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I have been looking at the Fiamma racks with a view to add a box to carry all the outdoor stuuf on the van instead of inside. I am confused to the fixings as it seems some vans have them already and it's a simple job to just hang the bike rack, but we have an Adria Twin which does not appear to have these fixings. What should I do? I would really like to buy from ebay to save on cost as we are kitting out the van with a sat dish and other essentials for a comfortable trip to Europe. We have managed to buy a porch awning for half the price of a shop bought, but even so, the costs are still mounting up.
Thanks.
Hi
I adapted the bike rack on my van so the drop down rack part could hold a box etc. I had to place it further up the rack frame so it was above the Scooter. If not fitting bikes I suppose you could add more shelf racks.
Back to which rack........
See
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What year is your van?
It would help to give as much info as you can.
Steve
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I've just installed a Fiamma Ultra-Box 360 onto the bike rack on the back of our Duetto Transit. It was straightforward enough to fix the box but, in your case, the bike rack would be more difficult and involve drilling the rear door of your Adria. Personally I wouldn't fit the clip on bike rack as the weight of a fully laden backbox might result in damage to the door.
As far as the box is concerned we originally intended to fit a 320 which is 1000mm long and 500 deep. But we managed to pick up a nearly new 360 which is 1500mm x 380. Either box would be suitable for you.
As far as practicality goes, it frees up an enormous amount of space inside the van and ours is filled with folding chairs, bucket, hosereel, hookup cables, satellite dish and all sorts of other junk!
You'll usually find secondhand boxes on Ebay but you can bet your life they'll be hundreds of miles away. We got ours from an ad in our local paper.
Good luck, anyway!
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Thanks for the info, very useful. And John, we bought the van end of last year. It has the red badge and without rooting for the paperwork, I'd guess we could say build would be 2007? I will look for that paperwork though to be sure.
I'm thinking a small box really as someone else posted that you can take it off and store it in the van if there are size issues on the ferries etc, which seems a very good tip!
We're after ours so that we can clear the Motordome bag off the van floor, among other things, and save a lot of scrabbling about at rest stops and meal times.
Once we pitch up the Motordome won't be in the Ultra Box anyway, it'll be hitched to the side of the van.
There's one on ebay but it's got flipping 9 days to go and is already at £165 with 5 bids. With another £30 of fuel to collect it, you may as well buy a new one retail.
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OH and I are falling out over thisas I say, you can carry a bigger box on the Duccato door without ripping the door off!!!!! He says not of course and that we will have to go for the smallest box as the bike rack will not be across both doors, but one, thus the weight ratio would be wrong?
Please help someone, pleaseeee.
OH and I are falling out over thisas I say, you can carry a bigger box on the Duccato door without ripping the door off!!!!! He says not of course and that we will have to go for the smallest box as the bike rack will not be across both doors, but one, thus the weight ratio would be wrong?
Please help someone, pleaseeee.
You need to talk to the Johns Cross Fiamma people who know the bike racks and boxes inside out.
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Why not store it for all travel and place outside when you arrive? Surely you could fit some sort of security?
Steve
That's good lateral thinking, Steve. I don't want to fix a permanent-ish bike rack onto the back of our not very large and (relatively) low wind-resisting van because I'm quite certain that our (relatively) very good mpg would be greatly reduced by the gales which howl around any bike / luggage rack. A box on the roof would probably perform no better and would certainly keep us out of lots of those height-restricted parking areas into which at present we can quite easily duck and dive.
I've been thinking that once it was removed from inside the van, the box could be locked to the towing eye, or to something similar, using one or two cable-type bicycle locks threaded through two holes drilled low down in the side of the box. (It'd probably be a good idea to pack into the box something which one was bound to use every night so that when returning that item one would be prompted to load the box back into the van rather than start every day by crashing into the box, or towing it away).
And after all that, I still can't help thinking about what seems to me to be another issue - unlike the saloon car driver who for two or three weeks of the year has a roof box fitted so that he can take his family to a (Dordogne) campsite, when for the other 49 weeks his luggage capacity is quite adequate - we're likely to be actively motorhoming for nearly as many weeks and weekends as we can possibly manage, and if we do so with extra boxes plonked on top of, or somehow hanging onto the back of our vans, perhaps we might as well put up a sign in the window saying, Oops, I bought the wrong van, (I never realised how many things would start to seem to be indispensible).
In the last day or two I've read somewhere something like this: 'Why not simply pack those things which you feel you really can't do without, then into any space which is left pack those things which perhaps "you could do with taking"?'
Ah, well, I've talked myself into a corner now (just for a change!), and for shame I'll never be able to fit any long term extra luggage holders onto the outside of our van.