The forums default photo with the scooter trailer.

The photo sparked an interesting idea of mine as a musician. What about touring with a band where a small band goes on tour with scooters and trailers rather then a van or tour buss to make the tour more profitable. I posted on a bass player's forum. The Discussion made it clear it was a bad idea but raised another.


What size trailer and weight is safe for the Silver Wing?

The official answer of course is "NONE".
Honda never envisioned the Silverwing as a tow vehicle.

Two types of hitches are often used:  
The DennisB style. and the Joe Wolfe Style.
DB style is attached. JW style is welded on.
You can contact each of those people for details on their hitch, and what they think is safe.
Neither one has gone through any specialized testing to determine a max tongue weight.
As far as pulling power, I believe I've seen numbers thrown around of around 150lbs.
That's trailer and gear together.  Further research on your part might yield different results.  

IIRC, Honda has listed the vehicle's carry weight @ 386lbs.

As I've said before, in the UK there are strict rules about towing with a motorcycle: weight to weight, maximum speeds and so on.

They do make sense and err on the conservative side.
For example: the regulations for m/c and cars towing trailers is a maximum motorway (freeway) speed of 60MPH, 10MPH below the non-towing maximum.

Here are the specific m/c regulations from the Government website:


Towing with a motorbike


You can use motorbikes with an engine size of 125cc or more to tow small trailers.

Your motorbike has to be clearly and permanently marked with its ‘kerbside weight’.


Kerbside weight is the weight of the vehicle without passengers or any load but with a full tank of fuel and filled up with the necessary oils, water and fluids.

The trailer must be no more than 1 metre wide and must be clearly and permanently marked with its unladen weight.

When the trailer is loaded it must weigh no more than 150 kilograms or 2/3 of the kerbside weight of the motorbike - whichever is lighter.

When hitched, the distance between the end of the trailer and the rear axle of the motorbike must be no more than 2.5 metres.

dspevack wrote:

 ... snipped ... IIRC, Honda has listed the vehicle's carry weight @ 386lbs.

Load (carry) weight and pull/tow weight are two very different things as the "load" does not sit on the suspension.  Think pick up truck.

Having said that, it's a bit of a crap shoot as to what would be the correct tow weight for a SW as this would need to be engineered and then tested.  On trucks, the two most important elements are power (engine/tranny combo) and stopping (brakes).