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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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

• Extrawheel’s web­site
• List of world­wide dealers
• Buy online
• Cycle­sense (UK dealer)

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