Will a motorbike carrier break my towbar?
QUESTION
G’day John,
I spotted this on a FB group the other day.
The guy reckons that he is within the specified towball weight. The bike is a BMW R1200 GSA which would weigh approx. 263kgs.
Now even if the Toyota’s towball weight was 263kg, I imagine having the bike a further few 100mm rearward would increase the weight markedly. I’m not sure if the mount/leverage/design would make it allowable but it looks awfully suss to me.
The hitch is one of these: https://racknroll.com.au/product/rack-n-roll-adventure-carrier/?fbclid=IwAR0iS0mXxGlobe4F8-_TiwsHTFxj48t-YHdN7Crg1TbPykM6mIjfIKn-92c
Keep the videos coming, always good.
Regards,
Geoff
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ANSWER
Geoff,
Will do on the videos - thanks for watching.
These are pretty clearly very different loading situations. A standard towbar and towball, last time I looked, is not designed to carry the kind of torque that the bike would apply to the arrangement when inertial loads are imposed in the vertical plane. The whole point of a ball is to rotate so that only the load (force) is transmitted, not a torque…
I’d love to know what manufacturers think of this kind of thing.
Car goes over a dip/hits a bump, the bike accelerates at 3g vertically (say) and let’s say it’s 500mm from the towbar’s main transverse draw-bar: Imposed torque = 263 x 3 x 9.81 x 0.5 = 3900Nm (ish). I’d rate that as a bad idea.
The way to carry a motorcycle is: on a trailer. (Pro Tip: There are literally hundreds of good trailer manufacturers out there.)
Sincerely,
JC
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