Wyatt’s bike cart was a rare unicorn of a project in that I had previously built up a similar but more beat up Schwinn trailer nearly identical to this one. Eventually it fell apart for various reasons but I pack-ratted the aluminum square tube frame into my junkyard wars crawlspace stockpile, and see? Here it is getting all used up again! Yay! Due to this amazing preparedness I managed to knock out this whole modification/restoration in one afternoon. All we really had to do was clean and flatten the vinyl, slice up the old Aluminum frame and tig it onto some pre-existing hardware. Also, we chopped out the interior seating and webbing and all that, zip tied on the rain flap and extended the mounting screw for the top bar so that it locks in the channel hinge instead of pulling out easily. I had previously 3d printed some tube adaptors for the hardware but found I didn’t even need that to update this one. They did make some changes to this model, I guess they had some failures from boring the axles straight through the tubes nearly the full width, and so this version has an offset block- smart. It also has few mystery features, one is a pair of square tubes pointing down- I don’t know what they’re for, they had spring pins so something attached to them, but for me they were just about the right height to weld crossbars to form the bedpan at a lower height. This helps a LOT to lower the CG which I can tell you first hand was a problem with handing on the previous version. Fortunately my only wipeouts were while carrying cargo and not people or pets but we saw one family flip one of these with two kids inside on the creeper trail. Fortunately everyone was ok. This is at least 3″ lower now but still with plenty of ground clearance. Dog notwithstanding this is a big design improvement. The big design de-provement is that we’ve killed off most of the collapsability in this, so it’s generally fairly awkward to take apart and transport, but if you’re willing it can still end up in assorted pieces.
There is also some random socket near the hookup assembly- happens to fit a PVC tube that I stuck a camera mount screw into- I didn’t even have to cut anything, it just fit together! This build was destiny, evidently. Anyway, that’s where we ended up throwing that 360 up for the last few clips on here. The only thing lacking now is a mount for Saul’s bike so we could have a 4 bike train. Delilah REALLY insisted that her bike (mostly pulled by MY bike) be the one to pull it by the end. Luckily Wyatt made room for Saul. It’s a little cramped for him but it’s solid and he’s accepted his fate at this point. D’s getting pretty good at riding independently at this point but to be honest I like having her on the trailer so she can practice biking & leaning without much opportunity to lose control, especially when we have to ride near some busy roads. The only consequence now is that I’m stuck towing EVERYBODY… but I’ll be looking forward to those supercalves materializing shortly.
Thanks to the Connelly family for use of the trailer. It’s still theirs but I plan to return it well improved.