ZZ Trailer, anyone pulled one?

[Daza]

Stumbled across the ZZ Trailer http://zztrailer.com/ today and was wondering if anyone can give me the good oil on it.

Anyone pulled one on any long distance runs?
Are they as good as they look?
Are they as easy to pull as a Uni-go?

Thanks in advance guys.

[C. Buckman]

I thought a member of this group sold these,................Munson I believe?

[cfell]

What's the answer?

[Dick]

Hey, Daz - not a whole lotta help here, butt: my bro (who doesn't hang out here on the list very much) pulls a ZZ and has been on a coupla long distance rides (4k or longer), two up and towing. Loves it and has absolutely no problems. I'm almost positive he uses the Dauntless trailer hitch.

[JPSpen]

That's an awfull purdy trailer there.. How much do they cost ?

JOhn

[RonKMiller]

I seem to remember somewhere around $4K, but I may be way off.

That is an awesome trailer... style and engineering.

[jwd98056]

Here is the pricing page from Dauntless Motors:

http://www.dauntlessmotors.com/zztrailer.htm

They come with darn near every option as standard including carpeting, interior lighting, side marker lights, leather bra, a cooler with a leather bra, chrome wheels, tongue and coupler plus a swivel hitch. About the only options are travel bags and a spare wheel.

[walilisseu]

I'll consider delivering a ZZ trailer to you ... it would give me a good excuse to get a hitch and prepare to own a trailer myself. If I'm going to do much 2-up riding, I know my 2nd will be desiring more room to pack 'things'.

I'm looking to try and visit the mfg site and 'talk turkey' and see if what they can do. Although, I'm kind of partial to what I see in the Uni-Go trailers too.

Ride On,

[jwd98056]

I have been talking with owner of Dauntless Motors since about November about trailers. As I have stated in other posts the Uni-go is now back in production but Dauntless will not be carrying them again. They will be building their own one wheeled trailer that has yet to be named. Dauntless builds their own Zenith line of two wheeled trailers so they are not new to the business.

It will be about 1 cubic foot larger than the Uni-go with similar styling. The cargo compartment will actually be two separate halves that will quickly detach from the frame. They can be carried around like luggage unless you have more weight in them than you can carry that way. They will also develop other cargo carrying platforms that will mount to the trailer frame, like a golf club rack, a surf board rack or whatever. I suggested a wheel chock platform so I could tour with my HD softail in comfort, but he just laughed :D:D.

Unlike the simple spring suspension on the Uni-go they will have an adjustable air ride suspension system will hopefully resolve some of the bouncing behavior that some Uni-go owners have reported. It will also act as a load leveling system. It will probably require an external air source but I already have that farkle installed :).

He says they will be cheaper than the Uni-go, maybe 10% or so. I have pretty much decided to buy one unless I get a look at the finished product and it turns out to be butt ugly. The owner assured me it wouldn't be and judging by the looks of their stylish looking Zenith trailers I am inclined to believe him. I voiced my concern about buying an unproven product but he said he would make it good one way or the other.

Even though I am going solo both out to and back from the CCR I plan on dragging it along. I have enough camera equipment I want to take that it would be difficult to pack and use without a trailer. I don't like my LT looking like a rolling circus act anyway :p.

The plan is to start selling them in the spring. No firm date because they are still road testing the prototype and may need to make adjustments. Dauntless is about 10 miles from my house so I kind of like the idea of pumping my hard earned dollars back into the local economy. I had already decided to go with the highly rated Dauntless hitch so it will be one stop shopping ;).

I will post pictures as soon as I have something to take pictures of.

[walilisseu]

Jim,
Look forward to the additional info / photos as you get them! I don't think ZZ does hitches, so I'll likely have to find another ... not sure I'll have this rigged prior to CCR though.

[jwd98056]

There are a number of good quality hitches being made. For most of them the difficult part of the installation is probably the electrical. Most of the mechanical is pretty strait forward. I know both Bushtec and Dauntless have been given high ratings on the forum and elsewhere on the web. Those are probably the two I have seen recommended most often. If you want something chrome and stylish the Bushtec is a good choice. I personally like the Dauntless hitch for a couple of reasons.

1) You can pull 2 lock pins and most of the visible parts of the hitch can be quickly removed so you don't have to look at it all of the time. Other than the electrical plug you can hardly tell there is a hitch installed. Of course those that like the Bushtec can say it is too pretty to take off :D.

2) The permanent part of hitch that stays mounted on the bike doesn't interfere with removing the rear wheel. I know some hitches must be removed to take off the rear wheel. The Bushtec is a single sided design and I don't know if there are any issues with removing the rear wheel. Perhaps one of the Bushtec owners can shed some light on that issue.

If you are considering a one wheeled trailer then the hitch selection will be limited. Most manufacturers will provide their own hitch. Certainly Uni-Go makes one as Dauntless will for their trailer. Dauntless makes an adapter for the Uni-go but you may have to buy the receiver plate directly from Uni-go. I haven't researched if other hitch maker have adapters for the Uni-go or not. I had decided on a Dauntless hitch pretty early on in my investigations. So if a one wheeled trailer is a possibility I wouldn't invest in a hitch until you know what kind of trailer you are going to purchase. If you are certain you are going with a two wheeled trailer then you probably won't run into any compatibility problems as far as the mechanical hitch is concerned. There will always be the potential for having different electrical connections when mixing and matching trailers and hitches but that is usually easy to resolve.

I'm sure that just like tires, oil, trailers, lights and just about anything else that can be discussed, opinions and advice will vary ;). The good news is there are a lot of options :). The hard part is choosing :p.

[JATownsend]

The Bushtec is a single sided design and I don't know if there are any issues with removing the rear wheel. Perhaps one of the Bushtec owners can shed some light on that issue.
The Bushtec hitch design for the LT was requested by BMW in 1998. It by far the BEST performing hitch on the market. That's Bushtec's story and I believe them.

Now, that said, if your bike is on a lift table with a rear tire drop-out removal is of course no-problemo...

But, if you are in your garage, on the side of the road, in a motel parking lot... Well, I hope you brought your tools.

The last time I had to remove mine was after an '020 had the nerve to delaminate and bubble-up outside of Kadoka, SD. I had all the tools but it is a PITA. After practice, it can be accomplished in 10 - 15 minutes, unless you have really BIG hands.

However, the tightness and zero slop or movement of the pin hitch, the way it handles weight and distributes it to the middle of the LT is incredible.

It is clearly in a class by itself. :D

[SilverBuffalo]

Here's my take.
I had a Dauntless hitch on my bike and now have a Bushtec.
Dauntless makes an excellent product, there was a lot of thought and some really good engineering that went into the development of their hitch.
The ease of tire removal and the ability to remove the lower half of the hitch when you're not using it is great.

The only thing that concerns me, and I say concern because I have not heard of it happening is the hitch is bolted to the rear "subframe" of the bike.The old "airhead BMW's had an issue that if you mounted a "topbox" eventually the rear subframe would crack.
It seems to me that: if the trailer was heavy enough, the road rough enough, eventually the frame is going to crack somewhere underneath the saddlebags and you'll never know it.

I don't really like the looks of the Bushtec hitch and I don't think a lot of thought was put into the way it mounts under the license plate bracket, Dauntless is far superior in that end of it, however the load is being pulled from the lower motor mount and I personally believe that in extreme conditions the Bushtec will hold up better.

[pozo_izquierdo]

Dauntless builds their own Zenith line of two wheeled trailers so they are not new to the business.


If you look at these two websites:

http://www.dauntlessmotors.com/zenith.htm

and

http://www.peak-trailers.com/peak.htm

I would not be sure who is the actual manufacturer of the Zenith trailers...
Or perhaps one is the original and the other one is a copy.

Regards

[jwd98056]

Thank for the tip, you are correct. This was an incorrect assumption on my part. Apparently Dauntless is the US Peak distributor.

I found another page on the Dauntless website where they state this.

http://www.dauntlessmotors.com/motorcycle_trailers.htm

On that page they say they changed the name of the Peak Classic and Special trailers to Zenith Classic and Sport Touring but not the reason why.

This is strictly conjecture on my part but it is possible that Dauntless licensed the design from Peak and manufactures them in the US. The Peak web site doesn't even mention the fact they have a US distributor. All they list are distributors in Scandinavia and Europe. That may be one reason why Daunltess renamed them and why they don't even mention Peak on their Zenith product page.

They have been involved in trailer design in the past. They were developing a one wheel trailer at the same time the Uni-go was being developed. I don't know the whole story but some of their designs ended up in the Uni-go some how. At the time they went into a special distributorship arrangement with Uni-go rather than produce two nearly identical trailers or spend all their time in court. With the sale of Uni-go to Schoolhouse Motorcycle Accessories here in the US, that relationship ended. Now they are going to build their own.

[walilisseu]

I've e-mailed ZZ and hope to visit their mfg site. They sell Dauntless hitches, so I'll query them as to what they recommend. I've assumed they've prototyped their trailers ... and they definately look like they're bias to the LT, so, hopefully they have that experience to share.
V/R

[dfick]

About a year ago I had a ZZ-Trailer made to match my light yellow '05 LT. It comes in a huge crate (about as big as the LT shipping crate) so I had it shipped to Bob's BMW in Jessup, MD. They took delivery, uncrated and set it up for me, including installing the Dauntless hitch system. The trailer is fantastic. It is a twin for the rear of the bike, with matching lights and shape. Bob's replaced the ZZ roundel with a BMW roundel, and it looks like OEM. The build quality is great, the interior finish is thorough, and the shock damping system works well. I have dragged it about 400 miles and don't know it is there. We will be pulling it to '06 Curve Cowboy for its first long-distance workout (down Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway end-to-end). It can swallow a bunch (we can get 2 folding Dahon bicycles, and all our gear in there).

Drawback is $4,500 price with shipping and a couple months lead time, plus you have to have someplace to have it shipped by common carrier.

http://www.zztrailer.com/whybuy.html

[Daza]

Thanks for the info, appreciate it!