The Bicycle trailer chasse finished.

Hyer, I have been busy lately. As you will see on my last photo's, I fitted a coaster wheel to the upright -acting as a turntable; at least I  thought it would- and bolted the tow bar into it. I didn't go far off my drive as the thing was swinging around like a Darliks (is that how you spell it? Dr Who Bin on castors) sink plunger (I think it's a sink plunger; them things look like something cobbled up from reclaimed hoards). Anyway, I changed it.
Here it is, A sturdy swan neck affair, made out of parts of that sun lounger; glad I didn't take it to the tip; of course I have sawn them to the correct length and reused the little half moon shaped plastic bungs to stick in the ends like they were on the lounger. I hitched it up to the newly designed hitching point on the saddle stem.

Here is the hitching point, I decided not to use my other flimsy castor wheel housings that I bought cheaply and used one of these stronger larger ones with a bolt that would normally be used  to join the wheel to a piece of furniture or other mobile apparatus, as you can see I made a bracket with bolts and pieces of metal sawn from the legs of an old workmate vice bench thingy.  The wheel housing was given to me by the local postman who swapped 2 of them for an old green tin army bedside locker  that I was going to dump as it was in the way in my garage; it had been left in the old garage that we pulled down to make room for an en-suite bedroom and we then had a new double garage built. Not from reclaimed materials, cost us a lot of money. Anyway, I kept in with the free reclaimed materials on the trailer by using a reclaimed castor wheel housing. 

The little piece of tubing with the U-bolt welded to it was originally part of the frame but I sawed it off as it would have been in the way of the box when I screwed it on. I just threw it in my bits box full of brackets hinges bolts etcetera. I didn't think I would need it for this project until I had fitted the wheel housing onto the seat stem; originally I was going to hitch the bar between the two bolt holes that originally held the wheel as a few people do on the internet; and where I first got this idea from.

The reason I have taken their advice on other instructions is because I wanted to allow the bicycle to lean as I went round corners. The piece of tubing bolted on the hitching bolt can act as a spindle for the tow bar to turn and the small bolt allows the tube to swing up and down, so I have 3 movements; whereas with using the original wheel bolt holes it would only swing for the bicycle to lean and allow some movement up and down, you would have to fit another wheel housing somewhere else on the tow bar as others have to give 3 movements. I have tried it out with just the chasee frame in tow and it worked great; I went about a quarter of a mile and round a church carpark in both directions to try the turning out, it was excellent. I had one teething problem, I noticed that it began to rattle a bit so I checked it out when I got back on my drive, the wingnut I put on for quick assembly and unhitching had worked loose with the vibration; I purposely cycled over rutted rough roads as my bike is a mountain bike and I also have chunky tires on the trailer as I will be on green roads mostly; off the main roads; some people use a pin with a hole in and a sort of key ring thing in it, I recon that is a bit fiddly so I have decided to have a couple of spanners as well as a proper cycle spanner in my bag on the handle bars and I am using a locknut, or 2 ordinary nuts tightened together. Where I haven't put locknut on other parts as I didn't have them to fit the smaller bolts, I used that idea of tightening two nuts together, as my neighbour who bikes a lot said that they were liable to shake loose and the under carriage would fall to pieces.  

 I didn't take a photo of the bike hitched to the trailer today so I will do that tomorrow. I have a few adjustments to do to the box before fitting it to the chasses. Not long now, I will keep you posted.