Extrawheel Voyager Single-wheel Bike Trailer Review

Extrawheel’s ori­ginal Clas­sic model, with its cargo nets and canoeists’ dry­bags, is no longer in pro­duc­tion. Why? Because Extrawheel, after a lot of prototype-testing and feed­back by myself and other intrepid riders, have hit upon some­thing that’s even sim­pler, lighter and more prac­tical: the Voy­ager.

Weather turns

The Voy­ager was launched last year and I’ve been able to put it through its paces in some of the toughest con­di­tions I’ve rid­den. Car­ry­ing a pair of big, water­proof pan­niers, the Voy­ager excels when taken off-road, and mine has now been through a couple of thou­sand kilo­metres of dirt roads, single­tracks, jeep trails, river-beds and no-track-at-all cross-country riding.

The improve­ments over the ori­ginal Clas­sic trailer are imme­di­ately obvi­ous. The plastic-and-fabric hood has now gone, replaced by an optional light­weight fender (which I removed for weight-saving and sim­pli­city). The amount of metal in the frame has been halved. It’s so simple it seems ridicu­lous that nobody thought of it before! The whole thing fits into a stand­ard bike box — along with the bike itself! Extrawheel’s claim to have pro­duced the world’s light­est single-wheel trailer seems to be well-founded.

Gladed downhill trail

Coup­ling with the bike is done using the ori­ginal sprung-steel fork, which I have found to be 100% reli­able. The bear­ing sur­faces have been redesigned so that the ball and socket can each be replaced, rather than hav­ing to replace the whole frame or fork if the bear­ing sur­faces wore through (as happened to me in Ethiopia in 2009). From a dur­ab­il­ity point-of-view in the long term, this is a big plus point.

The reduced-size frame now fea­tures narrow-gauge steel tubing and retainer tabs for mount­ing pan­niers, instead of the pre­vi­ous net-and-sack arrange­ment. This means that pack­ing and quick access is far more prac­tical, the load is more stable as a res­ult, although the bike can no longer be jack-knifed to stand up if rear pan­niers are used as well. The sup­plied Crosso Expert pan­niers, fully-waterproof and con­struc­ted of dur­able lam­in­ated can­vas, are eas­ily big enough to carry everything I desired to put on the trailer — in Mon­go­lia, that was everything except food, tent and tripod.

Camping under the stormclouds in Mongolia

As with the Clas­sic, the hand­ling of the bike bene­fits greatly off-road from the fact that front pan­niers are no longer needed — now you can carry lug­gage and steer it as well! I found the greatest sta­bil­ity with about a 70:30 ratio of weight on the trailer and in the rear pan­niers respect­ively. This bal­ance was ideal in terms of man­oeuv­rab­il­ity and capa­city; the two main factors when head­ing off the beaten track for long peri­ods of time.

Rid­ing single­track demon­strated the trailer’s lim­its. I found that on par­tic­u­larly tech­nical sec­tions, where I was still able to ride the bike itself, the pan­niers some­times bounced off obstacles which were big­ger than the pan­niers’ ground clear­ance allowed for. I encountered sim­ilar prob­lems when the track became really nar­row — but these were hik­ing trails after all. I can’t blame the trailer for my route choices!

Crossing the River near Orhan

If there’s any­thing that could be improved, it would be to add ‘off-road’ tubing, in addi­tion to the stand­ard tubes, to allow the pan­niers to be moun­ted a few inches higher, or even allow for extra ‘rack-top’ lug­gage to be strapped on. This would con­sid­er­ably extend the trailer’s range into mountain-biking ter­rit­ory, and allow the load to be reposi­tioned lower for more sta­bil­ity when appro­pri­ate. Per­haps this would work well in a hypo­thet­ical 29-er setup (i.e. a bike and trailer with 29-inch wheels).

The ori­ginal trailer’s other plus-points still apply. Wear and tear on the bike itself is massively reduced. You get a spare front wheel — also mean­ing spare spokes, bear­ings and a rim for the back wheel, of course. It’s com­pact enough to cause no addi­tional fuss on pub­lic trans­port. It’s afford­able in com­par­ison to the com­pet­i­tion, cus­tomer ser­vice is excel­lent, and it’s an great source of amuse­ment and interest to every­one you encounter on the road!

Another epic valley

It’s prob­ably not optimal for slim­line road-touring, but I won’t hes­it­ate to take my Extrawheel Voy­ager with me on off-road exped­i­tions and to parts of the world where con­di­tions are likely to be tough. Adven­tur­ous bikers: Ditch the front pan­niers, take the strain off your back wheel and ride a bike which makes tough ter­rain a source of enjoy­ment, rather than suffering.

Extrawheel have taken a big risk ven­tur­ing into the spe­cial­ist trailer mar­ket, which was pre­vi­ously dom­in­ated by BOB, but their adapt­ab­il­ity and ingenu­ity has paid off in the form of the Voy­ager, which is the most refined off-road-friendly lug­gage solu­tion I’ve used to date.

Ride Earth Rat­ing: 5/5

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6 Comments

  1. Posted July 28, 2010 at 23:48 | Permalink

    Glad to see bobby’s undue hege­mony com­ing to an end.
    Prob­ably my biggest life regret to-date was buy­ing that f%&king Bob trailer!

  2. Classic
    Posted November 4, 2010 at 04:01 | Permalink

    I pur­chased a Voy­ager to pull behind a road bike as it can not take any pan­niers. The Voy­ager worked well with only on prob­lem in down­hill des­cents on high­ways. It star­ted to fish­tail slightly when I went at speeds above about 15 mph. Do you have any sug­ges­tions on what may be hap­pen­ing and how to pre­vent this?
    Thanks

    • Posted November 29, 2010 at 19:28 | Permalink

      I would say that it’s prob­ably a com­bin­a­tion of speed, weight and frame tor­sion. I would ima­gine it’s prob­ably com­mon in light road frames which would flex with a trailer added. Try light­en­ing the load a little or repos­i­tion­ing dense/heavy items to the bot­tom of the pan­niers. At the end of the day, there is a limit on speed with any single-wheel trailer, and a limit on any bike’s nor­mal cap­ab­il­it­ies when lug­gage is added to the equation.

      • Anonymous
        Posted January 25, 2011 at 20:28 | Permalink

        Thanks for the inform­a­tion. I evened the loads out bet­ter and it seemed to have elim­in­ated the problem.

  3. Posted April 20, 2011 at 02:40 | Permalink

    Hi,

    I’ve been read­ing your review with interest. Could you expand a little on the dif­fer­ence in ‘feel’ between rid­ing with pan­niers and rid­ing with a trailer. Does it feel lighter? Slower? More nimble?

    Thanks,

    Peter

    • Posted April 20, 2011 at 06:04 | Permalink

      I would say it feels lighter and more nimble, but also longer and with more momentum and drag. You can feel that the weight is no longer beneath your body but is some­where behind the bike. I can’t really describe much bet­ter — it’s some­thing that just needs to be tried out. But I imme­di­ately pre­ferred the feel of the trailer to that of pan­niers for agil­ity off-road. On-road I think the dif­fer­ence is less important.

4 Trackbacks

  1. […] This post was men­tioned on Twit­ter by Tom / Ride Earth, Trav­el­lingTwo. Trav­el­lingTwo said: RT @rideearthtom: Adven­ture Cyc­ling Kit Review: Extrawheel Voy­ager single-wheel trailer http://bit.ly/d9C7Hp #cycle #bike­tour #mtb […]

  2. By EXTRAWHEEL Voyager Expert on February 7, 2011 at 11:18

    […] Review from rideearth.org.uk […]

  3. […] Read the full review here. ← Extrawheel Voy­ager Single-wheel Bike Trailer Review Mov­ing For­ward From Vanilla Cycle Touring → […]

  4. […] Look­ing at get­ting an Extrawheel? The trailer reviewed here has been replaced by the improved Extrawheel Voy­ager and is no longer avail­able. Go and read the new review. […]

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