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Anyone fitted a towbar recently..?
I recently purchased a three bike carrier from T7 that fits onto a towball. Anyone done some research recently on a good service at a good price to fit a towbar on my car?
Thanks in advance...
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I've used Bars N Racks at Brooky and Roof Rack World at Artarmon. Both had good service. I didn't use them both for tow bars in particular but you should find most places do a standard sort of price for brand name towbars.
http://www.roofrackworld.com.au/index.php
http://barsnracks-px.rtrk.com.au/
We got one fitted today at Tru Racks in Penrith to our X-Trail for $395. It is not one with a square hitch that is removable, but I wasn't prepared to pay $700-$800 to get one that is. For our bike rack and the occassional trailer and camper towing it'll do fine.
(Not necessarily convenient for you to get to, but you get the idea!)
The square hitch can be annoying depending on the type. Because of the free play they can rattle a lot. The one on my commodore was noisy as but the one on my Escape has a bolt that tightens against the tongue which stop it rattling.
One thing I do like about the removable one is I have two tongues. One for my bike rack and one for towing. The one for my bike rack is flipped so it means the rack sits higher and therefor doesn't scrape.
One last thing with any towbar bike rack. I have welded the two ball nut on because you can lock the bikes to the bike rack and the bike rack to the towball but it just takes a shifter to undo the tow ball nut and take the whole lot.
Cheers
Brian
The removable square hitches are handy because you can remove them when not required. This saves advertising to the (criminal) world that you have a bike rack and hence bikes stored at your place. It also saves barking your shins on a regular basis when accessing the back of the car when there's nothing on the tow bar.
You do have to think about the removal security issues mentioned by the previous poster tho'.
Square hitches will only have free play and rattle if you haven't put in the screw that keeps it secure and tight.