Beefing up my motorcycle carrier

[BigRich]

Hi Everyone,

I decided to take on a project this week to put my mind at ease. I travel with a 400lb scooter. I haven't had a problem, but I wanted to beef up the carrier for two reasons. 1) The hitch tongue weight is rated at 500 lbs. 2) The scooter is heaviest in the rear, where the engine is, and twists the carrier to the right side. I have been using a ratchet strap hooked to the right side and the ladder to make it even up, but I didn't like doing that.

This is the original setup - I modified the carrier and added LED strips for the rear lights since it was covering my tail lights and moved the reflectors to the back:

So I went out and bought a new 18" receiver. I have a friend in the sign business and brought him over to the RV. He took all the measurements of the hitch and the steel and we went back to his office and put it all into his engineering software. To my surprise, unlike what the manufacturer says, the original hitch had a maximum legal tongue weight of 1400 lbs! He told me it's not unusual that a manufacturer would triple or quadruple the max rating, especially on a vehicle, since it will affect the level of the ride. With the added receiver and new tube, the software said 2900 lbs. So, now that I'm real comfortable with the tongue weight, I welded the new receiver to the hitch. Oh yeah, I have airbag suspension, so I'm not concerned with the level.

So here's the final product. I got up on it and jumped a few times and it's solid as a rock! No more tilting!

 

-Rich

[gjhunter01]

I have a swivel trailer behind my fifth wheel and the factory swivel hitch uses the center receiver and then a cross beam that hooks into the trailer corners. This set up allowed to much twist or side to side twisting for my comfort. So I did something similar to your set up and added two receivers to the rear hitch which mounts directly to the trailer corners. It is much more stable now, even carrying a 950 LB Goldwing.

It would be interesting to use your buddy's engineering software to see what max load is allowed to be carried by the camper frame. I bet the 500lb weight limit was restricted due to the camper frame design, not the hitch design as you discovered.

Greg

[mptjelgin]

I would be really careful relying on a friend with "engineering software" to determine the load carrying limits of a hitch. I am a structural engineer and can tell you that in a dynamic environment like a vehicle on a roadway, loads are accelerating up and down continuously and that leads to significantly higher dynamic loading and fatigue issues. And as noted by Greg above the load limit on the hitch may very well be governed by the frame elsewhere.