Fitting the SDR comfortably into a Grand Espace

I'm posting this here just if someone's curious and kind of for my own benefit. I've got a Renault Grand Espace that exists pretty much solely to transport my bike (SuperDuke R at the moment) and my girfriends bike (GSX-R600 K4).

Annoyingly the SDR is just a tad too high to fit in through the tailgate without waggling the bars a bit.
This thread will be my ongoing efforts on how to fit the bike comfortably into the car. I'll be starting out small and probably stopping when things are easy enough.

My first modification is to lower the handle bars by 3mm by milling off a bit of the bar-holders.

They're 32mm high standard.


Starting the milling.


Did the sides first:


Then I backed the head up 2mm to do the sides as the sides were 2mm higher as standard.


Here's the result:


On the bike without the bars:


With the bars:


Now 29mm:


I'm going to try this 3mm lower first. See if it's OK to ride, and obviously how it slides into the car. I might take 2mm more off if needed. I'm also thinking of making new reservoir holders that are a few mm lower than the standard ones.

Please feel free to ask if there's anything.

I'll have to give you credit for what you've already done,but for me it would just be too much hassle. I'd just buy something bigger i run an old Merc 308 sprinter it's not very fast ,but i'm in no rush and it does about 30 MPH ish.
It does however have loads of room in the back for everything you could possibly need on track days or longer trips,bike,tools,fuel,spare's,gazeebo and BBQ and lot's more. I've owned a van since the mid 90's and can't ever see me going for ouwt smaller.

Whato you guys need is....

http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2008/11/to ... -part.html




Just paint it orange and throw a SDR

Or just don't bother, I'll take the desmosedici and the red truck

bet that tool box looks real nice after a run through the rain...

you could say he is a fair weather rider.

Joker, you are brilliant and we are not. what an idea.... never occurred to me.

I wish Honda would make this in an all-wheel drive steroided version, enough to sqeeze two road or off-road bikes inside, with a pod carrier on top this would be my ideal transporter.

Luke, the Caravelle is the one to go for of those. There's a few used ones too, but as you say, expensive. The Vito has apparently had issues with gearboxes failing or something else. I can't remember but a friend of mine looked into vans and this made him go with the VW. I think the Vito in "people version" is called V-Klasse...

Just to make one thing clear; The KTM SuperDuke fits into the Grand Espace without any modifications. I just want to make it more "comfortable", however, we do travel with a roof box and we don't carry spare wheels etc.

If purchase price and running costs wouldn't be an option, then a fully kitted Caravelle would probably be what I would have.

You can get Webasto and Eberspracher heaters as aftermarket ones for most cars, expensive though.

this is my idea of a bike van, I was shocked to see what these cost but joe would have to have one if I were the carrying type..

Bloody good idea Joker, I can definitely see the benefits of using a people carrier. A box trailer may be easier to load but I bet the loaded 'spaz drives much better than a car towing a trailer. Please post some pics of the car loaded with bikes.

I'm lucky in that I have the use of a Merc Vito, it gets two bikes, tools and boxes of random bike bits (spares!) in easily. It also has a row of removable seats - The seats have to come out to get the bikes in. It drives like a (big) car, has no lack of power and is pretty quiet because the rear is carpeted all round, although it is noisier than my car. It needs a better stereo but that's about all.

A friend recently bought the Hyundai iLoad which seems like a good option, it also has removable seats and can fit two bikes with ease.

Otherwise the van of choice in Australia is the Toyota HiAce, they can be bought quite cheaply over here at auction as Telstra, the Australian Telecom company buy heaps of them. Go to an MX meet and white HiAces dominate the parking lot! HiAces are pretty basic but they are reasonably bulletproof, I have seen them used in Africa as safari vehicles.

Hey,

I've finally found some time to stick the bikes in the car. All in all it went very well. The only issues I'm having is that the bars are higher and wider than on the BMW (for ref: we used to lug the BMW K1200R and the GSX-R600 K4 around before I broke the K-R). The higher and wider bars mean that it's more difficult to put the bike further to the side of the car. I also found that the K-R is incredibly stable when strapped down with a narrow footprint, because I used to strap the (DuoLever) fork down. The SDR isn't as stable when strapped from my custom R&G plates. I also don't have a good tie-down point at the rear. In the pictures I used the paddock stand bobbins, but I'm considering making something that uses the pillion-footpeg-screw-holes. Don't know... Another inherent problem of the Espace is that, because it doesn't have a 4th row of seats there's no seat-points furthest back, meaning that I can't strap the bikes as far back as I'd want to. The rear straps, thus, always pull the bike forwards because they're attached to the floor too far forward to be absolutely ideal.

Here's a few pictures.

As I said before, it's the tailgate height that's an issue:

Mirrors removed, bars lowered and reservoirs lowered, this is how the bike now slots in. No problems at all.

We're using the five-strap-system (Ducati Pete, sit down!)

Two straps on the front, two at the back and one through the front wheel to prevent the bike to possibly lunging forwards.
In the picture the orange ones are the front straps, the yellow ones are the rear ones, and the red one is the one stopping the bike going forwards.

Another view from the same angle;


From the rear:

You can clearly see that a set of tie-down-points at the rear would be appreciated!

A bit closer on the rear straps. I'm not happy with this, but it's an option.


Rear height:

Yeah, the bike's dirty, I know. Riding is more fun than washing.

The side of the bike looking backwards looks like this:

If we were to actually travel, I would tie up the footpegs to prevent them rubbing. The limiting factor is that I can't keep the rear windows open to stick the handlebars out. I therefore have to turn the front wheel to make the bars narrower.

View of the RHS tie down point. I could use the other slots in the floor if needed to make the anchoring point wider.


Front wheel strap.


Both bikes in:

You can clearly see the height of the GSX-R tail unit. It's very high, and very pointy.

Space between the two bikes;

It's not much, but it's still plentiful. If we were to travel with this setup, I would probably add a strap from the SDR to the floor to one of the free slots close to the GSX-R simply to stop a bit of movement. It's not needed, but it would stabilise the bike a bit.

View of the car:


We normally travel with a roof box to put our kitchen sink in, but technically, especially for a day-trip, we could stick our bike gear into the car and travel. If we go for a longer journey we'll need more junk, and therefore the roof box is essential.

Car does 36mpg cruising at 80mph on the motorways, with the roof box.

Nice pictures - Joker. Impressive how the 2 bikes fit nice into the car

It looks really proffesionel strapped compared to when I do it.

Thanks for sharing !!

Looks to have been a lot of work but appears to have worked out great! Its been fun following the thread as the project developed The way you secure the SDR is really good.