OK, so probably a year and a half ago, a kindly gentleman on this forum named @Goforth gave me what I now know to be the most epic motorcycle hitch hauler of all time, absolutely free. I was in a run of lucky breaks getting free stuff, and this hitch rack was used to great effect to haul two more of my free items around, a scooter given by @Kilroy and another scooter I got from a very nice fellow up in Oklahoma.
This original hitch rack was home-made from the worlds heaviest steel, was at least two feet longer than what was needed for my scooters, and had a ramp made from something like 8mm aluminum channel that was the length of the carrier. If you wanted to put a Gold Wing on this carrier, I'm sure it'd work. The problem I had was that I convinced myself that it was overkill, and that someone else with big bikes should take it, since my 215 lb and 250 lb scooters were just not worthy of its magnitude. But also, my Jeep has a 350 lb tongue weight limit and I am quite certain that heavy carrier plus a 250 lb scooter was way over 350 lb even before you calculate the leverage due to the moment arm. So I did what any naive fool would have done, and traded this carrier for a well-used "Haul-Master" (aka Harbor Freight) aluminum carrier that is about 1/3 the weight.
Side note: I did have one big reason for making this swap, and that's that since I live on a hill, storing that carrier and putting it on and off the Jeep was a literal chore.
I am in no way complaining about getting an even trade deal for this aluminum carrier. It's precisely what I asked for and I am grateful.
But.
So last night mrs72 and I drove to San Antonio from Cedar Park and wound up buying a scooter, this one is like 260 lb. We took the HF carrier of course. Now, you can't use this carrier the way it's intended with a scooter. Turns out, the little things that're supposed to pinch the front tire were installed upside down, so they didn't work at all. Due to the small diameter of the 12" wheels, we had to position the scooter on the carrier so that the rear, with like 70% of the scooter's weight, was way off center. Even after we put like 100 straps on it in every which way, still the result was truly epic swaying and tipping, so much that we wound up driving on the access roads and trying to keep under 45 mph right up until we got to Blanco and I wound up lashing the scooter's grab bar to the Jeep's tailgate-mounted spare tire just to try to keep us from freaking out for the next hour and a half of driving. After that point we did manage to achieve highway speeds without being convinced the scooter was going to get flung off the rack at every bump and we eventually got home after 3 hours of what should have been a 1:45 trip.
OK, so, truly, I should have known better and done this better. There are design problems with this rack which make it a poor choice for those who value peace of mind, but it did eventually get the job done. The number one problem is the loose tolerance in the receiver, so it will rotate probably 10 degrees or more in either direction, and boy does it when there's a 260 lb motorbike on it. There's no good cure for this, but the right beefy "anti-sway" receiver device would likely reduce this problem a lot. I will not use this rack again without adding a good anti-sway device of some kind. The second problem is that whole pin-down-the-wheel design. It's not compatible with scooters with 20-12" wheels, and especially not a Vespa without spokes, but what is essentially a solid wheel. So you are left trying to get the pins to cradle the wheel, and they are not sufficiently adjustable to allow this for a scooter. As a result, the only position we could get the scooter to fit was one where it was horribly lopsided in terms of weight bearing. The other design flaw is that the tie down points are not far enough from the center of the rack to create a meaningful lateral force to keep the bike from tipping, which is why I had to lash the scooter to the Jeep's spare.
Knowing what I know now, I can make some modifications to this rack to accommodate scooters, since I will only ever be using it for scooter transport. The current plan is to create a bit of a miniature, movable wheel-chock for the front wheel, and permanently move the rear "pins" so they will cradle a scooter rear wheel when the front wheel is on the chock. I also need to add a steel bar up front to tie the handlebars to to keep the wheel from turning and keep the bike from tipping, and probably a similar rear tie down situation so a scooter's grab bar can be lashed down and keep it from tipping. Since a scooter's wheels won't dip far enough in between these rails for it to hold upright like a dirt bike would, some other solution is required.
Oh, and I plan to go through this entire thing and replace and upgrade all of the fasteners with plated grade 8 fasteners, nylock nuts, heavy washers, fit every bolt to near interference fit to holes, and then torque the snot out of it. A lot of the flexing was due to literally slipping of surfaces with insufficient clamping force between them.
Anyway, I should still wind up with a sub-50 lb rack that will hold and carry a 260 lb scooter no problem if I can sort out these issues. For those of you considering one of these HF hitch racks, beware that there are issues that might pop up and you should consider how to deal with it.
The truth is last night when coming home with a totally unknown, new to us scooter on the back, we were one scary bump away from yanking the scooter off and having me ride it all the way home in the dark of night without most of my gear... I just brought an open face helmet, enough for a residential test ride. But the risk of losing the scooter was high enough that we seriously considered this. If I had brought along my jacket and FF helmet, we would have done this immediately.
This original hitch rack was home-made from the worlds heaviest steel, was at least two feet longer than what was needed for my scooters, and had a ramp made from something like 8mm aluminum channel that was the length of the carrier. If you wanted to put a Gold Wing on this carrier, I'm sure it'd work. The problem I had was that I convinced myself that it was overkill, and that someone else with big bikes should take it, since my 215 lb and 250 lb scooters were just not worthy of its magnitude. But also, my Jeep has a 350 lb tongue weight limit and I am quite certain that heavy carrier plus a 250 lb scooter was way over 350 lb even before you calculate the leverage due to the moment arm. So I did what any naive fool would have done, and traded this carrier for a well-used "Haul-Master" (aka Harbor Freight) aluminum carrier that is about 1/3 the weight.
Side note: I did have one big reason for making this swap, and that's that since I live on a hill, storing that carrier and putting it on and off the Jeep was a literal chore.
I am in no way complaining about getting an even trade deal for this aluminum carrier. It's precisely what I asked for and I am grateful.
But.
So last night mrs72 and I drove to San Antonio from Cedar Park and wound up buying a scooter, this one is like 260 lb. We took the HF carrier of course. Now, you can't use this carrier the way it's intended with a scooter. Turns out, the little things that're supposed to pinch the front tire were installed upside down, so they didn't work at all. Due to the small diameter of the 12" wheels, we had to position the scooter on the carrier so that the rear, with like 70% of the scooter's weight, was way off center. Even after we put like 100 straps on it in every which way, still the result was truly epic swaying and tipping, so much that we wound up driving on the access roads and trying to keep under 45 mph right up until we got to Blanco and I wound up lashing the scooter's grab bar to the Jeep's tailgate-mounted spare tire just to try to keep us from freaking out for the next hour and a half of driving. After that point we did manage to achieve highway speeds without being convinced the scooter was going to get flung off the rack at every bump and we eventually got home after 3 hours of what should have been a 1:45 trip.
OK, so, truly, I should have known better and done this better. There are design problems with this rack which make it a poor choice for those who value peace of mind, but it did eventually get the job done. The number one problem is the loose tolerance in the receiver, so it will rotate probably 10 degrees or more in either direction, and boy does it when there's a 260 lb motorbike on it. There's no good cure for this, but the right beefy "anti-sway" receiver device would likely reduce this problem a lot. I will not use this rack again without adding a good anti-sway device of some kind. The second problem is that whole pin-down-the-wheel design. It's not compatible with scooters with 20-12" wheels, and especially not a Vespa without spokes, but what is essentially a solid wheel. So you are left trying to get the pins to cradle the wheel, and they are not sufficiently adjustable to allow this for a scooter. As a result, the only position we could get the scooter to fit was one where it was horribly lopsided in terms of weight bearing. The other design flaw is that the tie down points are not far enough from the center of the rack to create a meaningful lateral force to keep the bike from tipping, which is why I had to lash the scooter to the Jeep's spare.
Knowing what I know now, I can make some modifications to this rack to accommodate scooters, since I will only ever be using it for scooter transport. The current plan is to create a bit of a miniature, movable wheel-chock for the front wheel, and permanently move the rear "pins" so they will cradle a scooter rear wheel when the front wheel is on the chock. I also need to add a steel bar up front to tie the handlebars to to keep the wheel from turning and keep the bike from tipping, and probably a similar rear tie down situation so a scooter's grab bar can be lashed down and keep it from tipping. Since a scooter's wheels won't dip far enough in between these rails for it to hold upright like a dirt bike would, some other solution is required.
Oh, and I plan to go through this entire thing and replace and upgrade all of the fasteners with plated grade 8 fasteners, nylock nuts, heavy washers, fit every bolt to near interference fit to holes, and then torque the snot out of it. A lot of the flexing was due to literally slipping of surfaces with insufficient clamping force between them.
Anyway, I should still wind up with a sub-50 lb rack that will hold and carry a 260 lb scooter no problem if I can sort out these issues. For those of you considering one of these HF hitch racks, beware that there are issues that might pop up and you should consider how to deal with it.
The truth is last night when coming home with a totally unknown, new to us scooter on the back, we were one scary bump away from yanking the scooter off and having me ride it all the way home in the dark of night without most of my gear... I just brought an open face helmet, enough for a residential test ride. But the risk of losing the scooter was high enough that we seriously considered this. If I had brought along my jacket and FF helmet, we would have done this immediately.