Lumina 14 cu ft trailer

Larry Fine said:
Both links only go to: https://www.superoffers.com/
Click to expand...

Don't know how that happened. Hacked links?
Fixed them with corrected link addresses in that post.
When I returned to my post where I put those links to test them I noticed the logo on my webpage tab changed from the ST logo to the Super offers logo as if it is an intermittent web link hack. @Mellow ?
 
Safari on Iphone sends me to superoffers but windows sends me to amazon. My guess it is an issue with safari.
 
Not just Safari. When Larry posted the issue I checked and ended up at super offers also. And I use a Chromebook using Chrome to get to the Internet. But it wasn't consistent. I haven't had that specific issue since I changed the links but I do still have an occasional issue when getting to the intended product on Amazon and sometimes end up at the Amazon home page instead of the specific item.
 
The steel for the towball adapter to bolt onto my hitch is now at the welding shop. I don't have the equipment to weld stainless steel so I have the shop do that for me. They say it should be done tomorrow.

I am using what I have left over from the hitch I made for the AK 550. The end plate is just the right size to make most of the adapter. I am adding a 5/16 thick plate on top to mount the towball.
Here is the diagram I gave them to follow (not to scale but the important details are there). At the top is the flat plate that has the corners cut off. The other 3 diagrams are the welded/formed result. This plate will bolt onto the end of my existing hitch that is now on the Vulcan S.

hitch adapter 3.jpg
 
Installed the ball and torqued to 160 ft lbs per spec.
Installed the adapter onto the bike with 4 class 10.9 (metric) M8 bolts/nuts/washers and manually torqued as tight as I could with my 3/8 drive socket wrench using blue Loctite 242.
Maybe after the grandkids are picked up from our house and the rain stays away later today I'll test out the trailer. Yesterday I registered the trailer and put a plate on it. In Iowa there is no title for a trailer under 2000 lbs so just the registration and a motorcycle sized plate.

The hitch.
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The adapter installed on the hitch installed on the bike.
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I was expecting that I would have to remove the adapter to get the bike onto the paddock stand... to clean/lube the chain and to change the tire or other maintenance. But then I looked closer at where the stand hit the adapter and I verified that if I put the rear tire up on 2 2x boards to elevate the tail of the bike the stand would fit under the adapter and it would work as shown here. The problem was that small cross bar on the paddock stand. There is still space under the rear tire while on the stand to spin it for doing chain maintenance. But I will still need to remove the entire hitch to replace the tire since the factory tail left barely enough space to squeeze the tire out and the hitch hangs significantly lower than that.
PXL_20260611_211411168.jpg
 
From the looks of this I'd say the tongue is dead level with the ground as it should be with any 2 wheeled trailer with a straight tongue.
I have about 100 lbs of bricks in the trailer with 20 lbs tongue weight here and my full gear and pack in the saddle bags. Still think my bike looks tiny in front of that trailer. It is the smallest lower cost trailer that I could find nearby.
PXL_20260611_233134702.jpg

I needed to ride to my son's house tonight, 22 miles one-way, and was thinking that would be a good test on how the trailer tracks since I would be riding all back roads. But when I turned on the bike with the trailer connected there were no trailer lights and the LED bar on the bike was off. Those are all on my isolated circuit. Factory lights worked fine. I found the primary fuse for the isolated circuit blown. I unhooked the trailer and replaced the fuse and all light farkles I added on the bike work fine so it was just something on the trailer.

All the trailer lights were working fine in an earlier video I took showing the flashing brakes and other lighting so this was a puzzle. I unhooked the trailer and rode up to my son's house and back (44 miles round trip). I got home about 8:30 and took a quick look under the trailer to see if there was anything obvious. There was. The wire harness was pinched between a bolt and the frame for one of the torsion suspension mounts. I missed that when assembling the trailer. Really glad it wasn't a wire problem inside the tongue or frame tubes of the trailer... though it wouldn't be too hard to fix if it was. Still a puzzle why that didn't cause a problem when I tested the lights since there was no work done under the trailer after the light test. I'm guessing the insulation just took a bit of sitting for the bolt and frame to cut through. The trailer was not moved much at all during all that time. Only one wire is affected... the tail light wire. I suspected that it was something with the tail lights on the trailer since the fuse blew as soon as power was applied. So I knew it wasn't turn signals or brakes. Should be an easy fix to splice and insulate that wire. Though I'll be covering it with a longer bit of heat shrink insulation since it is in an exposed place under the trailer. Maybe wrap with electrical tape first and then heat shrink over that. I now have a task to do tomorrow.
 
Thinking about the wire short I figured out why the lights worked fine when I first tested them but blew the fuse when I hooked the trailer up to the bike for a test ride.
The running lights wire that I found was the problem. When I torqued one of the bolts for the suspension the washer was on top of the edge of the wire and pinched through grounding that wire to the trailer frame. During my initial light tests the frame was not grounded to anything. Not the ground wire and not any other wire except the problem tail light wire. So it all worked fine during the light test. But when I put the trailer coupler onto the towball then the trailer frame was grounded to the bike frame. And that caused the fuse to blow the moment power was applied to the isolated trailer circuit.

I put a few bricks in the very back of the trailer to weigh it down and lifted the front so the trailer sat on the bumper making it easy to sit under it and get to the wire for the repair. There was enough slack in the wire bundle to pull about an inch so I could cut the tail light wire where the bolt had cut through. Then used a Posi-Lock butt connector to splice the wire back together. I covered the ends of the wire going into the Posi-Lock at each end with a small heat shrink and covered the entire patch with a larger heat shrink. Then I put a small zip tie on either side of the Posi-Lock connector to hold it to the rest of the bundle. Then I hitched up the trailer and tested the connection. Everything works great now.
Here is the result.
PXL_20260612_191347467.jpg

Those wires are on the forward facing cross frame.

Now I'm ready for LOCSTOC.
 
The test run went really well. Pulled the trailer for 31 miles. I can see the luggage rack and the top 6 inches of the box on each side in my mirrors and it doesn't block my view of traffic behind. I rode at all speeds from 25 mph to 65 mph. I held off on going faster than 45 mph (drifting up to 55 sometimes :sneaky-2x: ) until the end after I was confident the trailer was tracking well and could handle it. Total gross weight of the loaded trailer was about 270 lbs with what ended up being about 25 lbs tongue weight due to a little shifting of the load. This was just a little heavier than I plan to make it when traveling but felt it was needed for the test. I want to do another test with my wife following just to verify the trailer is tracking inline with the bike. It seemed like it was from what I could see in my mirrors but want to be certain. LOTS of ground clearance with this trailer. Now I just have to relearn how wide those wheels are to avoid getting too close to curbs and "stuff" in turns.

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As most riders say about pulling a small trailer you really don't feel it back there. Well... actually... I do feel it. Every time I go over uneven sections of road or hit a bump or raised tar snake or road kill (still getting used to how far those wheels stick out on the sides) I do feel the trailer jostle a bit. But not very much at all. It is almost invisible on most roads. It IS invisible on smooth-as-glass pavement. Stopping and starting is not as much of an impact as I was expecting. Nothing like the campers I used to pull but more than the Uni-Go was. The trailer was tracking very nicely behind the bike even at 65 mph... which the Uni-Go had issues with on this bike.
 
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The nice thing about my Bushtec is, it is only barely wider than the handlebars on the GSA, and barely wider than the panniers on the ST1300.
But not even close, when it comes to grouns clearance.
You could haul yours offroad if you wanted.
 
Nah.
To my knowledge, you don't even have a German Shepherd to haul around. 🤣
And the one-wheeled PASQ ADV1 trailer has sadly (low sales / low interest / high price starting around $4500) quit manufacturing and closed up shop.
Were they not paying attention when the long-established and highly-regarded Bushtec trailer company went out of business 3 years ago?
And the ADV1 trailer, after a long design and development period, was brilliant, with an ingenious hitch for different bikes.
Did they believe there are more dual sport riders than road warriors?
Cool solution, in search of a problem.

www.pasqadventure.com

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Took a moment today to shorten the chains.
If you look just behind the rear wheel of the bike in post 33 or look at the side view in post 31 you can see the chains hang WAY down. Not touching the ground but could be close to scraping going over speed bumps and in certain other circumstances. I removed 5 links from each chain. That raises the low links by about 3 inches. I might even be able to remove maybe 2 more links on each and still have plenty of slack. But I'll leave it this way for now.
 
Took a second test run with the trailer this morning. This time I had my wife following to verify the trailer was tracking behind the bike correctly. What I could see in my mirrors indicated that it was but I wanted to be certain of it from the view behind.
Hopped on the Interstate and rode at just over 70 mph (traffic and construction prevented much faster). Only rode 10 miles with half on the Interstate highway. The trailer ran smooth as silk and my wife, and her sister who was tagging along in the car behind me, both said the same. My wife commented that she could tell a night and day difference between this trailer and the Uni-Go trailer on my Vulcan S. I was not able to stay at 65 mph in perfect weather with the Uni-Go. It just didn't want to work well with the Vulcan S for some reason. But this Lumina trailer works perfectly. The tires are speed rated M so that is a max of 81 mph... if I kept to that. Load rating on the tires is beyond the max load rating of the trailer.

I have noticed something I don't remember with my previous mc campers... When going around curves and taking turns the trailer tends to track to the outside of any turn. Maybe just an illusion in the mirrors. But when I turn left or right I definitely can see a bit more of the trailer in the mirror on the outside of the turn. It doesn't pull one way or the other but is very evenly behind the bike as far as the forces I can feel... which really isn't much.
 
Due to the issues you had with the Uni-go, I was also concerned about my Uni-go trailer having a waggle at higher speeds behind my Goldwing. But in May I went on a 3000 mile trip with speeds up to 90+ and I didn't have any real issues. I was concerned that the short wheelbase would be a problem. There must have been some incompatibility issue between the Vulcan and the Uni-go.
 
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