Thanks for the in depth reply. I had discounted the Tow Pac due to the small wheels but with 14 inch wheels it is now a consideration. I think the Trigg kit will have good quality since they are now owned by Bushtec. I had a Bushtec trailer and it was first class in quality and engineering. I have emailed them several times with questions over the past week and have not received any reply, being old school this is putting them low on the list. The Voyager kit looses ground clearance but looks easy to remove. My bike 2009 Yamaha Stratoliner does not have a center stand so that may make removing and installing the Tow Pac more difficult, but no ground clearance loss. Just weighing the pros and cons to help decide which way to go. How is highway speed performance (70 to 85 mph) with your Tow Pac? Just how much tinkering did you have to accomplish to get it where you wanted it? I also looked at the Trip Trike but their kit attaches to the rear fender support frame and just looks like it could have a major failure with loosening set screws etc.
just does not look solid to me.
I do not know how the Trigg kit attaches as they will not return my emails asking about it. Sorry this got long again, thanks again for your reply it is the kind of information I am looking for.
Actually Mike, mine works fine with the 12" wheels... Not sure what the 14" wheels would bring to the table??? They will have a higher rotating mass and also unsprung weight so not sure what would be an advantage of the larger wheels other than handling potholes a bit better...
One of the reasons I went with the Instatrike was good ground clearance... Their newer E-Trike had less ground clearance and my wife would have lost her retractable foot rests so that was a no-op... Tow Pac does offer center stand helpers (make shift supports) for bikes without center stands so you might inquire about them...
Truth be told, I haven't had the trike up to 75 or 80 - I seldom ride that fast as I tend to avoid Interstates and take back roads whenever possible (lots of great back roads here in eastern Tennessee)... I did have a set of CentraMatic balancers made for it so it's pretty smooth as far as I can tell... I have had it at 65-70 for short duration's and it seemed fine to me... I use the Tow Pac primarily when the wife and I are riding 2up and on a trip and she prefers the little back country roads and lower speed limits so that's usually the type riding I do with it...
In terms of setup, I wasn't satisfied with the way Tow Pac installers had set it up so I completely reworked all the adjustments so that I can simply slide it into the receiver now without have to have the trike cart on wooden blocks...
I also played with tire down force adjustments and tire pressures and have all that dialed in now... Took 2-3 attempts on tire down force and 3-4 different adjustments on tire pressure...
Once tire parallelism is adjusted it holds pretty well and I have probably about 6 -8K miles on the original 12" tires and they still have a few thousand miles left on them... I also reworked Tow Pac's installation by my main wiring harnesses as they pretty much screwed up that wire routing and it would have eventually caused problems... Had to rework their installation by the saddlebags as well because I could not get the bags off due to their routing of tailight wiring... Probably should have just installed it myself... Other than that, I am a happy camper with my Tow Pac kit... One of the reasons I went with Tow Pac is that they were only about 90 miles south of me when I lived in Illinois and I simply road down to their factory and test rode their demo bikes before I purchased it...
I saw your comments regarding the structural solidness of the Voyager and while I cannot comment on that as I have never seen one, I have to say my Instatrike is a very solid piece of equipment... It has a very stout sub-frame bolted to the main frame of the Goldwing and is attached with 3 very stout 1/2" grade 8 bolts, plus a safety wire in case all three mounting point ts fail simultaneously, which is darn near impossible... One of those bolts, secures a 1 1/4" stinger into the sub-frame receiver on the bike so it is a very stout mounting arrangement...
I can assure you that I would not ride, nor would I put my wife or granddaughter on anything I thought might be unsafe...
Add the advantage of removing and installing the trike kit in about 10 minutes, and that is a REAL 10 minutes that I can demonstrate over and over again, in my opinion, you can't beat it...
And no, I am not compensated by Tow Pac, just a satisfied customer aside from some of the initial misgivings of their installation staff...
Maybe some day I'll have a real trike conversion, but honestly, why spend 15 grand when what I have is doing the job so well, and still enables me to switch back to 2 wheels when I want to... Like I said, maybe some day, but maybe not too!!!
If you send me a PM on this forum with your e-mail address, I'll send you the Tow Pac install manual for a GL1800 and you can look it over... It will be similar for your bike but obviously not identical...
Les
PS - tell ya what - - - your not all that far away from me (about 300 miles)...
If you want to ride up, I'll let you ride my Tow Pac for a bit and see if you like it, or maybe we can meet in the middle somewhere for lunch and you can take it around the parking lot for a bit...