Need a Bike Rack Recommendation for a Fifth Wheel
Hello everyone,
I'm looking for a recommendation for a new bike rack. The one I'm currently using was purchased years ago to be used with my SUV once in a while. It now seems inadequate for the job of hauling around bikes of the back of my fifth wheel for thousands of miles a year. It was purchased on short notice and therefore was actually quite expensive but has been quite disappointing.
A major flaw seems to be that it was designed to fit several different sizes of hitch with a screw mechanism which tightens it. It is wholly inadequate and allow too much freedom of movement allowing the bikes and rack to flop around a bit too much. Also the way the bikes sit on their cross bar has caused the paint to rub off and on one actually wore through the cables for shifting and braking. The strength of the attachments provided is also lacking, bad roads in Louisiana along with the movement allowed bucked one of the bikes right off. Thank God no one was hurt, including the bike(minus a few scraps).
After that I used a cam strap to ensure that couldn't happen again. Unfortunately the rack also has a mechanism meant for SUVs where you can let the rack rotate back to open up your rear door. A bolt is used to secure it in the up position, this bolt snapped in half while on a nice flat stretch of california desert highway, putting the bikes in a pretty precarious position. So I threw the bikes in the trailer and hit the first Home Depot on the way. I banged a half inch piece of steel where that pitiful bolt had been it been fine since.
Alright, enough complaining, how do you carry your bikes? I'd like something fairly cheap and more functional than what I'm using now. I obviously don't need all these "bells and whistles", they are nothing but weak spots.
Thanks for the help,
Tim Czarkowski
TotalTravelers.com
The offending rack!
I'm looking for a recommendation for a new bike rack. The one I'm currently using was purchased years ago to be used with my SUV once in a while. It now seems inadequate for the job of hauling around bikes of the back of my fifth wheel for thousands of miles a year. It was purchased on short notice and therefore was actually quite expensive but has been quite disappointing.
A major flaw seems to be that it was designed to fit several different sizes of hitch with a screw mechanism which tightens it. It is wholly inadequate and allow too much freedom of movement allowing the bikes and rack to flop around a bit too much. Also the way the bikes sit on their cross bar has caused the paint to rub off and on one actually wore through the cables for shifting and braking. The strength of the attachments provided is also lacking, bad roads in Louisiana along with the movement allowed bucked one of the bikes right off. Thank God no one was hurt, including the bike(minus a few scraps).
After that I used a cam strap to ensure that couldn't happen again. Unfortunately the rack also has a mechanism meant for SUVs where you can let the rack rotate back to open up your rear door. A bolt is used to secure it in the up position, this bolt snapped in half while on a nice flat stretch of california desert highway, putting the bikes in a pretty precarious position. So I threw the bikes in the trailer and hit the first Home Depot on the way. I banged a half inch piece of steel where that pitiful bolt had been it been fine since.
Alright, enough complaining, how do you carry your bikes? I'd like something fairly cheap and more functional than what I'm using now. I obviously don't need all these "bells and whistles", they are nothing but weak spots.
Thanks for the help,
Tim Czarkowski
TotalTravelers.com
The offending rack!
