Cruisers Forum
Main Forum => Tips and Tricks => Topic started by: Barry-Sue on February 09, 2012, 07:13:50 pm
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Here is an idea for those that can use a dual drop receiver. Bikes can ride between the PC and the ‘toad’. During travel they are out of the wind and when you get to the camp ground they are out of the way but yet easy to get.
A couple very important items. MAKE SURE THERE IS ENOUGH ROOM BETWEEN THE HOOD OF THE ‘TOAD’, THE TOW BAR AND THE BIKE RACK. Double check your turning radius to make sure there are no problems. It could turn out to be very expensive if any two were to meet during a turn!!!!!
Barry
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I never thought of that one. Thanks for sharing.
BTW, I just noticed you don't have the rear ladder or roof rack. I thought I was the only one who decided against it.
With all the jabs I get about it, here I am not alone. :lol
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We received our dual hitch extention today from Harbour Freight. Looks like it raises high enough to clear the toad. Great sale price at $24.88.
George
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Which bike rack do you have? Now that I'm a toadie, this looks to be a great solution.
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I did want to share that having the bike rack attached to the toad instead of the motor home, has some advantages. One is that the rear storage compartment of the PC is more easily accessible. The other is that we most often leave the motor home in the camp ground and drive the toad far to another location to start our bike ride.
Rear hitches vary per vehicle (class-I, II, III), but in the case with our toad, Available was a strong class-III 3500 pound rear hitch. It cost me $125 shipped to the house. I mounted it in a half hour and utilize it well for the bike rack. Needless to say, this is also beneficial at home. When we want to bike ride along Chicago's lake front or other bike trail, we take the toad with bikes to the trail head. The PC stays home. Also, off-season the insurance on the PC is in suspense rendering it uninsured to drive.
If a rear hitch can be installed on your toad, I would first consider that. Our first toad was a little 2 seat sports car which we could not get a rear hitch for. In that case, Barry-Sue's twin receiver idea would be a great way to bring the bikes on trips.
The car we used to own was a 1998 Grand Prix. Only class-I and class-II hitches were available for that car. I installed a class-II for the bike rack which was a wise move. The stronger the better when it comes to bikes hanging out there.
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I guess we have the best of both worlds. We find the bikes behind the PC much easier to use then when they were behind the toad. The back storage compartment is very accessible with the dual receiver. If we want to take the bikes with us when we use the toad we just move the bike rack to the toad. We like keeping them behind the PC at the campgrounds and do not have to take the bikes with us everytime we go somewhere in the toad.
During travel, there is alot less wind resistance with the bikes behind the PC. It is great storage for them and they are not sitting out in the open when we are at a campground. Since we have used both methods we can honestly say "for us" we prefer them behind the PC.
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Barry-Sue,
Now you have convinced me that I should consider the dual hitch reciever. 2o2
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Scott at Cliff's Welding suggested I try out my existing bike rack (Swagman 3 bike hanger) first since the upper hitch will be extended ~6" and may allow for opening that back storage door. Currently, with only the bike rack on the hitch, I can only open the door just enough to get the cord & hose out for hook up (unless I take the bikes off). We'll see and report back.
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pyrthkr
Our bike rack is a Thule 990 dual track.
Barry
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I built mine, one person, Sharon does not like to ride.
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We received our dual hitch extention today from Harbour Freight. Looks like it raises high enough to clear the toad. Great sale price at $24.88.
George
I use a stainless steel foldable 2 bike rack from front of metro busses in salvage yard adapt it to front trailer hitch receiver on my ford chassis. the racks very minimal cost [$50.} compared to what bus company pays [$1500.] and put new ones on each new bus
ED
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Barry,
Does your bike rack and tow bar set-up allow you to disconnect your toad and fold up the tow bar without taking the bicycles off of the rack?
--Bruce
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Bruce,
Yes, I have no problem getting the toad disconnected and the tow bar in the storage position without removing the bikes. It might cause me to bend down a little further but in now way is it difficult to do. I never take the bike rack off during our travels unless I want to put it on the car if we are going to bike somewhere away from the campground.
I also can get into the back storage without any issues.
Barry
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Barry,
Wow, I'd like to be able to stow the tow bar as you do. My Roadmaster tow bar "arms" must be lifted and then folded to the side after the toad is disconnected. My Saris bike rack is dual track like your rack, and it blocks my attempts to deploy or stow the tow bar when the rack is attached to the PC.
Your tow bar must operate differently, or I don't understand my options with mine.
Does this description make sense to you? Maybe my solution is to buy a tow bar like yours.
Thanks for your help on this.
Bruce
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Bruce,
If your Roadmaster tow bar is like ours (a Falcon-II), you can disconnect to leave that one bar attached to the tow vehicle and fold the remaining two arms horizontally against the PC. That is how it is intended to be stored, using the included on-RV storage bag. but I never do that because this method is easiest to me. If I need to drive the PC on a real road, then I remove the bar altogether. But most often I only need to drive around the campsite or to the camp ground dump station. I drive slow with the triangle pivoted to one side because it will fall either left or right. I would never drive on a real road with the tow bar like this.
Pivoting right, the bar gets in the way of opening the storage compartment. Pivoting left takes a little care as not to bang into the spare tire cover. It sounds bad but really is nothing. Keeping the triangle together makes hooking and unhooking real fast and easy. With Irene's assistance, we can unhook in 45 seconds, re-hook in about 3 to 4 minutes when considering the safety stuff. A rare oops at a gas station and it becomes valuable information.
Regarding the bike rack, without a tow vehicle, the bike rack goes right into the PC hitch. When towing, we ended up mounting a class-III hitch on our tow vehicle, a Jeep Liberty and let it carry the bikes. That worked out quite well because we'll drive the Liberty to where we want to start riding our bikes. That also reduces the weight on the PC, the tongue weight, and maintains easy access to the rear compartment which is handy when leaving the camp ground for the final time while all hooked up, I need to get inside there for the fresh water hose. Yes I could store the water hose elsewhere.... :)
(http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2609/3743987921_e46722defd_z.jpg)
Note the bike rack on the Liberty
(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7020/6641812687_8e01997fa2_b.jpg)
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Here’s another example of why I love this forum:
For six months I’ve been thinking that no way could I haul bicycles on my bike rack with it attached to the rear of our PC and at the same time pull a toad because I thought that I would need to remove the bikes when we had to disconnect the toad before driving around the campsite. Removing the bikes before moving the toad would be too logistically difficult. Barry and Ron have helped me see some other possibilities.
First Barry told me that he can accomplish my desired task with his set-up and then Ron helped me see how I might maneuver the tow bar that was causing the problem in my attempts.
Ron, I had never thought of operating the tow bar in any way other than what I had always done—push the two “arms” together, lift them vertically, then fold them horizontally into the stored position. From the photo you included in your last post, it looks like you usually leave a part of the baseplate attached to the two tow bar arms when you disconnect your toad, and that keeps the arms in a triangle shape. That’s something that I might like to do when I don’t have my bike rack on the PC. But, our bike rack is similar the Barry’s (see his in the first photos in this thread) that has the dual track bars where the bike wheels sit. Those track bars block lifting the tow bar arms up to vertical. Your thoughts here of using a different approach helped me start thinking.
Perhaps instead of lifting the Roadmaster All Terain tow bar arms to vertical when I disconnect the toad, I could just push the arms together and then swing them right or left horizontally to a position under the bike rack track bars. The arms will not lock in that position, so I would need to strap them up to the track bars well enough to be able to drive the PC around in a manner suggested by Ron.
Barry, your photos show a tow bar the looks like a Blue Ox, so maybe that make it easier for you to disconnect your toad and drive the PC away without removing the bikes. Am I right on that? Any comment or suggestion on the possible plan I’ve laid out above?
--Bruce
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Sorry for adding even more complexity into this conversation, but there is one more thing to think about. That is the "Levelness" of your tow bar. If it is not level, you will get "tow-vehicle-bucking" while driving. The greater the angle, the worse the bucking. Using Quiet Hitches at every connection helps but does not resolve the problem. It only masks it. Leveling the tow bar eliminates it.
My picture here shows the "Condition To Avoid" of which I tolerated a lot of bucking. Note the tow bar is low at the PC and high at the Jeep Liberty. This was the day the light bulb went off inside my head and so I took this picture while on a trip.
(http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5541/9398970458_9cdb11b392_c.jpg)
In this picture taken a few years later, I added an offset receiver to level the tow bar. "Cumulative Play" with the extra connection required Quiet Hitches at both interconnects. This setup also required longer blue safety cables. 100% of the bucking was eliminated here.
(http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2885/9398957260_f31c2c27f1_c.jpg)
If you think about it enough, it will make sense. Every bump in the road changes the "vertical" relationship between tow vehicle and motor home. An angled tow bar with out-of-sync vertical movement between vehicles changes the distance between them, just enough to cause that horrid bucking. A horizontal bar would cause bucking only under every extreme conditions. But then I think you would have something much greater to worry about, like jumping a curb or worse. Getting the bar perfectly level is ideal, but getting it close works too.
I may stick this as an independent thread in the Tips & Tricks section.
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Bruce,
show a tow bar the looks like a Blue Ox, so maybe that make it easier for you to disconnect your toad and drive the PC away without removing the bikes. Am I right on that? Any comment or suggestion on the possible plan I’ve laid out above?
Yes, it is a Blue Ox (Aladdin). It disconnects by removing the two pins attached to the toad, both bars then compress and swing either left or right. The arms pivot in the standard pivot area that is used for storage of the tow bar. Thus our tow bar is always in the storage position once we remove the toad. We have a locking hitch pin so I have no worries about anything happening to the tow bar. We are camping now so I will try to get use some pictures after I finish the dishes.
Barry
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Bruce
Here is a picture of the tow bar in the store position. You can see it pivoted to left and locked in with the bike rack above.
Barry
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Barry,
I can see that the Blue Ox allows you to unhook and store the bars without moving the bikes.
As I mentioned earlier, I can unhook and move our Roadmaster tow bar laterally as you do, but it will not lock there. I think I'll try in a safe area my idea of strapping up the bars to the bike rack at that point so that we could carefully drive the PC in the campground.
Another difference I see is the type of dual receiver adapters that we have. Ours has the toad receiver straight out from the PC receiver to avoid a drop down there in order to keep level with the toad. The bike rack receiver sits above the toad receiver. That might leave less working space between the two receivers.
Thanks again for your help.
Bruce
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I'd like to add one more thing to consider with all the hitch mounts - the ladder. We run with the ladder tied up using ball bungees so that we can get into the rear bin easier (that tip from Bill Golden). However, we occasionally need roof access. We've discovered that swinging the Blue Ox to the right blocks the ladder. So we swing left but the nifty cover only fits correctly if you swing both arms right. No biggie but another item to consider when storing everything back there. We just put the cover on and partially zip it as best we can.
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A small receiver extender/adapter might place the tow bar out away from the spare tire cover enough so that the tow bar cover will fit easily.
Just a thought.
Bruce
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We just spent the weekend with Jack D and they have a dual hitch with the extender on the back of their 2350. They don't have a toad so the bottom receiver holds a cargo rack with heavy duty bins, etc., and the top receiver holds their bike rack. They could easily open their rear bin. I didn't pay attention to the ladder so I'm not sure if it can swing down when loaded.
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Hi Holly, et al,
The ladder will swing down over the cargo rack, but I have to remove the storage box - no big deal as long as I take the wts out first!
All the best,
Jack