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If you're thinking of fitting a tow bar to your DS then I can help you out a bit since I've just fitted a Westfalia detachable tow bar to my DSport.
http://www.pfjones.co.uk/tow-bars/to...k-towbars.html
I use it for a ball mounted mountain bike carrying rack and for towing a dirt bike trailer, but not a caravan or anything really heavy – more on this later!
Fitment is very straight forward and requires only a modest bumper cut which is in fact just the removal of a piece of the black part of the rear valance. The required cut is marked on the inside for you already, and it easily detaches from the bumper so you can jig saw the piece out on your work bench.
The result is very tidy and neither the 7 pin socket nor the socket for the ball is prominent when not in use
If I could add images, or even get them into my gallery I would – I’ll post them when I find out how!
I thought about the electrics for quite a while – ideally (and perhaps certainly if you were towing a caravan) you would use the Citroen kit which costs as much as the tow bar, and according to various websites is so sophisticated that it taps into various control systems such as ESP, and other ECUs to tell the car that it is towing and re-configure it accordingly.
Also when you pull the grills in the boot to access the wiring you’ll find a warning sticker telling you that ‘eet is forbidden to draw more zan a few milliamps from ze wiring M’sieur’
Anyway I spoke to a few suppliers who all told me that it would be perfectly acceptable to use a 7 way relay to safeguard the car’s wiring so I used the PCT relay bought off ebay for £26 instead of £80 from PCT
http://www.pct.eu.com/automotive/Fit...df/ZK3000A.pdf
I used these Posi taps to connect to the car wiring – so much better than Scotchlocks
http://www.performancemotorcare.com/...0288#aPMC00288
The relay requires a fused power supply which I initially thought was going to have to come directly from the battery which would have meant feeding a wire from the engine compartment into the interior of the car! No way! However if you open the fuse box in the glovebox you will find a permanent 12v supply block at the bottom left with, in my case a heavy feed cable and only one light gauge connection. I connected the relay via a fuse to that block and ran the feed behind the sill trim into the boot.
I’m only using a full LED trailer board so current draw is minimal.
Oh the only other trick is to get the 7 core cable from the socket into the boot – there’s a few taped off holes that you can use but there is an inner and outer skin and the holes I used didn’t line up but perseverance paid off.
PLEASE NOTE – DON’T TAKE ANY OF THIS AS GOSPEL - WHATEVER YOU DO IS AT YOUR OWN RISK – JUST THOUGHT I’D TELL YOU ALL WHAT WORKED FOR ME
http://www.pfjones.co.uk/tow-bars/to...k-towbars.html
I use it for a ball mounted mountain bike carrying rack and for towing a dirt bike trailer, but not a caravan or anything really heavy – more on this later!
Fitment is very straight forward and requires only a modest bumper cut which is in fact just the removal of a piece of the black part of the rear valance. The required cut is marked on the inside for you already, and it easily detaches from the bumper so you can jig saw the piece out on your work bench.
The result is very tidy and neither the 7 pin socket nor the socket for the ball is prominent when not in use
If I could add images, or even get them into my gallery I would – I’ll post them when I find out how!
I thought about the electrics for quite a while – ideally (and perhaps certainly if you were towing a caravan) you would use the Citroen kit which costs as much as the tow bar, and according to various websites is so sophisticated that it taps into various control systems such as ESP, and other ECUs to tell the car that it is towing and re-configure it accordingly.
Also when you pull the grills in the boot to access the wiring you’ll find a warning sticker telling you that ‘eet is forbidden to draw more zan a few milliamps from ze wiring M’sieur’
Anyway I spoke to a few suppliers who all told me that it would be perfectly acceptable to use a 7 way relay to safeguard the car’s wiring so I used the PCT relay bought off ebay for £26 instead of £80 from PCT
http://www.pct.eu.com/automotive/Fit...df/ZK3000A.pdf
I used these Posi taps to connect to the car wiring – so much better than Scotchlocks
http://www.performancemotorcare.com/...0288#aPMC00288
The relay requires a fused power supply which I initially thought was going to have to come directly from the battery which would have meant feeding a wire from the engine compartment into the interior of the car! No way! However if you open the fuse box in the glovebox you will find a permanent 12v supply block at the bottom left with, in my case a heavy feed cable and only one light gauge connection. I connected the relay via a fuse to that block and ran the feed behind the sill trim into the boot.
I’m only using a full LED trailer board so current draw is minimal.
Oh the only other trick is to get the 7 core cable from the socket into the boot – there’s a few taped off holes that you can use but there is an inner and outer skin and the holes I used didn’t line up but perseverance paid off.
PLEASE NOTE – DON’T TAKE ANY OF THIS AS GOSPEL - WHATEVER YOU DO IS AT YOUR OWN RISK – JUST THOUGHT I’D TELL YOU ALL WHAT WORKED FOR ME
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