Cycling UK Forum

I found it tended to rotate towards the spokes. The chan stay was rather thin. On a Brompton it doesn't fit at all.

I cushion my clamp by cable-tying some rubber sleeves (parts of old hand grips) around the chainstay.

Does anyone know where there actually ARE any of the Standard Burley Hitches and Round Tongue Connectors.
I keep ordering them just to have the dealers contact me (or not in the case of my LBS ) to say they couldnt get them afterall.

I tried taping the chain stay but it didn't really work.

Burley don't currently have a UK distributor. You could try Fisher Leisure http://www.fisheroutdoor.co.uk/default.asp

meic wrote:I cushion my clamp by cable-tying some rubber sleeves (parts of old hand grips) around the chainstay.

Does anyone know where there actually ARE any of the Standard Burley Hitches and Round Tongue Connectors.
I keep ordering them just to have the dealers contact me (or not in the case of my LBS ) to say they couldnt get them afterall.

AFAICT, Burley won't sell direct to UK. When I got my hitch, I tried and failed; I could get the items in my Burleygear shopping basket, but there was no option to ship to UK. If you can't get these items from Fisher (and it probably will have to be special order via your LBS), you could try getting a US bike shop to do mail order to UK.

http://www.burleygear.com/category_s/18.htm is Burley's product page. This is the page of spares for the Solo and D'Lite child trailers, but the forged bike plates, and flex connector assemblies are there - giving you the Burley part numbers.

HTH,

Geoff

maybe not the right post but it can help some people?
i managed to fix my clamp on my trailer bike (a cleveland trailer made by raleigh / phillips / avenir). i bought the Michelin Avenir Axle Mount Bicycle Trailer Replacement Hitch and it is much much safer now. no problem, i can carry three kids now without any worry. much better to have a bracket on the axle rather thatn a clamp

Back in 2007 I bought an Avenir Mule for about £80 from Rutland Cycles. Like many others that have posted I quickly found that the hitch easily became detached. I read this topic and being the least handy of men I was rather put off. I consulted Chris Juden and he pointed me in the direction of a German company who were very helpful but the cost of the hitch was more than the trailer had cost!

So I came back to this topic and bought the Burley hitch and drawer bar component and with trepidation fitted the hitch which was easy. I then fitted the drawbar end, expecting that I would have to drill the bar to fit the securing bolt..........but no there was a suitable hole already in the drawbar.

What a difference it has made. Whilst mating the couplings can take a minute, the trailer is much more stable, I find it doesn't go over on its side as it did with the Avenir fitting, I even take it up tracks and it is stable. I must admit the trailer rattles but I think this is a result of the lightweight construction and use of clips. I use to shopping baskets in the trailer to prevent what is being carried pressing against the canvas sides and wearing against the wheels and I have put a layer of foam rubber on the bottom of the trailer which stops what I am transporting moving.

The cost of the modification was about £40, added to the original cost of £80 and the trailer has cost £120. I have has been using the trailer weekly to go to a supermarket that involves a round trip of 12 miles, the no profit mileage rate allowed by Revenue and Customs is 45p and 20p per mile respectively for cars and bikes. so I reckon that the saving per mile is 25p and on my 12 mile journey is £3. My trailer will pay for itself after 40 journeys.

We don't see many trailers on bikes (with the exception of children trailers) and I have had many appreciative comments on what a good idea the trailer is. For me using shopping baskets is far better in supporting, protecting and separating what I buy than I achieved when I used panniers.

I eventually managed to get the Burley hitch from Bike24 after all my previous problems.
http://www.bike24.net/1.php?pitems=30;c ... =3339:3342
It arrived at the end of October and written on the packet was Do NOT use below freezing temperatures! Not much use for me as a Ride Round The Year type of person.

Well I did ride it once in serious sub-zero and it didnt shatter but I do worry about that and wonder if it was worth spending all the money after all.

Also when attaching the trailer I do have to get the bike properly vertical (normally leaning it on my shoulder) inorder to get the pin to go through.

If I lean the bike slowly over, by the time it is on the floor the trailer wheel is 2" off the floor when it is empty. I do wonder if this would make the trailer spin over in a high speed crash, the old hitch would offer almost no resistance to twisting.

Apart from that the quick coupling and uncoupling is welcome.

I found this thread helpful in replacing a broken square flexible hitch connector and also in recommending use of the standard cast aluminium hitch, so I thought in return I'd add additional recent UK specific information for other people searching for information.

As a result of my searching, I found that 'Extra UK' are now the distributors of Burley parts, but that they don't appear to list parts for trailers pre-2010.

Of course, Burley's US website, from which one cannot order parts if resident outside the USA, does allow one to check by model age, so a little bit of double checking is required against the Burley website to check that parts were okay for with the older 1996- trailers.

We have an aged second hand Cub, which we were running with a Burley Classic Hitch, precluding use on a bike with a pannier rack. The standard forged hitch seemed like a great addition whilst purchasing the replacement flex connector (which does now come with the safety strap, once more).

The part numbers and names for the items I purchased via my LBS are:

Flex Connector for Square Tow Bar (Burley Item No: 950038) (Extra UK: BU950038) = £14.99
Standard Forged Hitch (Burley Item No: 960041) (Extra UK: BU960041) = £17.99

I mentioned that I had the 'Extra UK' part number and the guy seemed grateful. However, he then was unsure if the part worked for the Cub trailer, so I needed to reassure him I'd done my research.

Link to the spares list for 2010 is here: Burley UK distributor trailer spares list

Hope this helps others - obviously, I have no affliation with Burley, Extra UK, or any bike shops, just wanting to share the knowledge to save others time.

Interesting to hear about the warning about not using in sub-zero temperatures. Guess the plastic is too brittle to function as designed in low temps. Shame they haven't engineered a redesign given their location up in a coldish part of the US...

Kind regards,

James

First, as OP of this thread my thanks go to James for the updated parts info.

meme_bot wrote:Interesting to hear about the warning about not using in sub-zero temperatures. Guess the plastic is too brittle to function as designed in low temps. Shame they haven't engineered a redesign given their location up in a coldish part of the US...

FWIW, I've used my trailer down to -8°C without problems. However, I'd taken the trailer out of a nice warm van on the day, hitched up, and barely stopped riding for almost 20 miles over three hours or so. I suspect the elastomer didn't have time to cool right down, helped by the small amount of energy it would have absorbed and converted to heat. In the same period the plain water in my water bottles didn't freeze either, which lends a little weight to my suspicion.

Thus I suspect that if you take the bike and trailer out of a nice warm environment that the hitch will stay above freezing (and hence be OK) even if the air temperature is a few degrees below freezing. However, things might be very different if (say) you keep the bike and trailer in an unheated garden shed. That said, I can offer no guarantees and only suggest that you keep the safety strap properly adjusted just in case the elastomer lets go!