Hoppy jr is increasingly competent and confident on his bike but still lacks a bit of stamina and power to get up the bigger hills on the rides he wants to do. We’ve currently got a tag along but it’s heavy for occasional use, takes time to connect/disconnect, is rattly/wobbly unless absolutely spot on and doesn’t fit on our bikes with droppers.

I am trying to work out if there is some way of rigging something light that can be easily connected to Jr’s bike to assist getting him up that can then be stashed quickly at the top, doesn’t need to lift his front wheel as he can steer himself. I was thinking something like the adventure racers used (bungee through a tube with a wrap at his bike end), anyone used anything similar? Have you accidentally maimed your kids?

Don’t let him steer himself when being towed. Unless he follows precisely you’ll pull him over (think forced highside).

Follow-me-tandem – robust, reliable, expensive (have taken it round selected bits of Dalby red – the bomb holes were the only problem)
Trailgator – cheaper, lighter, less convincing in the way it tows

Both reasonable options though

I use something like you describe when touring with our eldest. Started using it when he was 6. The youngest gets the follow me towed by Mrs Mugsy.

My system is plastic electrical conduit which comes with male and female ends here in France. I use 2 lengths which join together with male and female ends to give a boom like length which extends beyond my back wheel. The 1st length is cable tied along my rear rack and the second length just folds back over the 1st when not in use. Within the conduit I have a loop of bungy with eyes formed in each end giving redundancy if one strand breaks. One loop is round my seat tube seat stay junction and the other has a snap link karabiner. This karabiner clips onto a loop of bungy attached round my sons head tube.

He has always been very disciplined using it ( I think he detects my fear in using it!). Certainly worked miracles for 50kms towing into a sodden headwind along the Dutch coast one day.

It’s the off line tow that concerns me but it’s for uphills only really so shouldn’t have too much potential for mucking around. And we’ll be going slowly anyway.

Follow-me-tandem – robust, reliable, expensive (have taken it round selected bits of Dalby red – the bomb holes were the only problem)

Doesn’t work with bolt through axels or b+ tyres which means it doesn’t work with any of mine or the wife’s MTBs.

Trailgator – cheaper, lighter, less convincing in the way it tows

This is what we’ve got and basically it’s a bit shit. With some care and attention it could have been less shit bordering on useful but it has way too many design flaws for what we want it to do as is.

Just get him an e-bike – sorted!

I have used a bungee, it works very well for what you describe. If you wrap it once over their bars then they can hold it in place, if they want to stop being towed they can just let go. Have hauled a 9 year old up a few climbs in the peaks like this.

with respect, I think you’re overthinking this, especially mugsy’s mate. All you need is a length of very thin rope/cord. Probably around 7 m long.

Pass the cord through the gap between the your saddle and seatpost, parallel to the seat rails, ie front to back.
Take the front end and pull it to the front of the bike. Loop it under the stem from the left (ie past the headset spacers) over the top of the stem, then under the rope and then across to your right handlebar grip. Wind it round the handlebar grip once.

The end that comes from the back of the saddle… take it to the kid’s bike and feed it under the bars, round the stem, through itself and again wrap it round the handlebar grip once or twice.

Tellim to grab the grips, take up the slack and set off.

Basically what you’re doing is an Italian Friction Hitch round the stem of each bike. Climbing Belay Knot.

Obviously you must use the stem as the primary point, not the handlebar so you don’t affect steering.

The beauty of this system is that it requires almost no extra kit. If anything goes wrong either of you can release your grip on the rope and it just falls away.

We’ve been using it without problems since the wean was 5 or 6. He did stuff like the Llandegla Red, Nearly all of Dalbeattie, TNF Grizedale, Hamsters etc with this system. I find it great because it allows the tower a really good workout, gives the kid an excellent days uplift assisted cycle ride and allows the whole family to do some excellent routes together. Llandegla especially is excellent for it as there is a fireroad alongside the long initial climb which you can gain loads of height with. Likewise the fire road up from the black sections is easy.

We’ve not used it as much since ours was eight, but it is still useful now and again. For example last year when we wanted to do a couple of proper hills near the Ochsenkopf in Germany:

You can do some slightly tech uphill with it, as long as the kid is sharp and knows he should release as soon as there’s a problem.

There is definitely a limit however. For example, although you can do most of the hill from Hodge Close to Iron Keld for instance, you can’t do it all. We had a couple of falls on that section, and one grumpy child when the moss he landed on turned out to have an angry wasp in it. 😳

Follow-me-tandem – robust, reliable, expensive (have taken it round selected bits of Dalby red – the bomb holes were the only problem)

Doesn’t work with bolt through axels or b+ tyres which means it doesn’t work with any of mine or the wife’s MTBs.[/quote]

Both of those points are wrong. It does work with bolt through axles, they are just crap at advertising the fact. I emailed the UK importer and they sent me a document that detailed the versions supported (see below). It will also work with B+ tyres (no idea why you’d think it wouldn’t given it works with 29ers). I use ours on my longitude B+ and there is plenty of clearance.

Both of those points are wrong.

Both of those came from the importer.

How big are the hills? For my 7 yr old daughter I just give her a push with my left hand on her back 🙂

How big are the hills?

100-150 hm

just give her a push with my left hand on her back

Yep, I do that as well, but find it tends to screw up my elbow. I think the stretching bouncing impact over a long period of time doesn’t do it much good. But for short bursts it’s fine.

Not sure I or my son would fancy holding onto some cord for 50kms. Sounds like a good simple set up for certain instances though. …. ‘horses for courses’ seems an acceptable relevant statement here as our needs are different to those just wanting a bit of assistance on a shorter uphill slog section.

Hi Mugsy,
He doesn’t really hold on to the cords as such. He holds onto his handlebar grips pretty much as normal with the cord underneath. That’s the beauty of the Italian Friction hitch; pretty much like any other climbing belay device, you need very very little force to hold onto the dead end of the rope compared to the force that it being imparted onto the hitched object (in this case the stem, in the case of belaying, the karabiner and hence climbing harness)

In respect of the 50kms, totally agree. I’d never plan to use it to tow the kid all the way round a long route. That would be completely pointless for all concerned (apart from saving childcare costs of course). For me, at the time, the whole point of it was that it allowed the sprog to have a brilliant day mountain biking, doing the black jumps etc without getting too knackered and dangerous.

And it also gives you a backup plan if the chosen route does turn out to be too strenuous.

Both of those points are wrong.

Both of those came from the importer. [/quote]

As did that document (January this year). I don’t know if any of the axles listed are boost, I was looking for a 142 X12 for my full sus. My B+ frame is 135mm rear. It might be that boost B+ is just too much.

The only thing that I could see that would impinge on the tyre is the integrated mud guard. It would be easy to fit a old, old style crud down tube guard here to gain more space.

what the generalist says but use a retractable doglease

Dogleash is a well know adventure racing method. As is a plastic wand.

The generalist: I know the Italian Hitch well……

I used to have a length of climbing sling (cut, not loop, about 8m) wrapped around my bars. When I needed to deploy it I would wrap it around one handlebar grip on my bike as an attempt to counter the diagonal pull, run it back to juniors bike then Italian hitch around the step with him holding the loose end on his grip, same as described above. Worked really well but I like the idea of the retractable dog lead, that sounds spot on.

Keep it simple, light and cheap, sounds like you do not have a need for a mechanical or expensive solution

Keep it simple, light and cheap, sounds like you do not have a need for a mechanical or expensive solution

Very much this, i want something that is quick to set up so that i can use it and put it away as we ride rather than too much faffing about, i also don’t want to be lugging excess weight around if i can help it and it needs to be useable across my 2 bikes and Mrs hoppys. If i can get something that won’t get caught in either mine or Jr’s wheels even better.

I use a length of paracord to tow….

[/url]IMG_3103 by jon kemp, on Flickr[/img]

bloody hell you must be fit; that’s almost vertical 😀

Kiddyback tandem. Buy when they are young. Use for 10 years, get your money back. The trick is to buy when they are young.

Dyneema would work well as a tow line. It has a breaking strain of 750kg and is only 4mm in diameter.

Hoppy jr is increasingly competent and confident on his bike

TiRed: Kiddyback tandem. Buy when they are young. Use for 10 years

Seriously?
Apart from the childcare comment above, and perhaps the occasional jaunt, why would you want to stick your kid on a tandem?

MrHoppy wants to see his kid ride. He* wants to see his skills, fitness, bike control etc get better and see the satisfaction of his progression onto different trails and shared experiences. He just wants something to take the physical effort out of some of the bigger hills so the kid can explore further.

Or alternatively he could just dump him on the back like a piece of luggage and get some miles in…

* clearly by “He”, I really mean “me”

Seriously?
Apart from the childcare comment above, and perhaps the occasional jaunt, why would you want to stick your kid on a tandem?

Because it is the only way to travel with kids. Towing a tagalong is like pulling a caravan, compared with riding a kiddyback, which is more like driving a estate car.

When did you tow your kid for 60 miles?

I didn’t see anything in MrHoppy’s post that suggested he wanted to travel with his kids. I got the impression he wanted to go for a cycle with his kids. ie his kids cycling along for the most part. The enjoyment was in the ride itself, not arriving at a destination.

When did you tow your kid for 60 miles?

Never, and I never will. When I go for a cycle with the kids the whole point is that they get a lot out of it and max their enjoyment. If I feel the need to get myself a century plus ride then I’ll do it on my own.

But that’s from a perspective of cycling being a means in itself.. enjoyment.

If you’re cycling as a method of travelling then sure get a tandem. But I’m still not clear under what circumstances that would apply. I’m genuinely interested in a circumstance where it would be a good option.

OK, here’s why…

You ride at the same speed,
You can talk freely,
The child is less exposed to traffic
The child gets to experience adult speeds
It’s less tiring than towing

But best of all, its a lot more fun!!!

Kiddyback with tag-along off too school 😀

Yeah, but that’s a road. This is to help hoppy jr to the top of the hills so he can ride the ‘bike park’s with daddy.

He’s perfectly capable of riding the local BMX track and enjoyed Glentress and Glenlivet blues on the back of the trailgator but he wants to do them on his own so I’m not going to be selling the concept of a tandem. I don’t really want to be faffing with bolting the trailgator on and off or lugging the tow bar about especially in the Alps when I’ll be having to wrangle a small child and 2 bikes anyway.

They go off road too 😉 . Ours is comfortable on Blue (without the tagalong). But I accept that if you want him to ride solo, and it is great fun of course, you will always be limited in distance, climb, technicality, etc.

Of course there is always a couple of these to help 😈

I fed mine chocolate borbons btw.

Bought a retractable dog lead and gave it a try today, worked really well, quick to attach seemed pretty effective.

For those using a retractable dog lead, do you go for the biggest kg rating one you can find ?

Largest I’ve found (without spending a fortune) is 20kg and jnr FD weighs 32 kg! Appreciate that it’s not towing his full weight but even so…

I’ve used two old inner tubes looped together running from my seatpost to their stem, but now prefer a short length of old climbing rope. It’s about 6m long, with a fig-8 on the bight in the middle, with two ‘arms’ for each of our boys. It takes a bit of coordination to get them both riding with it, but the final climb on the Glenlivet blue/red for example, it worked well when the Haribo-effect was wearing off.

Just loop it over the saddle, so that it sits at the bottom of the seat post, loop the other end over their stem. (Obviously, you can make it even simpler, by only having the one towing ‘arm’)

FunkyDunc – Member
For those using a retractable dog lead, do you go for the biggest kg rating one you can find ?

Nope – for adventure racing we generally use the smallest dog lead that we can find. You’re not towing dead weight (well, hopefully not!), so it’s pretty rare that we snap them. On the occasions that this has happened, it’s usually because the towee has hauled on the brakes, or fallen asleep and ridden into a ditch (it happens!).

We use a short loop of bungee tied to the end of the dog lead to provide some shock absorption – the towee drops this over their stem where it hooks nicely over the stem clamp bolts to keep it in place under tension, and means that the bars aren’t being pulled sideways (which will happen if the towee tries to hold the bungee loop in one hand).