Witter ZX502 two-bike rack

[B J G]

I had a bit of lateral thinking on this problem and decided to look for a detachable towball from another vehicle that had the ball further away from the towbar/bumper.
Quite soon found that this isn't an easy thing to do as quite recently (not sure when) Westfalia have had a detachable towbar redesign making the detachable part on earlier ones non-compatable. This makes the secondhand market very restricted currently.

Ironically the UK Witter/Westfalia design looks like a much simpler design and being able to get whatever length of detachable towball you want fairly simple.

 

[iamchucky]

We wanted a 4 bike rack and so thought about the ZX504 rack for our T6 as we liked the fold away mechanism that the Witter provided. Luckily I managed to persuade a friend to buy one for his Discovery first and so we took the opportunity to try it on our T6 with VW factory fit tow bar. We couldn't get the boot to open with the bikes on the Witter. End result was we opted for the Altera as recommended many times on this forum.

 

[Les]

I had a bit of lateral thinking on this problem and decided to look for a detachable towball from another vehicle that had the ball further away from the towbar/bumper.
Quite soon found that this isn't an easy thing to do as quite recently (not sure when) Westfalia have had a detachable towbar redesign making the detachable part on earlier ones non-compatable. This makes the secondhand market very restricted currently.

Ironically the UK Witter/Westfalia design looks like a much simpler design and being able to get whatever length of detachable towball you want fairly simple.

I asked Westfalia if it was possible to get a different swan neck to move the ball further away from the bumper.
It appears the bar design/specification is set by VW that they believe is safe for the chassis, moving the ball further out could massively increase the twisting force on the chassis.

So as said earlier if you want more options on bike racks go for tow bar prep and buy an after market Witter.