Falk Schönfeld
Munich is a beautiful city. One of the things I like most about it is the fact that I can get almost anywhere on my bike. I don't own a car, and don't plan on getting one. In the cases I cannot get around using a car (such as buying furniture), my parents live close by and I'm also a member of ShareNow, a car sharing app (although I've only used them 2-3 times). We have a small supermarket on the next street corner which caters most of our needs and is accessible by foot. However, if I want to buy a crate of beer or visit the local hardware store, I take my bike. However, things get too unwieldy for the bike rack soon, so I decided to get a proper bike trailer.
I have no prior experience with bike trailers. So I did some googling and came up with the following criteria:
In the end I decided to go for this one from amazon (note: I have no affiliation with those guys).
Assembly was a breeze and didn't require any tools. There are some hooks to hold the axis in place, make sure to assemble those correctly. The frame comes preassembled and the sidewalls can be folded out. Then you fix them by pushing in the front and rear crossbars and securing them with screws on the corners. Pushing those bars in requires a bit of force and finicking, especially since your range is limited by the fact that they are already in the sleeves of the fabric. I thought about adding velcro to the sleeves, so you could attach the fabric after attaching the crossbar, but then it might rip when heavy loads shift while driving, so it is probably better this way.
The mount on the bike is a simple washer with a pin which gets added to the rear axis on the outside. The trailer shaft is a pipe which gets stuck on the pin, and a second pin goes through pin and shaft holds everything together. There is also a belt to keep everything together.
My first proper run with the trailer went to my parents' house where I loaded up some stuff I had not gotten around to grabbing before. On the ride there, I took the slightly bumpy forest track, since the trailer wasn't filled. While you feel the drag, it handles fine. Once arrived, I loaded a full moving box, some swinging chair for our balcony (the vertical beige thing), a camping mat, and random other stuff on there. The elastic around the cover of the trailer was not long enough to accomodate this, so I tied the one corner which did not reach down with a belt from the clothes in the box. On the way back you could feel the weight of the trailer, so more careful driving is necessary. I took flat roads back. I felt a bit out of breath once I was back home (each trip was around 4km), but that was due to the face mask rather than the weight. Just a few meters from home, one of the axles slipped from its mount as the aforementioned clips to hold them in place probably had not been placed perfectly. While that caused a grating sound the last few meters, it does not seem like it left lasting any damage. I'll watch and see if that happens again.
The second run went to the hardware store, where I got some planks for another project. I then proceeded to raid the liquor store for beer, to properly simulate a full load. Again tying down things was not easy, but worked. The 2m planks where a bit long, so I had to take care while driving corners, but it wasn't really a problem.
My building complex has a bike garage, so I can leave the trailer in there. Put up vertical in front of my bike, it hardly takes up any more space than just my bike. I did get a second lock for the trailer however.
The trailer comes with a flag for visibility. It has an ugly orange ball on top, and I instantly thought of printing some sort of figure for the top of it. At the same time, I dug up a model of the Ebon Hawk on thingiverse. Designed as a magnet, it already had a 6mm hole, which fit the flag pole perfectly. I drilled a bit deeper and it fit perfectly.
So far, the trailer worked great. It handles well, and despite the fact that it hardly has any suspension, also works on forest tracks. As long as the axle doesn't slip again, it works great and does exactly what I hoped it would.