Hi all looking at buying a 4 bike tow ball mounted bike carrier I’m looking at a “ride on” style one ….. I’m lead to believe the rack is about 15kg an can carry 60kg of bike so 75 kg the car it’s going on will be a Citroen C3 how do I find out if this effects the weight on the front axle of the car ? If there’s 4 bikes on the car too they’ll be 4 lads in it to can I take this into consideration for balancing the weight out ?

Have had 3 heavy DH bikes on the back of my Passat, with people and gear in the car it felt fine. A little low in the water though old chap.

no you have a maximum nose weight the car can take, how many folk are in the car is neither here nor there.

You sure a C3 is 75 kg? I would guess it is circa 50 kg max
http://www.cuddles.abelgratis.net/citroen.htm
i very much doubt you will get stopped and checked and I have exceeded mine [ or got close] on a 206 and it was fine [50 kg limit and 3 bikes and rack and people]

Not sure what 4 would do

So basically 75kg is approx one dead body in the boot of the car. I’d check over on http://www.mafioso.com/forum: they know all this kind of stuff 😉

Honestly having a towball carrier for a few years – if there is someone sitting in the passenger seat: you wont notice the difference.

A quick google shows a C3 unbraked towing weight of 450kg for the lowest spec. Even with less than quarter of that (approx) would be on the car’s tow bar you are a fine.

Towing weight and tow ball weight are not the same though they are related

It is recommended that you dont exceed 80% of the weight of the car when towing iirc

It’ll be fine. As for nose weights, its more for balancing stability of the car and trailer than a physical static weight limit. The forces of a trailer on the nose under braking will far exceed the static force of 75kg sitting on it.

Junkward – I know: but speaking practically – it’s fine with a bike carrier. All IME.

Yes I agree its fine but may be questionable legally

Junkyard is correct, depending on the model, some C3’s are about 40kg noseweight on the tow-ball.

Sorry didn’t explain properly after looking at that list my Citroen has a nose weight of 49kg …. the 75 is the weight of the rack with 4 ,15kg bikes on board …. the car can tow about a 1000kg … is it illegal then to exceed the nose weight or just ‘not recommended’ I can see how having weight so far back can take weight off the front of a car but surely 4, 80kg passengers counter acts that ? Basically what I’m asking is … is it legal or not *

Max nose weight for a c3 is pretty low. Might well cause the front to feel vague and light. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:P_H-k5RdbiQJ:www.caravanclub.co.uk/media/6678669/noseweights-mo.pdf+max+nose+weight&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgQR-pHbaNCLArKwMZXs8fP4a6wHNvSLNnp-P4-ZHWc2OTfgiUTlLBsAIkicF5uhKCQ9nvn9zJ6pZc-u65ZO1veZmnqYZRLmoCIWowvnyTniIs11cYHVHmCxTBND6jIp4AAjt03&sig=AHIEtbRmPhzYHi-wmzSOgvnpcgU3Hfi2Vg&pli=1

You can’t just add up the weights of your bikes, you need to calculate the leverage applied vertically at the tow ball. It’ll be much more than 75kg because a lot of the weight is a long WA158UU behind the tow ball. You’re unlikely to get caught, but I think you’ll find when you’ve then on that the handling becomes very dodgy. If you’re in any sort of accident you’ll have the book thrown at you too.

No idea why my postcode is in that post, the word I was looking for was “way”.

I wouldn’t have thought it’d be too much of an issue, I’ve put pretty nose heavy trailers on the back of 205’s a fair few times with no ill effects.

It’s not a problem.

after looking at that list my Citroen has a nose weight of 49kg

That implies if you stood on it, you’d stress/break it.

tbh I’ve had loads of cars with towbars, and would have no idea what the towball weights were for any of them – and also bear in mind that horseboxes and the like are that heavy no way can you physical lift them.

I kind of got around this by mounting my Aiston ride-on rack directly to the chassis – if there’s no tow ball – then there’s no point to measure the nose weight at ;).

with 3 full DH rigs mounted, my petrol Rav4 demonstrated a hint of steering lightness (Two 90kg gents in the front). This would probably be beter on a diesel, it’s fine for AM bikes and is a lot better with new rear springs on the car…

If I could get the same rack in all aluminium construction it’d be double awesome.