Taking more shape - 1980 GS850

[Dave Ireland]

Got a pair of auxiliary lights on and nearly finished the trailer refurb...

The LH light is a headlamp unit from an earthmover with a decent Hi/Lo beam pattern; that will be fitted with an H4 LED with copper braid cooling (no room for a fan-cooled one). The RH light is a 27W LED worklamp in long-distance form, which will only be used with main beam, so as not to dazzle anyone.

I originally built this trailer 20 years ago and it proved to be very useful at the time, but eventually got consigned to the rear lot and finished up looking a bit sorry for itself. New floor, sides, 12" Minilite wheels and a coat of paint really wakes it up. Still need to do LED lighting on it, but no hurry for that, the trailer lighting board works well enough for now.
It tows like a dream now, after some useful information from the Delphi Bike Trailer forum regarding tongue length, etc.

 

[Larry Fine]

The ball hitch does not inhibit lean angle?

 

[GS850_Mike]

Not to take from Dave's post but I have not had any issues with the ball hitch and lean angles. Although I will say I am more careful when pulling my two wheeled trailer.

 

[Dave Ireland]

The ball hitch does not inhibit lean angle?

Not in the slightest - by the time I'm dragging pegs with that, I'm already in trouble. As I tend to lean off a little bit to help cornering (as I've done for years), it's far less of a problem anyway.
Having said that, when I first built it, I jury-rigged a hodge-podge swivel hitch as that's what seemed to make sense at the time.
This is the original swivel-hitch, which worked well enough, but always had the tendency to pitch hard over and stay there, which I didn't like. It was the run-on brake spindle from a caravan chassis, gutted and re-configured into a piece of steel tube packed with grease.

It was very old anyway, and I was never sure whether it was a proper 50mm hitch or an older 2" one. Still, it did the job for thousands of miles and many years.
The trailer forum people are 50/50 on the desirability of a swivel and I decided to not bother with one for this rebuild. Otoh, a design for a better type of swivel has been taking shape - one that will address the issue of tilt-over on the ball.