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I just bought a used WeeRide Co-Pilot bike trailer. It's pretty good except for one little feature(?)

safety tabs that make your seat post do the twist like Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace

These tabs stick out on the side, and I'm assuming they're safety tabs to help you not run over your child, but for the life of me I can't figure out why. If I try to make a low-speed turn in our road (about 16') it will twist my seat around. It's less maneuverable than my regular bike trailer due to that fact.

Is there any real reason that I shouldn't follow through with my plan to grind them down/off so I can make turns safely?

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  • Can you clarify - you are about to do something that will let you run over your child, and you are asking if its a bad idea?
    – mattnz
    Dec 19, 2019 at 20:24
  • If the tabs didn't hit something, would the next contact be the bracket against the tube. That might not be good for the tube. You may be able to grind them down without removing them completely
    – Chris H
    Dec 20, 2019 at 19:28
  • @mattnz to be clear, I don't think there's any actual risk of hitting my child. I just can't come up with any other explanation of why you would only allow about a 15 degree bend before trying to twist the seatpost out of the bike.
    – Wayne Werner
    Dec 20, 2019 at 19:58
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    While I fully support letting common sense prevail, it is unwise to advise other people to remove safety features, and unwise for people to take advice off the internet when asking if circumventing safety features is wise.
    – mattnz
    Dec 20, 2019 at 22:27
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    @Criggie - It's worked fine for me - I started with a dremel but that took too long so I started hitting them with a flap disk. I've probably removed about 1/2 of the tabs and nothing has been less stable. I still can't take corners perfectly, but it went from turning my seatpost with every turn to only occasionally turning my seatpost. If I remember tomorrow I'll go take a picture.
    – Wayne Werner
    Jan 12 at 0:46

2 Answers 2

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I think the only real reason why you shouldn't remove them is that if you're moving the whole thing (without anyone on it) and it violently crashes against itself (say you pick it up to store it and it slips) then the safetly tabs will take the damaage and potentially save the rest of it.

Apart from a case like that, if you're safe with how you use it, the safety tabs can be removed.

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    If the tab is there the makers had a good reason to put it there first place. So I would not remove it.
    – Carel
    Dec 20, 2019 at 8:56
  • Me neither, but if modifing something makes more sense for the OP's needs, and we can't actually find a genuine reason not to. Then why not.
    – abdnChap
    Dec 20, 2019 at 12:54
  • Sometimes "lawyers" is the reason (at least, I've only heard the retaining tabs requiring you to spin the front skewer nuts referred to as "lawyer tabs"). Ironically if it was a safety device I would expect for it to be called out in the manual, but I couldn't find anything.
    – Wayne Werner
    Jan 20 at 1:59
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Bicycle manufacturers do all kinds of things to satisfy lawyers, and I suspect this was one of those things.

I'm not recommending anyone do this (hi, lawyers) of course, but this is what I did

photo of a hand grasping the CoPilot hitch, trying in vain to create a pinch point a photo of a tab ground down somewhat a photo of the other tab ground down somewhat

This helped, but I could still probably take some more off. As it is, reasonable turns still will twist my bike seat, but at least I can turn beyond about 15 degrees and still remain upright.

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