Custom Mountain Bike Rack

Here's the custom rack I made for my truck. It holds 5 bikes nicely with no need for straps. Fast loading and unloading for shuttle runs without bikes smacking the crap out of each other and making your $6000 DH bike look like someone chucked it in a cement mixer when its 3 weeks old.

This is my 2nd one. Had one on a Hilux for 2 years and it works like a charm, even when getting sideways on the way up. Well known around my old hometown as the Kram Rack.

 

Dude, that is tight! I don't actually need something for that many bikes, but if I did, I would definitely be interested. Nice work.

 

That is pretty damn awesome.

 

I was more caught up in where you live....man that's perfect biking country. I'm so jealous

 

How did you attach it to your truck? Cool idea for sure.

 

Nice rack! B.C. looks nice too. Were you able to make it to the winter games?

 

Can you give more specs on this please? Attachment, LxWxH. I would love to do this, maybe not for 5 bikes but for 2 bikes this would be perfect.

 

^ I second this motion ^

 

Here's the exact specs I used for the rack. It's 3/4in ply that I have given a few coats of clear varathane for weather resistance.

I had it cut out on a CNC machine for about $50. I also used a round file to file the corners down where the cutouts are so there is not a hard square edge under the black padding.

The black padding on the cutouts is just heater hose from an automotive store, screwed on with pretty short sheet metai screws. I quite like the studded colar kind of look. I had to cut two slits in it at the bottom to get it to bend more easily around the cutouts. It was a pretty tedious job getting it on, but worth it.

To attach the rack, I have screwed aluminum angle (A.A.) to the sides of the box (screws facing inward). You should be able to just make out in the photo from inside the box what I mean. The A.A. is 25x25x3mm (or 1"x1"). The rack just slides in behind the tailgate and is held in place by the angle. The Dakine pad helps keep it stable. You need to make it pretty snug. If I was to do it over, I would actually slightly angle the A.A. so it was closer to the tailgate at the bottom to allow the rack to slide in easier from the top but still be nice and snug on the bottom, as it has to clear a couple of plastic ladder lock tabs for the straps on the pad near the top.

The Dakine pad was purchased from a bike shop. Not sure how easy they are to find in the states, but in Canada they are very popular and are at most downhill oriented bike shops. People have discovered though, that dust will get up between the pad and the tailgate and sand off the paint. I have debadged the tailgate and applied 3M film to it. If you take the pad off when you are done with it and keep it clean, this will help keep the film shiny (I hope). I have a poplock on my tailgate and I can take the pad and rack on and off in just a couple of minutes now without opening the tailgate.

Hope this helps.

 

isn't that the truth

 

Pretty much the epicentre of all things MTB. 35 mins to Whistler and 45 mins to the North Shore. And really no need to go that far anyway, as it's all right here too. That's why I moved here from the other end of the planet.

 

Saw the 4 man bobsleigh. That was pretty cool. A lot of teams flew around the final 2 corners at 120km/h on their heads. They all walked away unharmed, so it was quite entertaining.

 

Anything holding the bikes down or keeping the back tires from wiggling around? Seems like they wouldn't be that stable.

 

That's what I was wondering. Seems like a large bump might be enough to jar a bike loose. What keeps them down in the groove? I would think you'd need a bar across the top of the opening to keep the bike down.

 

Thank You for the new desktop background. Cant wait till I get out of Texas and into some real Mountains this summer!

 

Gravity.

I'm not joking. They are pretty damn solid. I drove my truck like I stole it all day today. We did 3 shuttle runs from sea level to about 4000 feet on a forestry road. I hit the VSC button and ran in Auto LSD mode pretty pinned at times, and it was rough enough that I got my first flat in my Tacoma. It is very, very, very difficult to do anything that would cause the bike to fully jump out of the cutouts. I made a previous version on a Hilux in Australia that I ran for 2 years and never had a blowout. The current one has an extra inch deep cutout to allow for nastier climbs that I may encounter here in BC. So far so good.

I found today when driving really aggressively over rough terrain, that they can still lean a little. But the brake levers were still unable to mash the top tubes of neighbouring bikes. We did a few shuttles today and when we were running up the mountain in a friend's truck that had only the Dakine pad with no rack, I decided to sit on the tray and try and manage the bikes to reduce damage. I spent the next 30 mins in damage control, attempting to minimize the inevitable brake lever/top tube hammering that is to be expected It was a full time job the whole way up. My rack eliminates this, even when driving aggressively.

 

Nice job. You could probably sell those things. I always wondered about the dakine pad, looks like it has some drawbacks...

BTW, what do you guys do for work up there? I'm afraid I'd turn into a bike bum and go broke.

 

I thought about selling them, but not sure I want the hassle, so I figured I'd show people who to do it themselves.

I'm a draftsman. I used to operate a CNC machine which is what gave me the idea to do the rack this way. These days I do 3D modeling for water and wastewater treatment plants for municipalities. I'm very lucky and I work from home, so I get plenty of opportunity to be a ski and bike bum, but still hold down a job.

 

Bump now that bike season is underway, in case some of you missed it.

 

That is an awesome design, very simple but still looks really solid. A lot of the shuttle racks you see around here look like they weigh a ton.

Any time you combine bikes and tacos (both kinds) its beauty...