Discovery - carrying bikes on roof.

We used to take bikes on top of our Patriot, not quite as tall as a Disco. Always a two person job. We never liked them up there, so eventually bought a Thule tow bar mounted rack, but obviously not used when towing. Can’t you put them into caravan? Disco should be able to tow a big weight.

I assume you have a fixed flange type towball on the Disco in which case you could mount a bike carrier behind the towball e.g MaxxRaxx  A lot easier than lifting bikes onto the roof.

 

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We've never put the bikes in the caravan as wouldn't want to damage anything, with the new caravan we couldn't as we just don't have the weight allowance.  

We have a flange towbar so have a Witter bike carrier, the car has the weight limit for this unlike the caravan. 

We've just bought a new towcar,  a Toyota Verso pro ace, its MPV all the seats come out, so we can now get the full sized bikes inside it.

That’s a good compromise TG. Our boot space is usually full of dog, so we had to carry ours in van. Old van, only small, bikes were well padded, but of course a pain when you stop for a break. We used to use caravan step to get bikes up onto Patriot. We have bikes now, no way can we lift them up onto car roof. Hope OP gets something solved.

Carrying them on the tow hitch is ok if you have the weight allowance to do so but they are a pain when trying to hitch up. We've tried hitching first, then loading the bikes but it has to be a good sized pitch to do that.

So its bikes first, then reverse onto hitch, not a problem using mover to finalise it. Its when you come to push down the handle, with the bikes in place you can't get directly over the handle to push down, so awkward as can't deploy all your strength. Not quite so bad unhitching but I can't do it OH has to.

Now we can get everything inside the car, they are not only safer but much easier to hitch and unhitch the van. When just doing a one nighter it will be even better as bikes can stay inside the car. Hopefully a win win all round. We've never put bikes on the roof either, as OH isn't keen on that + he's had bad shoulders for years (now had an op) so its been out of the question.

Hope your OH works something out soon 

The Discovery has a massive tow hitch weight allowance which will accommodate both your caravan and bikes. We used an extended height version from Pendle which allowed us to carry the bikes above the caravan A frame. Obviously once loaded the back door cannot be opened but we preferred that to trying to lift the bikes onto a roof rack.

There have been roof mounted cycle racks offering levels of "aid".

One which reportedly was via BMW was a spring balanced lift type.

Another I saw was where a frame slid in the rack, enabling that section to be leant on the ground as a ramp, then with the bike(s) in place lifted and slid back on top.

Getting bikes on a D3/4 is quite a daunting challenge anywhichway.

I think you would struggle to lift bikes at this height unless they are ultra light and you are 6ft or over. We have a Skoda which has a fairly low roof and I would not want to lift our bikes (11.5kg each) much above this height. It can sometimes be a struggle if we are parked on uneven ground and one side of the vehicle is higher than the other. 

If we are travelling long distances we put the bikes upright in the back of the car with front wheels removed and the forks fitted into clamps and take either a roof or tow bar mounted rack.

Thanks all - plenty to think about when we take delivery