Over Built Lift or Similar

[Hard Headed Ken]

I wanna do it, but I just can't feel good about hanging an extra 1000 lbs, 2 feet out, on the rear of my bus. Even though I think I could build the best one ever. I'll pull a trailer or a ½ ton truck with the bike in the truck bed. There's a thread on Prevost Community under the chassis section, read the letter from Prevost. I took a friend out to the Nashville Prevost dealer last night to pickup his coach. I ask the service manger if they had installed the Overbuilt Lifts, he said "yes we've done several of the 20,000 lbs hitches / engine cradles" I said no, I mean the lifts for heavy street bikes that require 2 addition receivers installed on the chassis.  He said "no, I've seen them on coaches but I never installed one". He didn't say "we won't install one" but I suspect they won't. Especially after reading the letter from Prevost.

Ken

[rv_safetyman]

Ken, I would love to see that letter.  Can you give us a link, or can you copy it and send it to me.

Thanks

Jim

[Hard Headed Ken]

Try this

http://prevostcommunity.com/forum/threaddetails.asp?Category=Chassis&ThreadID=607&offset=10

the letter is near the bottom.

[rv_safetyman]

Ken, thanks for the link.  I read through the whole thread and it pretty much goes the same direction that the treads on this board does.  Many folks are very concerned about the ability of the structure to handle the static and dynamic loads of a motorcycle rack on the back of motorhomes.  Others say they have seen a lot of them on the road with no problem.  

One guy talked about risk vs reward.  That is really the key.  

As I said in this and the other thread, I have first hand knowledge of an Eagle "frame" failure and a motorhome frame failure, plus a couple of second hand stories of similar problems.  In the case of the motorhome, I drove with the owner lots of miles to vintage car races.  He towed a stacker trailer with two small cars (BMW 2002 and Lotus Elan).  These are not heavy cars and we did not carry a ton of tools or support equipment.  I can't recall the make of the motorhome (think Monoco), but it was a name brand diesel pusher.  It did have a pretty big overhang.  I doubt that the coach had 150K miles on it when the original owner sold it to a person I know fairly well.  He was towing a trailer down in the SE and lost a transmission.  Turns out that the frame cracked and sagged and that put the transmission in a bind.  Totaled the transmission and had a lot of damage to the coach.

I know most folks think I am too conservative, but I try to play devil's advocate so that folks know what the worse case issues are.

Jim

[Lin]

I am sure that this is a somewhat crackpot thought, but could it not be possible put some landing gear, maybe spring loaded, beneath the carrier that would keep a substantial amount of the weight off the frame?  It would still be easier than using a trailer.

[luvrbus]

Most of the carriers I have saw are on the Prevost MH chassis design for slides they are a different design than a non slide Prevost chassis hell for strength with the beam on both sides on the slide models I think they would carry one ok maybe not 

good luck