Trailgator

We recently bought a trailgator for the daughters bike. I was lucky enough to get one from a friend. We've tried carts and rear bike seats but those didnt suit our daughter-she cannot sit still! So for those who dont know, the trailgator is an extendable bar that goes from the adult bike to the childs bike, attaching to the head tube or steer tube of the childs bike to a clamp thats fitted onto the seatpost of the adults bike. They're availble in argos, amazon and other stores for about £50. 

So to the fitting. In the box theres s load of brackets, shims, bolts and looks rather daunting due to the sheer amount of bits included, but bear in mind that you wont need all of them-theres multiple sizes of the same thing for different size frames and seat tubes. The manual comes in a load of langauges-English is first, but annoyingly the pictures it referes to are all in the centre of the book.

In all it took about an hour and much swearing to fit the trailgator, Snags i found were:

1. Trailgators are quite awkward to fit on your own- very awkward if you have to stop a 3 year old from running off with the spanners.

2. Make sure you have a socket set and spanners

3. Dont forget to remove stabalisers  from the childs bike before using the trailgator

4. Practice to use the trailgtor with the child on grass before hitting thr tarmac. 

Once fitted, we took the bikes down to nearby field where we attached the bikes and began ride around gaining speed as we circled- the daughteer loved it! By having a practice I could see that the head tube clamp was not tight enough and would need adjusting once we got home. When this happens, the childs bike will lean dangerously to one side and the child, no doubt would fall off. 

We will take it for a real ride tommorrow.