CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Stuff

Followme vs Trailgator

(5 posts)

No tags yet.


  1. algo
    Member

    Hello,

    I recently bought a "tagalong", intending to take one child on the bike and pull the other one along to nursery. However, the bike I am pulling is very small and I don't think the tagalong quite works - I had to do quite a bit of humouring to get it to fit at all and with such a small frame the bike tends to lean over. As a result I invested in a "follow-me" tandem bike thing. It is absolutely worth the money and the resulting austerity measures. I think the tagalong is probably great for slightly bigger bikes - the bike my daughter has is an Islabike cnoc 14. If anyone would like the tagalong please let me know - it's practically unused and all the bits are still there. FOC of course.

    This is the tagalong:

    This is the follow-me tandem, which I would definitely recommend

    (click on pics for bigger versions)

    Posted 7 years ago #

  2. HankChief
    Member

    <pedant> that's a 'trailgator' not a 'tagalong'. A tagalong being a specific piece of kit without a front wheel & without the ability for solo running </pedant>

    Like you I found the trailgator not ideal for small wheeled bikes and had poor manoeuvrability due to the extended wheelbase.

    I seriously considered a follow-me as I could have put a rack mounted childseat on at the same time for child no2.

    Posted 7 years ago #

  3. algo
    Member

    @HC - not pedantic at all - correct, and I apologise for my mis-branding.... thanks for pointing it out (I wonder if chdot could change the title and mistakes (if there's any point).

    I'm glad I'm not the only who had problems with the trailgator - I think it would be ok taller bikes though.

    I plan to have the follow-me and the yepp mini on the front - currently I can have that and the hamax on the rear. I suppose the hamax might also work but I like the idea of being able to see the rider on the back - I will have to experiment. I have to admit transitioning from a trailer to this is a bit nerve-wracking the first time in traffic...

    Posted 7 years ago #

  4. Tulyar
    Member

    Part of the issue with many 'simple designs us that they place the loads on the towing bike in the wrong places, and put heavy leverage, on the 'host' who than has to fight with steering, and has a risk when making moves that place high offset forces on the rear (mainly) tyre contact patch. Brake hard when turening on a reduced friction surface and the trailer will push your rear end sideways

    Hence the best designs attempt to place the connection in such a place that the traction forces act in the closest alignment to the rear axle and tyre contact patch, and if possible limit the degrees of freedom within the hitch. Hence the Rann/Islabike trailer and the axle-end hitches - notably the simple but tough Mik-Link used by Transaid on their ambulance bikes.

    A seatpost mount will put forces high up and forward, and some designs use industrial rubber hose to avoid the need to have proper pivot pins and bearing bushes in the hitch. These you will notice because the towed 'bike' or trailer is usually leaning over at a serious deviation from the position of the towing bike.

    The German (?) design closely resembles the detail of the BOB Yak trailer with a yoke pivoted around the rear axle (vertical) and the pivot for lateral movement behind the rear wheel. There us no need for a third degree of freedom (rotation relative to towing bike, as the trailer has a single wheel and leans with the towing bike when cornering - removing the risk of the trailer flipping over if cornering at speed and clipping a bump or ridge (hence the warnings on many types of 2-wheel trailer about limiting towing speeds)

    Posted 7 years ago #

  5. Stickman
    Member

    https://backonmybikeblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/29/it-takes-two-to-tandem/

    Posted 7 years ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.


Video embedded using Easy Video Embed plugin