NSW tow bar vs tow hitch

[CASTLE]

Hello,

I have a new passat wagon and i would like to install a tow hitch to attach a bike carrier.
As you know these are only available at the vw dealers. I am not very familier with the terms used (tow hitch/tow bar etc) and finding it difficult to communicate with the dealers over the phone to find a reasonable price. Have you anyone fixed a tow hitch. How do i go about this. thank you
castle

[Dan W]

Quite often the whole assembly is referred to as a "Tow Bar" but it is interchanged with a lot of stuff for towing so is a very generic and ambiguous term made worse by the multitude of set ups which are now very specific to each vehicle (as you are discovering).

The easiest way to get it sorted is start from the very end. You have a tow ball. The tow ball bolts on to a "tongue" This is generally a flat pice of steel, or a short square bar. On many set ups this piece can be removed quite easily by removing a steel pin on some description from the "Receiver"

The receiver is what you see on many 4x4's and looks like a square hole in the back of the car (50mmX50mm is most common). The Receiver is part of the "Tow Hitch" which is the assembly bolted to the chassis of the vehicle.

So you will often see descriptions like "heavy duty off-road hitch with a 50x50mm receiver"

For bike carriers you will either have one that bolts on with the tow ball, or one that slides into a 50x50mm receiver.

Do you know which one yours is?

Hope this explanation helps. I picked up my Passat Wagon yesterday which has the VW tow pack fitted but I now need to source a hitch adaptor to fit my existing bike rack which is one of the ones that slides into a 50x50mm receiver. The VW is a 50X50mm receiver but it's mounted vertical instead of horizontal - I can see why it's done that way but it's painful....