carbon road bikes with a trailer???

[charlie]

My wife and I are planning on doing some motel touring and would like to use a burley nomad trailer with our carbon road bikes. Is there any negative feed back out there or problems that other cyclist have had with this set up? Hoping to prevent any unwanted problems on the open road.
charlie

This message was edited by charlie on 11-15-07 @ 6:35 PM

[cyclesafe]

I took a 3-ring Trek 5200 and BOB trailer on the Southern Tier with no major problems.  The only two (manageable) downsides are braking on extreme grades and traction for turning on wet and sandy surfaces.  If you go slow and watch the slippery parts you'll be fine.

I toured with a person who wouldn't tour any other way than with a Trek 5200 and Burley two wheeled trailer.

[bogiesan]

Depends a lot, I should think, on which parts are carbon and what
generation of technology you have on your bikes. The Burley grabs the
chainstays, does it not? The BOB uses a skewer on the rear dropouts.
They will put tremendous torque and moment on those areas.

but here's the thing: Your carbon road bikes are designed to do
something completely different than tour and they certainly weren't
made to pull trailers. Your carbon bike weighs several pounds less than
a utilitarian steel machine designed specifically for touring. But if you
put a trailer on your carbon bike, the weight savings are meaningless
considering the entire package (you, trailer, contents, bike).

david boise ID

go, ristretto, FCP/AE
"Read the manual."

[charlie]

CYCLESAFE: What size tires did you and your friend use,while you were touring?
Thanks for the reponse
charlie

life member
jioned 1999

[cyclesafe]

25 mm is the widest tire that will fit on a Trek 5200.

[edmilkman]

all you need to do is chop off the last zero on your Trek, and it goes from a lite carbon 5200 to the old touring workhorse 520 !  I think the engineers up at Trek weren't even thinking about that when they named the new models.

[raybo]

Here is a link about road bikes and trailers from www.biketouringtips.com.

Also, here is a set of links about touring bikes in general.

Ray