Bike Rack for Towbar

[eddieandsue]

Have purchased a new motorhome (Burstner) and need to buy a bike rack suitable for two bikes which attach to the Towbar. I am totally confused as it looks as if you can spend as little as £50 and as much as £400!! Has anybody got any tips of which make to go for? All replies gratefully received. (lol)

[Sydney1]

Have a look here

 

http://www.roofbox.co.uk/bike-carriers/

 

Includes best buy advice. I went for the Atera and very impressed with the quality and design but plenty of choice further down the price range as well. Excellent service from Roofbox as well. Ordered 11am, delivered 11am next day

[Pete-B]

Another one for Atera great quality and easy to use. B-)

[lizken]

I have a "towsure" branded folding rack, which locks onto the towball, and is fitted with full lighting set and plug, number plate holder and extendable wheel racks for two bikes. The towsure price was £259, but I bought mine from a trader at last years Lincoln show for £129. A very good piece of kit

[brom]

Ours is a Thule two-bike rack, which fits easily on the towbar. We've had it over six years now, and it works just fine. Can't remember the price, but it wasn't exorbitant.

[tonyishuk]

As above, we have a Thule tow-bar rack for electric bikes. Slightly heavier and wider than a standard Thule rack,

 

Thule racks can be fitted with a ramp to roll the bikes up to load. A lot easier than the lift on to arm types.

 

That said we had a Pendle "arm" rack that carried our bike and tandem for a good number of years, Only sold it because it was much easier to roll up the ramp on the Thule rack.

 

The latter come in many sizes and widths and cater for most needs,

 

http://www.thule.com/en/it/products/bike-carriers/towbar

 

http://www.pendle-bike.co.uk/shopping/towbar-racks.php

 

Rgds

[Injebreck99]

We are thinking of buying a Thule carrier for our Swifr Bolero motorhome to carry our 2 electric bikes as well, they both weigh 22KG each without the batteries, anyone had any problems with the extra weight of the carrier/bikes, has the rear suspension had to be upgraded to cope with the extra weight, ?, our Bolero (600 Compact) has quite a rear overhang.

[DJP]

I have one of these going cheap if you are interested

 

 

http://www.towsure.com/product/Clipper_2_Bike_Towbar_Mounted_Cycle_Carrier

 

About £20 based in Somerset, but I do get about a bit.

[Injebreck99]

I have already tried one of those, not man enough I'm afraid, thanks anyway.

[tonyishuk]

Re Rear Axle weights.

 

On our Rapido, I made a rough calc of the extra weight on the axle.

 

I knew approximately the rear axle load, from previous weighbridge measurements and used the calculator on the http://www.svtech.co.uk/motorhomes.html site (3rd line up from the bottom in the box) to calculate the extra load.

 

From memory our two electric bikes (without batteries) + Cycle Rack + Towbar fittings weighed a little under 100kg, The calcs showed that the front was lighter by 30kg, and the load on the rear axle was 130kg.

 

It brought the total load on the axle up to just under the load limit for the m/home 3.5ton, but well within the max load allowable on the axle 2000 kg, The Rapido can be re-plated from 3500 to 3850 kg, but was not a route to go down unless we had to.

 

Rgds