Hi, I am contemplating buying a cycle carrier that sits on the a frame of my van. I know that you can get tow bar mounted ones but as we have an Adria caravan which is both light and has virtually no noseweight (we have to put the awning in the gas locker to get it over 50kg)
The a frame itself is longer than most British vans mainly as the front of the van is much flatter. I can easily stand on it to clean the front of the van.
We have seen some that fiamma make... Carry bike xla or xla pro I think they call them
I would be grateful for any advice / experiences you may have had
Yes - Fiamma seem to be a very good make, but they are quite expensive. To fit the rack you will probably need to remove the covering from the A-frame.
This is the one we had on our Adria 542 DT
The model really depends on how many bikes you wish to carry, but be careful of your nose weight when all the bikes are sitting on the A-frame.
They can cause fouling issues when turning. This needs watching, particularly in reverse.
I saw an excellent Dutch permutation on this. It used a "towball" mounted on a bar across the "A" frame. On this a Thule hang on car towball bike rack was mounted. So then when on site the Thule carrier gets remounted on the car's towball for days out.
Quote: Originally posted by tantabank on 06/5/2014
That's brilliant.. Daft question but access to gas locker was that ok?
The whole thing tilts forward to allow access to the gas locker. It's just held in place with a couple of pins that you pull out and then tilt it all forward.
When fitting the Fiamma you will need to remove the fairing. Wait until a warm day so the sticky stuff holding it down is a bit easier to peel off. Then use a couple of clamps to find the best place to mount the rack so that you can still open the gas bottle locker. Consider where the towcar will be on turns too. The Fiamma one comes with u-bolts to clamp to the frame so it can be removed if you trade in your caravan. best of luck with it.
We were offered a fiamma bike rack on our a frame by venture when we bought our caravan last year...they didn't say anything about removing the cover though, but suppose that they would have to...we decided against it in the end because of the cost and also bothered about the nose weight issue with having 2 adult bikes and an childs bike on there. We currently have one that sits on the back of the car, but one of the pads came off it on our last journey, rubbed a nice big patch of paint off the bumper and so it's now no use. When we get the new car in September, we're getting a roof mounted one.
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Topic: Caravan A Frame Cycle Carriers
