DIY Survival Off Grid Bike Trailer 

I love the creativity 👏

Use a 2" length of "U" channel to make an axel mount like Burley. Drill a. Hole for the hitch pin. Use a dog plastic cheek bone as the flex link. Cut it into a more tubular shape before drilling. Holes in each end. Add a tubular extension to the side of your hand truck and pin the flex joint into its end.

Very cool, I enjoyed the video - thanks!

That joint ya made is just genius level like! This has really helped coz I’m making a tiny home! To be pulled by me push bike! Thankyou so much, Stray1 Britain’s best Unknown stuntman that never was,

Instead of the hitch contraption, consider a short piece of spring coil. Weld a fender washer to both ends and connect to trailer and bicycle with nuts and bolts.

Thats a good idea. A dolly makes a great bicycle trailer. I've been thinking about building a bike trailer. I'm leaning towards a goose neck seat pole hitch, maybe. I've just tried a different way of lubricating my bike wheel hubs with a grease gun. It did make peddling easer.

I just made one myself with an old heavy duty plastic bin for the box, and 26" wheels. It sits at the height of the center line of the wheels, and is about 18" wide, and 24" long. For the hitch, I used a "u-bolt" on my rear carrier, and a "eye bolt" screwed into the end of a 1" dowel.

Great video. Thank you. I'm going to share this with my husband. He is gonna love it!

I saw a guy used Velcro to attach the hand truck as it is to his rear bike rack worked good easy on and off.

hey thanks! You helped me realized something for my project!

My late dad was a mechanical engineer designing buses and vehicles most of his life. He also drafted a bike trailer once, spending a lot of time to find the right pivoting point to ensure best trailing (staying on the same wheel track as the bike went on). The best pivoting point is cca midway between the bike's rear wheel axle and the trailer axle - if you put the pivot closer to the bike the trailer will always turn on a smaller radius as the bike rear wheel and much smaller than the front wheel, which could be a problem when negotiating tight corners. This, however, requires a relatively long bracket mounted on the bike, with its weight. Another big issue he tackled was suspension. A real suspension with springs and dampening adds to weight (and complexity) but measurably decreases towing force (would be easire to tow). Our guess for a first try was to use gas cylinders used e.g. to support a car's trunk door aloft. That would add both the spring and dampening. Finally a conclusion we had about wheel size is, bigger wheels have lots of advantages but some serious disadvantage. Limiting lateral load size is one disadvantage. Another disadvantage is it tends to keep the load higher and if the surface is not horizontal (e.g one wheel rolls on a rock when the other one does not) the entire load rolls/swings heavily to the side and back. Riding seriously uneven surface might lead to the trailer tipping to the side. Therefore it makes serious sense to consider monowheel trailers. That takes you to a trickier pivoting solution though.

Not gonna lie, hose clamps are great for bikes. I use old tubes as rubber isolation to protect the paint (i ride a ratty ATB) but they hold stuff super well and are dirt cheap

Back in the late 1970's a friend of mine and I made two bike trailers out of hand trucks. We removed the original axle and replaced it with one that was almost twice as thick and was a foot and a half wider (9" on each side) which game them more stability. We change the cheap tires from some of better quality. Then we took a couple of Kmart frame backpacks off of the frames, and placed them on the hand trucks, and drilled cotter pin holes to mount them with. Then we had a stout curved tube welded on to each one to use as a hitch. The hitch mounted on the seat post with a U bolt. We pulled those makeshift trailers for 7,000 miles, and as bike trailers were basically unheard of in those days, just about everyone we talked to wanted to know how we made them. Total cost in 1976, about $40 each.

brilliant. subscribed.

You had benny hill in the states cool, I grew up on benny hill being 58 👍oops this is 2 years old 😂

That Benny Hill song is called, " Yakkity-Sax". A double-leg kickstand might solve your bike tipping over problem. You might want to invest in a multi-speed bike to make your trips a little easier. Very nice process. I like your results.

Looks like the adventure is going well

Nice work Sir !

One way to do a hitch that won't bind up is two loops cut from an old flat inner tube, one fastened to one side vertically, the other fastened to the other side horizontally, the loops go through each other. A halfway point between hitching to the seat post and hitching to bars from the level of the back axle is to make a back rack and hitch to the back of the back rack.

I have a good idea to connect the pivot point use the rubber brackets at muffler shops use to hang the muffler pipe with its strong it's sturdy and it flexible perfect for the application ⚓

Thank U 4 Your time :) , I learned a lot

Good idea ! My mountain has a rack in back with saddle bags

Hello loved watching your video for me my Pivot point i made mine using a Folding Lug wrench and 1 large spring and a motorcyle handlebar riser to attach it to the rear axl of my bike. I cut out the pivot leaving a coulple of inches on each side. the side that has the axl nut i insert a large spring the side that is used for the handle i attach the the trailer back to the spring i insert a inch of it over a bicyle seatpost. yhea i drill and bolt the spring on no welder anyways the seatpost that now has a spring on it i attach it to the bike using a motorcycle handlebar riser all i do is place a nut in the riser thread it on to my rear axl then slide the seatpost on when i want to use my trailer and it makes tight turns you can lay the bike down and the trailer be fully loader and will stay upright and its heavy duty. i know i didnt spend more than 5 dollars finding things at swapmeet and yardsales.

Thanks!

Nice vid! Hope you're dealing with the major heat events well. Here is my 2 cents; As you say; "Roll, Pitch, and Yaw". Your pitch (nose up and down) should gimbel at the rear tire axle. This puts all your tong weight directly on your rear tire axis. That way a load on your traylor doesn't try to make you 'wheely'. Your "Yaw" (side to side or turning bend) should be right behind your rear tire, but maintain horizontal strength (see Burly single wheel Traylor attachments for an illustration). Your roll, because you have 2 traylor wheels instead of one, should be right behind the Yaw axis but limited by bungees or springs to keep it 'wanting' to have both traylor wheels on the ground, (limiting side tip-overs). If you could cant your traylor wheels Toe-Out a bit it would add to the stability too. Nice project. You wound up my imagination with it, Thanks.

proper use of a jack stand. hammered into submission...my chuckles for the day.

what about ball joint? those would offer (limited) 3 side movements needed for stable ride with cargo. nice idea using hand trolley as base of trailer. i may use your idea ;)

Glorious.

great idea ~!

If you ever have to go stealth off the road, those bigger tires are a must.

Cool idea

That looks like a good sturdy trailer. Very practical - and you did it yourself! So when you get your ebike done, that trailer should fit on it? You are recycling lots of items! Good for you!

Super Idee

Large Suitcase With big wheel

Grate...... 🌹🌹❤️❤️💯% Iam Abdul Latheef from India kerala

im trying to build a Trailer, using a Golf Bag Cart , with air tires, and Balance my load, but i didnt think about the Pivoting hitch, will think about that one , lol

It's a KLR!

That is cool, using a sack truck as a trailer. 1 thing did occur to me. Would it be worth using a towing ball/hitch configuration such as you would have from a car to a small "garden" 6 x 4 trailer. Welding the towing ball to the steel extenders from the bike frame and the hitch part to the trailer ? Just a thought.

Youre fantastic sir....you should manufacture the bike hitch portion..100$ yes..there s huge demand for..no doubts n amazing skills on limited budget..wow

It is a 2 lb. mechanics club hammer as far as I know. A very handy hammer.

I notice pulling weight off e bike is more stress on motor vs putting weight on top of the motor such as a rack. I experimented this using same weight on my e bike. The pulling weight forced a cut off of power to cool down the first 3 miles. Putting on weight on top of rear rack there was no cut off to cool down of riding 20miles on. Believe weight on top of a tire the air compensate the overall g forces. Pulling is just straight up rpm force of motor using more wattage than normal of course but the difference of wattage use was more less with weight on top. Used a 1500 watt 52v.20ah Gearless for experimenting. I'm sure using 1800 thru 3000watts makes pulling weight easier and the right specs range of power to pull. But the physics behind experiment actually makes sense of the dimension of air to bear weight.

Ala class trailer

When you started the video, the back end of the trailer was obviously too low. To me, this meant the cargo, as well as the load was all on the back end and causes undue stress on the bike, as well as can lead to issues with the cargo at every bounce in the road. It limited how much cargo you could safely carry, as well, I believe. You eventually changed that and even added some larger wheels. However, by the end, you had made a hitch, but it still all allowed the trailer to still sit low at the hitch, as well at the cargo bed & frame. Larger tires didn't help that issue and I am thinking that your main issue is that the whole trailer simply rides angled too low from the hitch point on back. The swivel hitch setup you made works well to allow any lean from the bike to happen. Your hitch setup should have the trailer nose more downward that at a straight angle or even reversed with the nose pointed up. This may be accomplished by modifying the rear axle location to actually make a set of pillars to move the hand truck frame up higher in the back area. If you check out barrel train cars for ideas about this, you can see how they set up their cars to ride well. I am probably getting too complex on this to actually work well for you to understand what I mean, but the rear end of your handcart should be even or a bit higher than the front end is at the hitch. Otherwise it will always have the issues of not being all that stable, especially under a heavy load. It would probably be even easier just to adapt the same type of hitch that is most commonly used with pet carrier/baby carrier trailers which are used with bikes. They have spring loaded hitches which allow movement sideways and such, so that you can turn or lean the bike easier. Fabricating one of them would likely be easier than making the hitch setup you came up with. I am not being critical in the least, as I love DIY things and am currently planning out a barrel trailer setup for my electric bike and maybe adaptable to my lawn tractor. Every time I start on the project, I seen to come across another idea which changes my plans dramatically. Finding videos as this give me inspiration. sometimes I give myself a face slap sometimes after expending so much effort on a project just to see someone else had a better and easier idea if I had only seen it first. ;-) Thanks for the video. ;-)

When you talked about roll, pitch, and yaw (and later, when the bike fell over), I thought about my experiences with a cheap bike trailer that I got off CraigsList. It had a "goose neck" with a fixed ring on it. The ring connected to the seat post. A rubber gasket was missing, so I put foam and duct tape on the seat post to deaden the banging. It worked pretty well. I never had a problem when I had two kids in it. One time, though, I only had one kid and the light side of the bike hit a curb. The trailer flipped! It was a good thing that the seat post through the ring limited the roll access. I quickly jerked the bike in the other direction and it popped back up. My son was strapped in and safely contained inside the sides of the trailer. If it had flipped all the way over it might have been an issue. I don't suppose you've had any troubles with the trailer tipping, have you? The other trailers we had were single wheel. They also attached to the seat post, but the roll was kept to as close to zero as possible because the trailer was supposed to lean with the bike.

Solar and ebike ;)

it's a nice video, but the trailer is so bad... ... if it gets the work done, then it's ok, but it must weigh like 30 kg unloaded and the wheel base is so narrow it could be good for driving in tight streets with loads of cars beig just as wide as the handlebars...but a small stone will tip your trailer , and the cargo needs to be as close to the ground as possible

where did you find your wheels? Thanks for the video You have a great idea.

I just build a long John cargo bike with a big cargo deck instead. It can easily carry a few tote bins.

Innovate and iterate, wash, rinse, repeat. Now take out a patent!

if you getting thorns in tire use the pipe insulation method

Amazon has replacement bike trailer hitch

very narrow, and center of gravity is very high. Carlin, you might think about spacers on the axles to widen this. You are going to find it tips really easy on corners,

Very nice. Comparable to jury rigging Dewalt tool batteries to an ebike

maybe you could pour some polyeter resin into the tube to reinforce certatain parts... Boy I spoke too soon.. a very nice evolution. maybe a used child bike trailer might have been worth exploring ..new they are not cheap. compost any paper buried in the ground.. that bolt holding the trailer on seems a little small. But amazing.. good work.

What part of the Sonoran desert are you in kinda looks like Yuma maybe Parker

Too much pressure on the drawbar, weight using a scale?

🍀✌️😁✌️🍀 ... try Tannus never flat tires ... I have some on my bike ... Tannus guarantees 5000 km ..

fyi... a guy in England used the same idea... except he cut out the metal handle in the top part and conneect it to a bike rear rack

There’s a huge metal weight in some of the older RV small washing machines, clothes washer. They make a great small anvil.

Why not just use and steel front wheel fork, which you can widen to fit the rear axle, as hitch ?

My name is Stacy out here id like to connect with you put here in the sunset ranches area

I’m trying to figure out: what is the point of those gloves?. 😂

Lost me after so many ads found another trailer idea that didn't force one to watch so many commercials for about 10 minutesutes of video

Are you off grid?

PLEASE MAKE YOUR BIKE ELECTRIC I don’t want to see you pass out the video was good tho

Amazon sells bike trailer ball hitches they are so tiny and cute

I get the DIY part of the deal, but Survival Off-Grid? It could just as well be used by a homeless person who has no other choice. Or a loading dock security guard in Puerto Rico. Off Grid or On Grid, it ain't much.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.