Bike racks and silverscreens

[Dorset Dimension]

Hi

Has any-one tried a towball fitted bike rack on the back of a Dimension ?

Can any-one recommend where to buy an EXTERIOR silverscreen (front windscreen and side windows) suitable for a Dimension ?

Many thanks

Gail

[peterholden]

We got the ones for our Outlook from http://www.silverscreens.co.uk/ and we are very pleased with them. Their son has a similar business but sells through ebay.

[Aileen]

Hello
We got ours for our Outlook from here:http://www.silverproducts.co.uk/ (he also sells on e-bay).

We've only recently got them, but so far so good. From order to delivery took just over a week during all the snow at the beginning of the year.
Aileen

[glenw]

silverproducts.co.uk is run by the son of the founder of silverscreens.co.uk. so you are both recommending the same people!!

[Graham]

There is one on amazon that says it will fit a Citroen Relay 1994-2001 but if I remember right your van is a later model.

Motorhome External Silver Thermal Screen Fiat Ducato / Boxer 94-01

[barry5]

Hi

Has any-one tried a towball fitted bike rack on the back of a Dimension ?

We use a towball mounted rack on our Dimension, sadly we don't have a picture.

The one we use is an old folding scissor type with projecting arms that you hang the bikes on by their top tubes.

In addition to being light in weight, it has the advantage of folding down quite small when not in use, so is easy to store off the van. The disadvantage is that the bikes are set quite low on the back of the van.

As well as strapping the bikes to the rack, we also put straps from the bikes direct to the van, threading them through the top hinges of the back doors. Having once seen a bike rack complete with 2 bikes lying in the middle lane of the M6 (having apparently parted company with the vehicle) we now follow the "belt and braces plus a bit of string" principle when securing the bikes.

We also have a Thule rack which has channels for the bike wheels to sit in, but this is a huge great beast that would be impossible to store in the van after arriving on site. We only use that one on the car when we go out for day trips and leave it attached in the car park.

We do plan this year, on our first fully loaded trip out, to visit a weighbridge to check that we are not overloading the van, especially the rear axle, with the added weight of the bikes hanging off the back.

Also remember that you need a number plate and light board fixed on the bikes as the van lights and number plate could well be obscured by the bikes.

Barry

[Dorset Dimension]

Thanks

Hi

Thanks to you all for your help with this. Armed with this info, I am sure that we can now go forward !

Again many thanks

Keith and Gail

[barry5]

Bike rack on Dimension towball

I lied in my earlier post,

We do have a picture of the bikes on the rack on the Dimension. (Just ignore the old geezer lurking round the front of the van, the wife picked him up somewhere)



This shows how low the bikes travel and also the "safety straps" I use to ensure that we won't lose the bikes should the rack come loose.

Barry

[jessiem]

Barry5

We have bikes and my husband wants to take them when we go away. I was a bit apprehensive about carrying them inside the Outlook but had a look at your photos and was pleasantly surprised! Seems they will be ok. what did you do to stop them from moving towards the back door when travelling?

[barry5]

Barry5

We have bikes and my husband wants to take them when we go away. I was a bit apprehensive about carrying them inside the Outlook but had a look at your photos and was pleasantly surprised! Seems they will be ok. what did you do to stop them from moving towards the back door when travelling?

Not sure which photos you were looking at, but I will try to explain how we carried two full size touring bikes (mudguards, pannier racks, lights etc etc plus the luggage) inside our HyLo.

1. In order to protect the interior of the van, we made a "bag with wings" out of the plastic sheeting commonly used on market stall roofs. This bag fitted in the trough between the seats, with the wings extending onto the seat cushions. The bag was closed at the front end and open (with a tie up flap) at the door end.

2. Pannier bags and other similar bulky stuff was wedged onto the wings on the seats, holding the "bag" in place.

3. Pedals were removed from the bikes - 15 mm spanner - remember the left hand pedal has a reverse thread.

4. First bike is inserted into "bag", facing forwards. One person outside wheeling bike in and other person in cab guiding the front wheel

5. Second bike threaded into "bag", backwards, placing cardboard sheets between vulnerable protuberances such as hub nuts, gears, cranks etc. During this part, the person in the cab may have to lift the second bike over "sticky outy bits" of the first bike. Practice made perfect. Bikes leaned apart, and gently rocked into their preferred resting positions. Old towels possibly needed to finally wedge tight and to give added padding against Roma's bed fronts.

6. The flap at the open end of the "bag" is tied up - and finally -

7. The clever bit - the plastic caravan step is wedged inside the door on an angle, between the bike wheels and the inside of the back door threshold.

It sounds complicated, but once we had sorted out the routine, loading and unloading was relatively quick and pain free.

Obviously, we worked this out by trial and error, being the solution for our bikes, yours may be different sizes and the wedging, padding etc may need to be adapted. In our case, once fully loaded, the bikes could not move front or backwards, and any minor sideways rocking (not that there was much) was accommodated by soft padding. I would also mention that behind the cab seats we used to carry a lot of junk including two folding chairs that spanned the gap across the aisle, which also created a "stop" that the front wheels rested against.

We carried the bikes around like this for two seasons with no damage either to the Roma, nor to the bikes.

Mind you, we avoided weighbridges like the plague.

Now that we have the Dimension, we carry the bikes on an external rack, so now we can use the van en route without having to empty it out first.

Hope this all makes sense.

Barry