Bob Maxwell at TIAB and asked if he had any used trailers coming in. As luck would have it, one was coming in a few days and I agreed to take it. While on the phone I reminded him of a telephone conversation he and I had a couple of times over the last year or so about him making a trailer that could convert from a bike towing trailer to a trailer towed behind a bike. He was interested when I proposed it to him and put it on his "list of things to get around to". Well, apparently someone from Miami had pestered him more than I had and Bob had made the part's I'd suggested. Not that it was any great idea, just make the axles shorter so the trailer would be thinner than the standard 5'.  I asked Bob to make me some shorter axles too and, about 10 days later, 3 big boxes arrived via UPS.

I took everything out of the boxes and here's what you get if you order the original TIAB

  Click on the photo for a "Much too large" view

You can see the trailer easily fits into a duffle bag (oh yeah, you get that too but it's not in the photo).  Check the TIAB website for the particulars but suffice it to say, the individual pieces are pretty small and fairly light. I'm told few really move the trailer pieces while in the bag due to the total weight but it's a good way to store the pieces.

It takes about 5-10 minutes to slide everything together (it's held together with pins like the pin that holds a hitch drawbar onto a receiver) 

This is what you end up with.

The ramp at the back is to load the bike.  The grated piece on the side is where the kickstand goes when you load the bike. Once you tie the bike down, that piece and the tail ramp are removed.

Now that's the standard TIAB. If you want something a little extra, you can have a wheel chock added which my buddy had done. Here's a photo of his trailer.

The nice thing about the chock is, when you pull the bike onto the ramp, the chock "grabs" the front wheel and holds the bike up. You can then get off the bike, even without putting the side stand down, and the bike will stay upright. In addition to making loading the bike more convenient, the chock adds a bit of security to the bike when towing since it, in addition to the tie downs, holds the bike up.

Ok, that's the normal TIAB. Now the fun part.

I wanted to be able to tow the trailer behind my scoot and I wanted to add a carrier to it so, I needed at least 40" between the wheels so I could fit the carrier. I asked Bob to make an extra set of axles to do that and that's what he did. Here's the 2 axles side by side.

   The standard axles is 24" and the smaller one is 18"

Here's a shot of the trailer with one axle swapped.

  You can see how the right side is shorter than the left.

Here's both axles swapped.

  Note the smaller axles are still pretty wide and one could probably tow a motorcycle with this configuration. I'll have to try it someday and see how it feels. I do know that towing a Silver Wing on the full size axle (60") is quite nice and after a few minutes, you forget the trailer is even back there. At speeds up to 80 mph it was secure and stable.

The original TIAB is advertised to weigh 140 pounds. I'm guestimating that reducing the axle size 6" each end drops total weight about 5 pounds. This based on an internet lookup of the weight of 3 x 3 tubing being about 5 pounds / foot. So we are about 135 lbs here.

Next I removed the tie down bar and the middle piece of the long part of the trailer and ended up with this.

Another guesstimate is a drop of about 20 pounds for the approximately 2.5 foot middle piece and tie down bar. So we are about 115 pounds for the trailer.

In order to have a place to put stuff, I bought a used car top carrier. I still need to find a way to permanently attach it to the trailer but, just to see how it would look, I laid it on the trailer. Here it is:

At this time I'm still waiting for the scoot hitch to arrive. Once I install it I'll load up the car top carrier and see how the trailer handles when I pull it. At the moment I believe that with just me on the bike, there should be no problem pulling the trailer since, even with gear in it, the total weight should be under 200 pounds. I think the Silver Wing can handle that amount of weight without a problem.

Handling is my concern at the moment. The tongue of the trailer looks a bit short and it's possible that may have to be lengthened so the trailer will track correctly and not wander on the road. If that can be worked out, I'll next try pulling a loaded trailer with Wifey also on the back. That's the ultimate test and goal.

Check back in a couple of weeks to see how things go and thanks for stopping by!