Thule Spare Me 2 Bike Spare Tire Rack Review

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Thule Women's and Alternative Frame Bike Adapter Bar for Hitch Bike Racks

TH982

$32.00

Review of the Thule Spare Me 2 Bike Spare Tire Rack

To begin the install, obviously we took the spare tire cover off. Now we need to take the spare tire off so we can get to the wheel mount. Next we install the rack mount itself, it gets sandwiched between the tire and the wheel mount. The bike rack mount also has a variety of bolt patterns on it, to fit a variety of different vehicles so this will probably sit differently on each vehicle. With the bike rack mount in place well do a test fit to see how it fits on there. It looks relatively secure, but if you notice the spare tire sets off to the side on this vehicle. The Thule bike rack provides a provision for that, what happens is you can offset the bicycle rack to center the bikes so theyre not sticking out on one side or the other. Well take the rack apart and show you how its done. What we need to do first is take off this plate here which covers up the holes and transfer it to the other side, then well re-bolt it back into place. Now that we have the rack in its proper position we need to install the bumpers so it has an even bike to tire contact. Go ahead and take a note of where the contacts are, and well slip on our bumpers. The bumpers practically just snap into place. Now we will re-install the rack and adjust the bumpers to fit. Once we have it set the way we want it, well use the locking knob to clamp everything into place. You may have noticed we had the arms up while we installed it, we did that for clarity purposes.

Probably at this point though your rack will be folded up still. Well show you how to loosen up the arms and fold the rack up at that point the rack will be ready to use. Next well show you how to fit a couple of bikes on here, well start with standard road bike frames and see how it sits on the bike rack. Next well try an alternative frame bicycle on the rack. As you can see the rack is a little bit wide for the frame on this bike. Well get an overall measurement of this rack to compare it to your own bike. The outside edge to the other outside edge is well say 17 1/2 inches. Once you have installed the bicycle adapter bar of your choice, in this case we used a Thule product, well go ahead and try it on the rack now. Now well cover some of the features of this rack starting with the cradles first you will notice they have grooves inside the cradles to allow room for your cables. Second, the straps have two tie down points so you can cross from one side to the other. Another nice feature about this rack when you are not using it, it can fold up. If you decide to leave it on the vehicle itself, just fold it flat. One of the last couple features is the rack is adjustable left to right as we discussed earlier. You have three positions on this rack, offset to the right, middle obviously, and also on the left hand side to situate different vehicles and different makes. The last standard feature is the locking knob. It holds everything in place you can lock it then spin it and it cant come off. You unlock it, and you can take the whole rack off at will. There you have it for the 2 bike spare tire carrier, part # TH963, the “Thule Spare Me” model.