Bike-Rack: Tailgate or Towbar Mount?
- Thread starter flatfourtour
- Start date
@Ayjay fantastic info and very much a help. I see what you mean. That’s great, will get it purchased.
@Bentley T6. Glad to be of assistance. One thing I would advise on the rack is to keep an eye on price movements if you've got the luxury of time. When I bought mine, I looked all over the internet for best prices over a period of about 3 months. In the end Halfords dropped a very large lump off of their limited time on-line only price only and I jumped in with an additional 10% armed forces discount - I saved something like £200 over prices advertised elsewhere. You can get a similar discount as a member of British Cycling.
@Ayjay that’s fantastic, thank you again. Really very helpful. Will have a shop around and keep an eye on Halfords.
@BruvDunk I think our van is the twin of yours, albeit with the Atera Strada DL 3 + 4th bike adapter
+1 for Atera DL3. Slides nicely out of the way of the barn doors with bikes still loaded. Easy fitment to tow ball. Ours had tow bar fitted when we bought it so it was a no brainer really. Picked up DL3 off eBay cheap from someone who didn’t know what model it was and never knew it had the sliding feature!
I also went for the Thule as a) it was cheaper than VW equivalent, and b) I wanted something to stay on the van so I wouldn't have to store it somewhere. Works for me, but then I'm only putting 2 bikes on max, and no e-bikes.. Oh and at home I have a nice wall I reverse up to, for getting the bikes on.
We have an Altera Strada DL3 on the van, used for a couple of ordinary MTBs. We're considering getting eBikes, probably the Cube Reaction Hybrid Pro model. Has anyone experience of this rack / bike combination? Weight wise I think it's marginal - I'm more interested in whether the rack is big enough as these bikes are large!
Each to their own, but I’d rather get a towbar one unless people like to drive around with prison bars on the window lol.
Just our two ebikes weigh over 50kg’s anyway, there’s no way I’m risking that on the tailgate.
Most of my pals use thule tow bar ones, and they seem great, plus you can actually see out the back window!
Just our two ebikes weigh over 50kg’s anyway, there’s no way I’m risking that on the tailgate.
Most of my pals use thule tow bar ones, and they seem great, plus you can actually see out the back window!
I’ve had the tailgate rack and the Thule Velospace XT3 tow bar mount. I like the look of the tailgate rack but I wanted to be able to open the tailgate with bikes on, so the hinged tow bar mount works for me.
Yes thats a bonus too, just rotate away and open the tailgate.
I’m not convinced that the VW one is safe enough for heavy bikes anyway. And having bikes so close to the van can easily result in knocking the bars etc into the van. We used yo have one on the back of a previous vehicle and the rack ruined the paint around the edges and on a couple of occasions we scraped the paint with the bar ends. There’s also the driving around with giant prison bars over the back window. I put a window unto the tailgate to see out of it
I’m not convinced that the VW one is safe enough for heavy bikes anyway. And having bikes so close to the van can easily result in knocking the bars etc into the van. We used yo have one on the back of a previous vehicle and the rack ruined the paint around the edges and on a couple of occasions we scraped the paint with the bar ends. There’s also the driving around with giant prison bars over the back window. I put a window unto the tailgate to see out of it
I’ve switched from a tow bar mount to a bike rack as I tow a caravan.
If I didn’t tow, I would have kept the tow bar rack.
If I didn’t tow, I would have kept the tow bar rack.
To be fair I think that one looks a lot better that the ones like this:
I think the one I pictured looks hideous, appreciate thats just my opinion and some people might love them though.
There’s also no way I would be lifting awkward 27kg ebikes up onto it lol.
