Tow bar mounted trials bike carrier

[bryan]

Towball carriers are great, I use mine (one of Phil's beauties) on the back of my Hilux when I've got my canopy on, and now that I've fitted a towbar to my Falcon I'd say it'll get a fair run there.

A couple of points:

I wouldn't want my bashplate bolted solid to the rack as in Austini's version. I reckon that it's asking for bearing problems in your engine from road vibrations (I've seen a couple of similar failures from stationary bearings that lead me to this suspicion). Also I think you're better off having the bike's suspension to absorb some of the bigger road bumps. even if the bike moves around more it's got to be better for your rack and towbar.

I started out with the exact same light board on my rack, due to time contraints, but as soon as I had the chance I ripped it to bits, chucked the board in the bin and used the lights and wiring (shortened significantly), welded some tabs on the rack and Bob's your uncle. The main reason is the light board looks crap on such a well build rack! Do yourself a favour and whack a couple of those neat looking welds on some angle steel and screw in some lights and a number plate.

A number plate can be easily fashioned from a bit of white coreflute plastic and an Artline texta. I've got a different rego on each side so I can just turn it over for the other car. If there's a house for sale around the corner you can easily "borrow" a 100mm x 300mm piece off the sign with a stanley knife (if it sells for a good price they'll just put your council rates up anyway). Light for the number plate is usually provided by a clear lens in the side of one of the tail lights.

It seems to me (I stand to be corrected) that all towbars are the same width (well, all mine are) so it might be easier to weld on those "centraliser" tabs than stuffing around with ropes every time?

Tell me to sod of if you like, but that looks like a bit of a dog of a purchase on Ebay! Supercheap have got those lightboards on special this week for about fifty bucks, and they come with two unbroken lenses and a plug of your choice! You can pick up a longer towball while you're there, then you've got a spare nut to use as a locknut.

Make sure you check what the combined weight of your rack and bike and that this comfortably fits within the towball downforce rating of your towbar and car. It'd be handy to be able to quote the figures if Mr Plod ever asks, but more importantly it may void your insurance if it's over and you have a stack.

Thanks for letting me dump my brain contents on the subject, can you tell that I have far to long a drive to get to trials? much to much thinking time.

regards
Bryan

[Phil]

Hi All
NAM I would add some side plates to your mount most tow bar tounges
are 75mm to 76mm wide.
On the lights front I am looking at adding a lighting pack to my product list
using LED lights.
On the towbar weight, A std type tow bar is rated at 90kg at the ball
my racks are 15kg in weight so that leaves you 75kgs of bike on the rack.
I have made quite a few differant types of racks and the one that I am making now is the pick of them when travelling the bike doesn't move
and when the racks not in use it packs up and fits into the boot of a car.
And by the way we are making a run of racks at the moment so if anybody
is interested just give me a call on 0415 861 036 or email me [email protected].
Thanks.
Phil
PTR Engeering

[N*A*M]

brilliant! so simple and effective. how many design iterations did it take to reach that point? that's almost perfect. led lights with a standard trailer light plug would make that the ultimate.

my junky contraption weighs at least 20kgs. it was all from stuff i already had lying around. if you can't tell by now, i'm on a tight budget! oh well, one day i'll get a PTR engineering pro job and call it good.

bryan, thanks for your detailed input. i'm taking it all on board.

[austini]

Bryan good point about the bearing issue with my rack, however lots of boats, planes and automobiles have auxillary machinery attatched that is used once in a blue moon surely all these would suffer from stuffed bearings from sitting in the same spot for so long. I would say having a resident frequency around the stationary machine that makes the balls vibrate would be the most proboble cause of excessive ball wear!! I know first hand that a certain diesel engine used in the military now runs at a slightly different RPM because the resident frequency at its old RPM killed the bearings, I can't give any more details or I would have to kill you all
Forgot to add my rack is rubber mounted and a 2hour trip to a trial shouldn't effect a stationary ball bearing. How about the bearing and bush wear from a bouncing trials on a bike trailor???????/

[N*A*M]

i agree there. i support my bike with a bar that runs under the skidplate. it is padded with rubber. personally i'm not too worried about additional bearing damage. the rack worked really well. i drove a fair distance last weekend and the bike arrive safe and sound.

[r2wtrials]

we have been using bike racks here for as long as i have been riding i think... 35 years now!!
I don't actually own a trailer... been using the Dave cooper racks for ages. I believe your standard towbars are different to ours though. This is Coopers site... http://www.davecooper.co.uk/bike_racks.htm