Fiamma Bike Rack Failure

I am not convinced that it is only the top rail that needs to be well secured. A severe sleeping policeman could cause quite an uplift on the bottom rail. If you are tooled up to fit a couple of toggles then you might as well fit four. (or 8 even), particularly since the lower ones are (from the sound of it) easier to get to.

The installation instructions for the 'fix' say there is no need to reinforce the lower mounting bar.  But you are right.  A sharp upward jolt of a fully loaded rack could be enough to pull the lower mounting bar off.  There is very good access to the back of the lower mounting bar batten so there would be no need to use toggle bolts.  Conventional bolts would do, so no need for the drilled holes to be oversize.  However, only one bolt at the end of each mounting bar can be used.  A-S have butchered the mounting bars by drilling holes through them to take their wood screws at the four points the rack is secured to the mounting bars.  The only way of fitting more bolts would be to break and remove the adhesive holding the mounting bars to the back of the van and then fit coach bolts whose heads are captivated by sliding them into the mounting bar's profile as per Fiamma's fitting instructions.

It gets worse.  Yesterday out of the blue I had a call from my Marquis dealer.  They have never phoned before.  I thought they were going to tell me about the bike rack fix and invite me to have it done.  Nothing of kind.  When I asked about the fix they knew nothing about it.  All they were doing was seeing if we still had our Nuevo.  As we know, Marquis and A-S are joined at the hip.

Paulmold wrote:All enquiries go through the leentech system, you just have to register an account.

Thanks Paul.

We are now at Camping de Haro, on our way back having driven all the way down through France, Barcelona and Benicassim. Sorry for the tardy response, we didn't want to jinx anything, but I am happy to report that our 2x23kg ebikes have travelled safely on the rack with our toggle bolts insitu.

We have had some minor unrelated issues but will post these elsewhere. We will use the leentech system when (not if!!) we need it in future.

Thank God for this forum. I've just 'upgraded' my 2012 Nuevo to a 2022 Nuevo and seen I can no longer transport my lekky bikes. I guess I will have to get a towbar fitted, but that extra weight concerns me. Have any of you got any recommendations for a lightweight towbar? Thanks.

You might want to check this but I estimate that the COG of a tow bar will be 180 cm behind the rear axle and the COG of a loaded tow ball rack will be 240 cm behind the rear axle.  

As the Nuevo wheelbase is 300 cm, the additional weight on the rear axle will then be 180/300 x the tow bar weight + the tow bar weight + 240/300 x the loaded tow ball rack weight + the loaded tow ball rack weight.  So if the tow bar weighs say 28 kg and the loaded tow ball rack weighs say 80 kg, the overall increase in weight on the rear axle will be 188.8 kg.  The increase in weight on the rear axle will be less if you use lower figures. 

From the 2023 A-S Handbook, the 2022 Nuevo ES Boxer appears to have a rear axle loading margin of 394 kg.  However, if you take your Nuevo to a weigh bridge when it is fully loaded for a trip less tow bar and bikes, you will get an actual rear axle mass.  Subtract this from 2,000 kg and it will tell you how much rear axle loading margin you have left for a tow bar and loaded tow ball rack.  

If your Nuevo has its original tyres, they will have a load index of 109 = 1030 kg.  The UK tyre industry and TyreSafe recommend that an axle mass should not be more that 90% of its tyres maximum permitted load.  For the 109 load index tyres this works out at 1854 kg.  So although the Nuevo's rear axle has a MTPLM of 2,000 kg, the UK tyre industry and TyreSafe recommend it should not exceed 1854 kg if it has its original tyres.  I am pretty certain that if you fit a tow bar and a loaded tow ball bike rack, your rear axle mass will be more than 1854 kg which is food for thought.  If this concerns you you could fit slightly wider 225 tyres to your R15 wheels with a higher load index of 112 = 1120 kg, which would allow all of the rear axle's MTPLM of 2,000 kg to be used.