Bike Racks - Helpful Videos and How To Articles

SportRack 3 Bike Spare Tire Mount Bike Rack Review - Video

The first step in installing this bicycle rack is to go ahead and disconnect the wheel mount as it comes packaged already installed on the rack. We will take the wheel mount and put it behind the spare tire and then we will re-install the rack. The next step is to take off the spare tire cover if you have one, then the spare tire itself. Next we can slide on our adapter plate, it has a variety of different holes in it for different makes and models of vehicles. With the spare and the mount installed we can put our rack on using its locking bolt. The cradles are mounted loose so you can adjust them for the different tilts of the top tube on your bike. We will leave them level for now and we will install a couple of bikes to show how they fit. The cradles are loosely set on the rack, we will set the bike on there to get the tilt we want. That is how a standard frame bicycle will work on this rack. Now we will show you an alternative frame bicycle. more

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Posted: 8/6/2008 3:47:43 PM

Thule Spare Me 2 Bike Spare Tire Rack Review - Video

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. more

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Posted: 8/6/2008 3:38:46 PM

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