Effect of Using Hitch Adapter in 1-1/4-Inch Class I Hitch on 2004 Honda Civic  

Question:

Expert Reply:

The size and class of hitch made for your 2004 Honda Civic is a light-duty 1-1/4-inch Class I type and all such hitches for your car appear on the page I linked for you. Although these many hitches are made for the different versions of the car (4-door sedan or 2-door coupe or hatchback) they all share the same weight capacities of 200-lbs tongue weight (TW) which is downward force on the hitch and 2000-lbs towing weight, which is the heaviest a towed trailer can be. A Class I hitch can handle the weight of only 2 bikes, even if the rack holds more than two.

We do offer hitch adapters that will convert these 1-1/4-inch hitch openings to a 2-inch, such as parts # HTAD and # HES6 (with no rise), # HT5R (5-inches of rise) all such adapters will cause you to lose HALF of your Class I hitch's rated capacity. The capacity drops because all of these adapters move the actual load, say a bike rack like the 2-inch Swagman # S64FR, further from the hitch where it will apply more leverage on the hitch tube.

Use of any of these adapters means your hitch rating drops to 100-lbs of TW and since this 4-bike rack weighs 85-lbs all by itself you could not use it with an adapter. You COULD use just the main 52-lb 2-bike section with adapter # HT5R so long as the two bikes together weighed no more than 48-lbs.

The safest way to transport 2 bikes on your Civic's hitch is to choose a 1-1/4-inch Class I type rack, such as one of those on the page linked for you, which will not require use of an adapter. An example is the Swagman XTC-2 rack # S64670.

expert reply by: Adam R

0