Carry Freedom Y trailer for mountain bike touring

Just returned from the second of two three day mountain bike touring expeditions (supervising Silver DofE exped) in and around the Southern Cairngorms and Grampians. the group had a mix of trailers and panniers with the expected various pros and cons. the route was varied as would be expected for 100km and included some steeper and rock descents: landrover track down to Allt na G. from Lochngar, Glen Tanar to Glen Esk via Mount Keen shoulder, the Fungle to name a few. The big issue we had was with the Carry freedom Y trailer. It is not suitable for this sort of touring/expedition. It’s great on the flat and uphill, and generally copes well with incised ditches or trails if you just ignore what is happening behind you and let it do its thing. It is also very durable. BUT the trailer on downhills is a total liability. On gentler declines with some moderate speed a fist-sized rock or bump, or the side or the track will send one side into the air and the trailer will invert, twisting over on the elastomer connection to the bike. This is inconvenient but the one large waterproof holdall ws well lashed on and never came off; but you have to stop to right the trailer which is a pain. On traversing singletrack the trailer inverts frequently as it gets dragged off the track by gravity. On steeper declines it is actually dangerous as it will bounce forward and land on the bike. On my bike the arm of the trailer lands right across the rear shock and caused several falls off the bike. This happens when you are going slowly down rock or more technical terrain. My opinion is that there is no “fix” for this and that these trailers should not be used on anything other than low gradient wide tracks or surfaced roads. I would not recoomend them to anyone going touring in terrain described above and would not let any young people involved in such trips use these trailers.

No double wheel trailer should be used off road – it’s all about the Bob Yak for that kind of thing. I used a Y-frame for a road tour and it was great but even one little bit of unsurfaced bike path and el dickhead here going a bit to quick meant the trailer capsized and nearly threw me into the adjacent canal. Oh how the missus laughed 😀

single wheel rear trailers for off road definitely the way to go. i know people with BOB Yaks/Ibex (some doing RTW trips as we speak) and i and other friends have the edinburgh bikes version – both good. BOB is a little more robust, had no problems using it off road

Thanks for the replies/comments. There were two single wheel trailers on the trips. There was an Adventure copy of a Bob Yak and an original Yak. Both seemed to work really well; they jump about a fair bit but this does not affect the rider and is best ignored. The Adventure needed some minor running repairs; linking/pivot bolt (veretical one) cane loose and the quick-releae for the mudguard is iffy so I agree the Bob Yak is the way to go. The copies don’t seem to offer any imporvements and cost-save at the loss of durability/construction.

Yes, two wheel trailers are for the road (and better on the road than single wheel ones). Nick at CarryFreedom toyed with making an off-road trailer but it would have ended up exactly like the Extrawheel, so he just tells people to buy one them instead for mountain biking.

Personally – even as a bit of a trailer evangelist for touring …. For off road if I couldn’t carry the gear I needed on the bike and my back, I’d rather make other plans than use a trailer.

As other have said it isn’t great off road at all. I have a large y-frame and it is excellent on road with all kinds of weird loads, have even carried two bikes on it.