Bivouac Bravo... Off Road Trailer for Motorcycles / Build Thread

Metal Twister

Highly Motivated
Several years ago a good friend Pete from Hot Shot Racing and I designed a unique trailer suspension. I posted it up here for conversation along with a solid works animation of the arm an air bag cycling. A few of you thought it was a different idea that looked interesting and were encouraging. A larger group of you thought it a waste of time and nit picked the concept apart. It was so negative that I ended up removing the Solid works arm in disgust.
Since that time we have had the opportunity to develop the suspension in the real world and not virtually. Im happy to say that all that work has paid off and now we are up and running and building the first of what we hope are many Bivouac trailers. This Bivouac trailer is called the "Bravo" as it is designed to haul 2 bikes. By bikes we are talking 2 Off Road racing motorcycles. I spent a life time on two wheels racing Motocross and Desert racing and it has always been a dream of mine to build what I though was the ultimate Long Travel motorcycle trailer with the practicality of a self contained Expo Trailer. Ive always been fascinated with the Swiss Army Knife approach the these vehicles and hope to exploit that aspect through out the build process.
This was the original suspension design that we started with. Since this original design we have moved the shock absorbers up front and parallel to the airbags. This got rid of a lot of extra work and eliminated any reliability issues. Every thing related to the actual suspension is now mounted in the trailer and away from any ground hazards or obstacles. Another benefit of this design is the ability to change out components through an access panel door and not on your back in the mud, snow, rocks or dirt. As we all know air bags degrade over time and most manufactures recommend changing out bags about every 5 years or so. This makes that process painless and super easy. Finally with Bivouac suspension design it is easy to insure that the shock angles are correct and located in the perfect operating angles for maximum efficiency. No need to lay them down or tuck them in an already violent environment.



It really does work, honest!
 
Last edited:

elmo_4_vt

Explorer
Nice... I figured from the posts in the other thread about weight that there was something else going on with that trailer. You put a lot of work into it and it shows. Can't wait to hear/see more about the details of the swing out (kitchen?) and bike storage.

Don

-
 

AFSOC

Explorer
The Bivouac suspension design is an exciting advancement. Looks like it's potential abounds. Will be curious to see more pics and empirical evidence of performance, reliability and serviceability. When you're fully sorted, you have a game changer! Well done
 

Metal Twister

Highly Motivated
Bivouac's 26" / 35.5" adjustable ground clearance on the fly

Thanks guys for the encouraging words here. I will post up the progress as it happens. Fortunately I have other work to get accomplished as well so at times I cant spend the time on it that I would like to. Thought I would throw in a few pics from the rear showing the ground clearance. Aired down I have 26.5" of ground clearance Aired up the rear is at 35.5". The Jerry can give you some perspective.

Bengels Pack Mule 049.jpgBengels Pack Mule 046.jpg
 
Last edited:

Nightcrawler

New member
HELP Moderators, Admin, Anybody!

Just an FYI... Metal Twister has not been able to post on this thread his last post on the 22nd. It appears he can no longer post on any of the forums here but he has not been banned or reprimanded? He has tried PM'ing the mods and even sent a couple of emails to the contact address at the bottom of the home page with no helpful responses yet. My Dad really enjoys this forum and would love to continue to be a part of it. He received no warnings or any words of displeasure from anyone here. I would hope and like to think that someone switched him off by accident? Could a mod or admin at least pm him and let him know what is going on with his account? Thank you for any help here. He can sign in and view the forum, and read this post, but when he tries to reply to the thread he only gets the Reply with a Quote button and none of the others. I saved the error message when I was looking on with him on his account. When it is selected an error message pops up saying.


Metal Twister, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:
Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.
 
Last edited:

Forum statistics

Threads
185,527
Messages
2,875,540
Members
224,922
Latest member
Randy Towles
Top