Having received a going away present from work of a voucher for
Edinburgh Bicycle which would render one of their trailers almost free,
I decided to hitch one up to the bike and take it for a spin.
I waltzed up with the Giant and took a look. First impressions (off the
bike);
- It's reasonably sized. Without one around for direct comparison it was
hard to judge the size, but it looked to be about the same size.
- Low finish quality. On the display model that I looked at, the paint
had cracked off the upper beam where the folding mechanism joined it.
- Removing the locking pin and partially folding it and rebuilding it
resulted in the hole ending up slightly out of alignment. This could be
easily re-aligned with a little force, but was disconcerting.
I handed over my credit card as security and took it upstairs (After
removing the mudguard as they only had one allen bolt holding it on and
didn't have time to start looking for a matching one!) where I hitched
it to the bike. Replacing the QR is problem free and their design means
that the same QR will happily fit any rear triangle (I'm not sure if
it'd be wide enough for a Santana tandem, but if you can afford one of
those you should be buying a BoB! ;-) ). Hitching the trailer is very
easy, and (dare I say it) a better design than the Bob. The two sides of
the bike mount hinge independently so lining them up is a doddle. Rather
than using a little R-clip (Which is so easy to lose, and fiddly to
operate), the arms have an integrated clip with a locking mechanism. To
open them, you press the little button and slide it back. It is a one
handed operation.
I then took it for a spin to my flat. First impressions were very good.
It was quieter than the unladen Bob (Although EBC had stuffed the dry
sac with bubble wrap which probably helped) and it was less noticeable
in handling. I was merrily jinking the bike around on the cycle track
and aside from the weight it felt pretty much the same as normal.
Having got it home, I tested it properly. This involved loading it up
with ~ 20kg (Estimated weight, but we're reasonably confident) of diving
weights. A few hundred metres down the road I stopped to readjust
everything. We had just slung the weights in the top of the bag, but
that felt more than a bit odd. I unpacked the bubble wrap and laid the
weights out in a reasonably even distribution over the bottom of the
trailer and set off again.
Better now, but still noticeable. At speed (Anything over about 12mph)
it had a disturbing tendency to wag a little. Probably only a few mm but
very noticeable on a light road bike. Descending was entertaining
although it was nice to be able to use the rear brake more without
sliding the wheel! I took the weights down to the new parliament and up
the hill through the park (No... not the Arthur's Seat climb!). At the
lower speeds when climbing it behaved nicely. I think there is a little
more play in the hitch than on the Bob so there was a very small amount
of push-me-pull-me going on, but smooth, high cadence pedalling solved that.
Took it home, ditched the weights and returned it to EBC.
Overall opinion:
It's not as bad as this review may have made it sound, and the folding
ability is a pretty strong point as one of the problems with the Bob was
storage. The dry sac looks to be identical but in red (One for you
Danny?) and seemed perfectly good. The mesh panel on the bottom seemed
to have a little more flex in it than I'd expect, but I never really
investigated the Bob that closely so it'd be unfair to compare. It
certainly didn't seem to suffer with the weight!
In terms of riding it seemed better than the Bob when unladen, but not
as good when laden. This is based on two provisos; It's been around 8
months since I rode with a Bob Yak, and I can't say for certain that the
weight that I used was equivalent in quantity or distribution... I did
take more care packing the Bob!
If I were staying in Edinburgh I'd almost certainly get one of these for
shopping runs and small errands around town. I'd be a little more
cautious for touring where you're relying a lot more on the build
quality and quality of ride. The other concern is that as of yet, EBC
have not secured any spare skewers so a failed skewer will cost you the
price of a new trailer. There also aren't any nuts so this is a QR only
option. As I would have to bodge a mount on to the fixer if I wished to
take it with me, and as, even if I did, I would be unable to source
spares easily as EBC are currently the only EU importers of TW-Bents
trailers that I know of, I can't really justify getting it.
In all though, there is one point which stands in it's favour more than
any others: At almost half the price of a Bob it's hard to argue.
Especially when it does do a little more.