unterhausen

Do I have to ask a clueless question to get people to post? Don't answer that. People seem to want to talk about bike racks, so here is a current thread to do that. How many people have run into their garage with a bike on top of their car, for example.

I really want a 2" receiver hitch for my wife's Camry hybrid. There is one company that makes a 2" hitch for my Prius, but her car is better to take road trips with. And she's the one with the heavy ebike and who likes to travel to rail trails.
Apparently the same company that makes 2" receivers for the Prius will do custom hitches for other cars, but I'm afraid to ask what the price is given that the Prius hitch is almost $500. My other thought is getting a 1 1/4" hitch and having a local welder put a 2" receiver on it. There is no way I'm putting that ebike on a trunk mounted rack.

indyfabz

Perhaps the only advantage to not having a garage.

Eric F

I would start here... https://www.uhaul.com/Trailer-Hitches/

3alarmer 

...my garage is so full off bicycles, that I no longer need worry about driving into it. I call that an elegant solution.

Eric F

A garage is no place for a car!

Koyote

unterhausen , forgive me if you've already thought of this, but: perhaps inquire at the local Toyota dealer. They might know of a stock hitch that will fit.

I suggest this because when I bought a new Honda CR-V Hybrid last March, the dealership's Sales Manager sent me a link to a hitch at eTrailer.com which was a tiny fraction of the price of a Genuine Honda hitch. He knew the exact part number because they had installed many of them for their customers.

Edit: A quick google search shows only 1.25" hitch receivers for that vehicle. Must be a clearance issue. Yeah, a custom hitch will be costly.

3alarmer 

....I don't have much in the way of an answer, but when I first got an electric car, I noticed right away that there were zero options for towing a small trailer. I don't know why the manufacturers decided to eliminate this common aspect of American life, but for people who have always had small utility trailers as a workaround to owning a separate (and infrequently used) pickup truck, it seems short sighted. It appears to have some relationship to the design of them, and worrying about the people who will not read the weight limitations for towing, that come with your car.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Koyote

When I bought a Honda hybrid this year, I was told that Honda won't allow their factory hitches to be installed on my model as it doesn't work well with the regenerative braking. That sounds like nonsense, esp since they apparently will allow those hitches to be installed on their hybrids in the EU. At any rate, the dealer installed an aftermarket hitch for my bike rack, and all is well. (But maybe towing a trailer with 500lbs of cargo would be a problem...?)

himespau 

I always thought that the reason most sedans could only get a 1.25" receiver to add on was just to avoid the liability of, as you say, people failing to read the manual and towing limitations.

unterhausen

Uhaul and Etrailer don't list a 2" for the Camry. I did find the 2" for the prius through etrailer. My going theory is lawyers are keeping most companies from making a 2" hitch for small cars, even though they are better for light duty tasks. I can't really disagree, people are reckless when it comes to moving things with their cars. Then again, any hitch is going to let you hook a too-big trailer to your car, so I'm not sure what the real concern is.

I have found 2" with the same weight ratings as the 1 1/4", so the whole concern over overloading the car seems misguided. They just hate bike racks. Someone on Prius chat said toyota didn't even want to say it was okay to put one of those hitch mounted flagpoles on a prius. Maybe the concern was aesthetic in that case. But as noted above, the prius is rated to tow in the EU and it's virtually the same car except for a few buttons. I thought Toyota gives a tow rating for current Priuses, but since I don't really want to tow anything, it's not much of a concern.

This is the company that makes 2" hitches for the Prius and some other small cars: https://torkliftcentral.com/ There is one on a Prius here in town.
The bike shop found one on ebay that was said to be 2", but they listed a part number for the easily available 1 1/4"

unterhausen

Tbh, I probably wouldn't work too hard to figure out how much my trailer weighed if I had one. Although I just rent a truck when I want to move something heavy. Lowe's has the best deal on their pickups, but HD is fine too.

I can see how an electric car might not be able to handle towing. Startup current could be a real problem, electric motors are basically a dead short at standstill. So they would have to work to overcome that. Granted, there are now electric trucks so maybe I'm imagining problems when there aren't any.

Koyote

Huh. Interesting. But don't e-vehicles have loads of torque? I would think that getting rolling from a dead stop with a small trailer would be no different than starting on an uphill grade.

Paul Barnard

Get a 1 1/4 hitch and use one of these.

https://www.harborfreight.com/1-1-4-...IaAuEQEALw_wcB

pdlamb

Different use, but remember diesel-electric locomotives work so well because you can rev the diesel engines to generate the electricity that turns the electric motors on the wheels to start an ungodly-heavy train (10,000 tons?) from a standing start. Uphill. In the snow.

I figure if my wife's Prius could haul a 2" hitch with 4 bikes on it, the Camry should have no problem.

unterhausen

I thought about an adapter, but it really defeats the purpose. It's even worse than a 1 1/4" compatible rack.
I'm pretty sure we will want to carry 3 bikes, and moving them even further out back while relying on a 1 1/4" hitch just seems like a recipe for the rack flopping around. When I first thought about modifying a hitch I was out at HF looking at their options.


Yes, they have a lot of torque given their intended usage. They have to consider that someone is going to start on a uphill fully loaded with people, so they would be a bit conservative. I'm mostly just making things up, but I'm guessing I'm on the right track. There is a limit on their torque between the motor and the max current you can safely draw from the batteries without harming them. I'm sure they rebalanced these elements for etrucks that have towing capacity. Although there are pictures of a Tesla semi broken down by the side of the road, and it's about to go on the market. I haven't heard if they publicly addressed that.

Totally different system and the electric motors are the size of a smartcar. I have seen announcements of all-electric engines and wondered what took them so long, but I think the answer is batteries, not motors. There is a junkyard down the way that gets those motors in every once in a while, so apparently if you do a burnout with one of those engines you can fry a motor. It's important to remember that car designers would sell off their grandma's vital organs to save a buck per car. So an electric car has the minimal motors required to do the use case they are designing them for. And they decided that they could get the sales they wanted without making it so those cars are capable of towing. I imagine a pickup without tow capacity would be a pretty difficult thing to sell.

Neither car would have a problem with it, the issue is the availability of hitches. I think Prius owners are just more adventurous. I really like the camry though, it's much nicer on trips.

Ironfish653

This has been around on a couple of the automotive / moto forums over the years as well, and the simple version is:
The EU requires brakes on much smaller trailers that the US; so the EU spec allows for a bigger (heavier,) trailer than in the US.

Observation (but no real evidence) that smaller camper trailers seem to be more commonly tandem axle, where in the US they'd have a large single, so tongue loading ratios maybe different (lower) as well
Also, distances and speeds are generally lower (and more tightly controlled) than the US.
TLDR:. EU trailer regulations and conditions make it less demanding of the tow vehicle than in the US, hence, "higher" rating for the same vehicle.

rosefarts

The adapter isn’t expensive and it’ll be more than strong enough for 2 bikes.

I personally wouldn’t trust the rear suspension of a Prius for a 4 or 6 bike crazy mount. Decent chance that it is strong enough but you’ll probably surpass the tongue weight limit of a Prius.

Amazon sells the adapter for $35. They have an extra bracket to keep it from wobbling for $12, that probably functions to seriously slow down rack thieves (I was told they exist).

The Prius AWD is likely to be my next car. I recently moved though and found myself driving the second (beater) car about 20 miles a week, so I’m in less of a hurry than I used to be.

phughes

How much does her bike weigh? A lot comes into play regarding capacity of a receiver, and simply making a 2 inch receiver doesn't magically allow the car to have increased capacity. There are reasons 1 1/4 inch receivers are the only ones available for some cars. And sorry, using an adapter doesn't make the receiver stronger either, in fact, adding an adapter enabling a 1 1/4 inch receiver accept 2 inch type bike racks will make it weaker since it will extend the receiver, acting as a lever, increasing stress, in the form of torque, on the receiver, and mounting points. That stress will be over what the smaller receiver is designed for. Each bump in the road adds more and more stress to the receiver and mounting points.

I have a 1 1/4 inch receiver on my Nissan Cube, and a Thule rack. Just for one example, the Thule T2 Pro XTR rack has a single bike allowable weight rating of 60 lbs. with a 1 1/4 inch receiver, and a 100 lbs. total weight permissible for two bikes on the rack.

Get a 1 1/4 inch receiver, a good one, designed to fit your Camry, then buy a good, high quality rack. Don't skimp on the rack. Get a tray type rack.

Paul Barnard

I have used longer adapters on heavier loads. It does introduce another point of "slop" in the fit, but assuming good quality parts it will be nominal. When you are talking 6 additional inches with perhaps a 75 pound load, that's insignificant. You won't be anywhere near max. With some racks, it's nice to have a little extra clearance between the first bike on the rack and the back of the vehicle.

phughes

It still does not increase the load your receiver can handle, and that is the point. There is no advantage to using an adapter. Use a 1 1/4 inch receiver with a high quality rack. To do otherwise is a bad compromise.

EDIT: Adding an adapter lowers the tongue weight capacity by half. If the tongue weight allowed is 300, then you are left with 150. There are no free lunches, so it is better to simply use a good 1 1/4 inch receiver, along with a quality bike rack. A high quality rack made for a 2 inch receiver may have a higher weight capacity, but when you add the adapter, it will actually end up having less weight capacity.

Polaris OBark

I went through this search for 2010 (nonhybrid) Camry a few months ago, and found only 1.25" hitch receivers were compatible. (We instead got a roof rack for that car, which my kid took over.) I am afraid the adapter is really the only option if you really need 2". As above, I would just get a 1.25" receiver and a compatible rack. Keep the bike on the slot closest to the car.

Paul Barnard

I was thinking that the Op was set on a 2" rack. After reading his post again, I am not seeing that. Your solution is surely easier.

unterhausen

I really want a 2" rack. I'm not sure if I will just get the 2" hitch for my Prius or keep working on figuring out how to get a 2" hitch for the Camry.
If I ever do put 4 bikes on the car I'm fairly confident that even the ebike will not get it over 150 pounds. It's an ecoco that weighs 42 pounds.

Polaris OBark

I have a 2" receiver on a Rav4, which is kind of Prius-like, but would not want to put more than two bikes on it. I also have a roof rack for 2 more bikes, for those few times when I need to haul 3 or 4 (like evacuating for impending natural disasters).

unterhausen

I had 4 bikes on a hitch rack on a previous prius and it really wasn't a problem. Except I was driving into a major headwind with 4 adults in the car, that was less than ideal
I think it's unlikely we would have more than 2 on a regular basis though