New life for an old trailer
I’ve been quiet for a while, but this doesn’t mean I’ve been idle. Today I’m just going to play blog catchup.
Some very close friends had their first baby (a girl named Alcyone, this is important later) about two months ago. Almost immediately they started to ask me about bicycle trailers.
Two weeks ago I found this one in Craigslist:
It is an old Burley d’Lite. The seller seemed surprised that I’d want to buy it given the shredded front window, but at $20 it was a very good deal.
I took it home and looked at it more closely. For the most part it was in quite good shape. The window was shredded, the seat was pretty dirty, and there were a couple of small tears, but the frame and wheels were in good shape, it included the stroller kit, and everything else still worked. Not bad considering that these trailers sell for $400 or more when new.
I spent the next couple of evenings fixing up the top of the trailer. The first item was to sew in new screening. I bought some no-seeum-netting from Seattle Fabricsand sewed it into place. Luckily this went pretty easily (I had been worried about sewing next to the elastic on the sides of the top, but it wasn’t a problem at all).
One of the missing features of this old trailer compared to the new ones was a roll-down windscreen. Since Alcyone and her parents live in cold Missoula, MT I thought this was going to be an essential feature (and a friend who lived in Spokane agreed). So my next project was to make a rolldown windscreen. I used some yellow/orange packcloth and clear vinyl to make it. The windscreen is sewn into the top at the top of the trailer and velcros into one of two positions, rolled all the way down or rolled all the way up.
The black flag at the top of the trailer was my final piece of work. Remember that their daughter’s name is Alcyone. This is the name of the largest star in the Pleiades (also known as the Seven Sisters). I found an image of the Pleiades,did some more research to figure out which of the dozens of stars in the Pleiades are considered the brightest seven,and made a map of it to decorate the top of the trailer.
I’m really happy with how everything came out. I probably should have used black around the window instead of yellow/orange, but it is good enough. The Pleiades map really personalizes the trailer. The $20 and hours of time that I spent on the trailer made for a much more personal project then if I had just spent $400 and bought a new trailer.
I think that these old Burley trailers are probably a goldmine for cargotrailers too. It would be pretty easy to buy one of these, remove all of the seating and top, and sew in a flatbed floor, making a discount version of the Burley Flatbed trailer.