Living with a scooter and rack

Share this article

Deciding that we needed a bit more flexibility to explore once parked up on our travels, we decided to get a scooter to give us better access to city centres and the like en route.

Whilst on a UK visit we researched the various possibilities available. We found what we were looking for on the internet at Watling Towbars near St Albans, Herts. Their scooter rack bolts to an existing towbar mounting so, as long as the existing fittings are up to the job, this makes for a very economical solution.

Whilst doing this research I was also keeping an eye on a possible scooter on Ebay which was also in Hertfordshire so things were starting to come together. With a successful bid the scooter was ours and I arranged to collect it the next day. A quick call to Watling Towbars confirmed they had the rack in stock and I could pick one up. On arrival at their premises I explained that it was a bit of a rush job so could it be fitted while we waited so that we could pick up the scooter on the way home?

Not phased by this urgency at all David (the boss) crawled under our Bel-Air and confirmed that with a couple of small mods our towbar was suitable to take the rack, David did stress the importance of staying within the motorhome's payload capacity and that we should really have already been on a weighbridge to confirm this. With me blindly agreeing that all was ok he set to with the fitting.

The rack comes as a bit of a self assembly project but appears to be very well engineered and bolts together nicely, it weighs about 30kg and can carry up to 130kg which, for us, was ideal with 'our' scooter weighing 115kg

An hour later and a reasonable £300 pounds lighter we left St Albans to collect the scooter. This loaded easily although the angle of the short loading ramp supplied causes our scooter to ground - maybe our particular scooter has a low ground clearance? Although there is no problem loading and offloading where there is a kerb etc. available to make the angle smoother. The ratchet straps supplied seemed to be up to the job of holding everything in place but I may add another for peace of mind. Although the vertical support post is already sleeved with plastic mesh I padded the post a little more to reduce the chaffing effect on the scooter's body panels. I also added a little padding around the front wheel retaining hoop to stop the scooter's brake disc chattering on it.

With everything loaded the loading ramp and supplied trailer lightboard fits ingeniously onto the rack secured by spring clips.

I had to make the wiring connections more secure within the trailer plug as we were getting strange lighting effects when applying the footbrake. 5 minutes with a screwdriver put it right. So, confident everything was as it should be we set off a couple of days later for a visit to friends in Yorkshire. The effect of carrying this extra kit was hardly noticeable although I kept a beady eye on my mirrors and reversing camera in case anything came adrift.

We had arranged to stay at one of our Pub Stopovers and on arrival discovered a small snag....

The entry to the pub car park was uneven and sloped steeply off the road, this caused our, now increased, rear overhang to ground quite heavily. Not that unexpected really but the problem we now had was that the sharp edges of the clipped-on loading ramp had squashed and 'guillotined' the trailer board lighting wires which are unavoidably routed under it!

An hour later I had cut out the damage and rewired the trailer board with the, now shortened, lead re-routing it as much as possible and put the loading ramp away in a storage locker out of harms way! The plastic lighting board will be the part that grounds first in future and will hopefully 'give' a bit. Shame as the original idea was so neat and tidy.

We've done a few hundred miles more now and with no more teething problems we're really happy with the setup. Oh, and a subsequent visit to a weighbridge has confirmed we are still well within limits.

Watling Towbars can be found via their website - Watling Towbars

to be continued.....