Can anyone tell me if i am ok to use a maxxraxx premier 4 bike carrier which is fixed to the tow bar and allows the caravan to still be towed. I have a audi a4 tdi 1.9 fitted with a flange type tow ball and am towing a Kip compakt 37ekv.I am unsure if this will be ok and have the chance to buy the bike carrier second hand though will only be taking 2 bikes on it.Any advice appreciated.Many thanks
Don't know what your permissible nose weight is, but the total load on the tow bar musn't exceed the max plated weight of the tow bar. Therefore if you're carrying bikes on the towbar, the weight of these (and the bike rack) must be subtracted from the nose weight of the caravan - depending on what you have left in your calculated capacity, you may experience problems achieving the correct nose weight for the van without moving weight behind the axle potentially causing stability issues.
With the long A frame on your Kip a better solution might be to fit an A frame bike carrier, Fiamma do them. As caravan is small & light, noseweight at moment could be less than 50kg which might allow you enough margin to carry a couple of bikes within your cars limit.
You need to check your caravan noseweight. Know what your cars' towbar download limit is & if there is enough difference between the 2 weights to include bikes & carrier you will be ok.
sorry to sound dim but how do i find all this out. i looked at my log book and it says the unladen car is 1515.0kg.its an 03 audi a4 tdi and is i think 130bhp.i cannot really find any info in the car manual and the towball has no info on it either. how do i work out the towbar download limit. ? and the caravan plate says its 950kg. Any help appreciated as i wud prefer the maxxraxx rather than an a frame carrier as i need to transport the bikes sometimes when the caravan is not attached and have 2 dogs so wanted access to the boot which the maxxraxx gives.Thank you
the plate on the caravan says max gew.as 950kg.... think that is maybe the same as max permitted weight. Its a foreign caravan and all the manual is in german so i cannot read it !
the towbar has a silver sticker but its all faded so i cannot tell but from what i have read online i think it is 75 or 80kg.
Hi. Looking at the Towsure site, I reckon the maximum noseweight for the car is 75Kg. Now you need to find the noseweight for your van and subtract the two. This will give you the extra weight you can bolt on to your towbar.