Question about towing a trailer with a fat bike in sand.

Advertise with us
Shop deals on ebay
shop deals on amazon
BOXKARS
Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum

Help Support Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
baldwooky

baldwooky

Joined
Aug 21, 2013
Messages
419
Reaction score
459
Rating - 100%
2   0   0
So, I just ordered another Dolomite last night for the misses.
We have a trip planned in June for Myrtle Beach, and that was the main reason I bought a 2nd one.
Plan on riding along the beach there fairly extensively to check out everything.

Right now, I have a 2 seat kids trailer that has 16x1.85 tires on it, I was hoping to tow it with the fat bikes, but I am unsure how effective that tire size will be in sand both wet and dry. Along the water where the sand is wet and beaten down, I'd imagine it would ride much smoother, but I was curious if this is going to be a pain in the butt and if I should start looking for baby seat to attach to the seat posts?

I would prefer to use the trailer, and even rig up something for the wheels if I have to, as I would like the option of towing the kid, as well as a cooler/picnic setup in there as well.

Anyone have experience trying this?
 
You could lace some 20" rims to the trailer hubs. They would raise the trailer a couple inches, but the Dolomite axle is higher than "Standard" 26" wheels. Then you could get some 20" fat tires!

Can you post a pic of the trailer?
 
yea Ill snap some pictures later. Not really sure if tire clearance is an issue.
Im more concerned about the thinner tires on sand, and whether they would actually spin or just drag when pulled.
 
Thinner tires would sink in more and add tons of drag. I look at farm wagons here in the great corn desert and they use super wide, low pressure, floatation tires on the grain wagons they use in the fields. They are really lousy on pavement, wandering all over the road at too much speed but they handle the soft fields well without compacting the soil.

Fat (and taller) tires will make the trailer slope downwards at the the front. Well that trailer is probably sloping up when attached to a fat bike so fat trailer tires might just level every thing out again.

Trailer tires won't ever spin. You need power driven wheels to do that. Fat tires, not over inflated, will give the kids a smoother ride.

Many of the newer trailers use stubby axles that snap in place. Makes it easy to transport and store when you can detach the wheels easily. I've used a single "through axle" design on my home made trailers. Those could handle any size tire with a longer axle and a couple of spacers to keep the tire from rubbing on the trailer body.
 
here's one of the pics I was talking about...
photo.php


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?..._208255592555790_3617373_n.jpg&size=2048,1536
 
Ok Heres some pictures of the trailer in question. Its currently apart as I am currently customizing/rebuilding it.

I don't have the resources to invest a lot of money into this project for 1 or 2 vacations worth of riding. I'd prefer not to have to custom fab anything at if if possible.

As you can see, having this as a plastic tub leaves me with a lot of customization options. The wheels are a single bar axel that just bolts onto the bottom of the tub.

Trying to do this as cheaply as possible to take onto the beach to be pulled by a fat bike. Any options will be considered. I've thought about making some sort of "Ski" setup for it to attach to, or maybe even duct taping some inflatable tubes to the tires to give it a wider ground patch, Zip tieing the tub to a larger inner tube/sled type thing.

I'd prefer to not have to custom fab up some fat wheels from a massif or something else extra cool, because I won't use it much, maybe a 25 miles tops of sand riding if I were to guess. I also don't want to permanently alter the setup it currently has, as I do a lot more rails to trails and bikepath type riding that I will need this for. You can see the 24" SE So Cal Flyer in the back of one of the pictures I built this specifically to match.

At my disposal, I have various wheels/tires from some 20" or 26" bikes, the fattest I think are 2.35, as well as another utility trailer, which is just a steel frame with a piece of plywood and some eye bolts on it for tie downs.







 
if you want to do it as cheaply as possible, and your really not going be using it a ton, then make it a dualie.

Just take another set of wheels the same size and attach them to the ones that are already on it. Maybe some clamps, or bolts if you don't mind making holes in the plastic spokes.

This would be a nearly free mod...
 
Last edited:
What about if I were to zip tie a thin strip of plastic to each tire, say 5" thick or whatever I can fit there, something rigid enough that it wouldn't flex, but increases my ground patch ?

The dualie idea is promising, but requires another set of wheels, and some way of connecting them(don't want to modify the axels on the existing stuff)
 
try it! As long as it doesn't act like a shovel. For that matter, you could use the same plastic and make a pair of skis that sit just inside the tires. Have them so they would be about an inch off the ground when on cement. Then when in the sand the would keep the trailer from sinking. Just make sure the ends curve up.
 
oh that's a good one.
I was thinking of just rigging up some ski's and mounts to fit the existing mounts, and taking off the wheels, but I could very easily just rig up some mount to the axel or side of the tub !
 
Buy a longer new axle in the same diameter. My local home store, local harbor freight and local hardware stores, all carry rod stock in various diameters and lengths. ~ $10. They are mild steel so you can hacksaw to length easy enough and drill a small hole (1/8") length wise across the axle (near the ends) for a split pin to hold the wheels on. Add a bit of spacer like 3/4" pvc to keep the tires from rubbing on the trailer body or each other. use a large flat washer at the end to keep the wheel from rubbing on the split pin.

You could do dualies (or more) or build fat wheels on slide-on hubs.

You can get plastic "cart wheels" that fit on 1/2" or 5/8" axles pretty cheap. I've gotten some from Northern Tool and Harbor Freight.

You can shelve the current axle for when you want to 'restore' the current trailer to stock. And you can use the longer axle when you decide to put dualies or fat tires on some other trailer.

I think stretching plastic from wheel to wheel would just sag and not take any load.

One problem with using regular bicycle wheels for trailers is you can't fit a 1/2" axle thru them. Anything thinner and it will bend. You are stuck with the wheel axles so you have to build a frame around the outside to support them on both sides. If you are building a trailer from scratch, you can do that easy enough.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top