Towing a trailer with a road bike?

[lukesdad]

I've thought about buying a trailer before now and the model i looked at was the Burley Nomad ..

Obviously chosen to reflect your charachter fuddy

 

[lulubel]

If you look at the pics of mine the ball joints are between the frame mounts and the trailer frame on both sides. This allows you to steer and lean the bike as normal while the trailer stays upright.

Now I'm going to seem really stupid, but how does that work? If you lean the bike and the trailer stays upright, won't the rear tyre of the bike rub against the trailer frame? And doesn't it mean the trailer will just tip over when you stop? OK, I'm guessing there must be some limits on it, but I'm trying to figure out how it all works. Maybe you need to explain it to me in very, very simple terms

 

[lulubel]

The Burley Nomad does look nice. I like the way you can have the extra rack on the top of it, and being able to fold down the back and front could be useful if you need to carry something that's too long to fit inside.

 

[lukesdad]

The trailer frame is tapered out towards the bike and there is plenty of clearance for angle of lean. The trailer is balanced on a tiangle of points its wheel and the 2 ball joints its also pivoted thru the vertical at the front of the trailer. So no problem when stationary. The only problem with mounting this way when fully loaded backing the bike up takes a little getting used to as the trailer trys to dictate the path, turning the bike while backing up tends to tip the bike sideways on the ball joints. Not a big deal but can be a bit tricky on tight manouvres. Its a small price to pay for the other advantages. Of course you can allways un hitch. Unloaded or light loads its not an issue.

 

[Muddyfox]

Obviously chosen to reflect your charachter fuddy

I'm not that Burley ;-)