Can you give me your input on my rack design?
As you can see it holds the bike by the rims, pulling down with bungee cords to the third arm. I have been using arm pads to separate my friend’s bikes from my own so their fork legs and chain stays don’t get scratched. I don’t use pads between my personal bikes, I don’t care if they get scratches and the DJ1 on my hard tail is now scratched on the lower legs, the stanchions are fine though, they don’t rub. My Shiver DC isn’t worse for the wear, the stanchion guards seem to be doing a good job.
I use a hitch pin lock to hold the rack to the car, and use a kryptonite cable lock to lock the bikes to the rack. No problems with theft so far.
As you can see, the approach angles for your truck are better with this rack than a tray rack design, the empty rack sits higher off the ground than traditional hitch mounted tray racks.
The rack isn’t collapsible; it can hold 300 lbs of bikes no problem. The rack weighs about 50 lbs unloaded. Would this be a problem for storage? Would you be scared about people rear-ending you while no bikes are attached? What would your wife think about this big rack riding around on the back of your car? Why wouldn’t you buy this rack?
My target price for the rack, which holds 3 bikes with Monster T’s or 4 bikes with 888 or Shiver DC size forks, is $300. From what you can see, is this a significant innovation over a tray rack to make you think of switching the rack you use now?
Are their issues that I haven’t addressed with this design? What am I forgetting?
Thanks for your input, I appreciate it.