Bike Rack over Propane Tanks Mod

[Renderspud]

After hearing about (and seeing) the aftermath to bumpers/frames from bike racks mounted to the rear bumpers of TT's, I decided to make a beefy 2" receiver mount over the battery and propane tanks. Here's some pics (before painting and capping the square tubing):

[HONDAMAN174]

Looks really nice!! Great job!!


2014 Evo 2850 "Woodstock"
2011 Toyota Tundra "Clifford"

[sji]

Great to see you have a 1 Up USA bike rack. I have owned many different bike racks during the 40years that I have been a serious cyclist and 1upis one of the best ,if not the best made (but as you know they are not cheap). Another very good and innovative one is a Sea sucker fork mount rack. You did a nice job fabricating you receiver rack

[dalford]

Great job.. For those of us not so adapt or tool savvy there is a rack that can be purchased that looks a lot like yours.

I had a 2 bike unit when I had the bumper pull and loved it. When we went to the 5ver I gave it to my buddy who now loves it. Here is a link to anyone interested...

Arvika 2 Bike Attachment - 7000 Series - Black - www.racksforcars.com

[Red dog]

That looks great, wonderful fabrication, I would like to build something like that myself someday.

[Restcure]

Originally Posted by dalford

Great job.. For those of us not so adapt or tool savvy there is a rack that can be purchased that looks a lot like yours.

I had a 2 bike unit when I had the bumper pull and loved it. When we went to the 5ver I gave it to my buddy who now loves it. Here is a link to anyone interested...

Arvika 2 Bike Attachment - 7000 Series - Black - www.racksforcars.com

We love our 3-bike Arvika rack. Made in Canada - bonus!

[dustman_stx]

I just built a custom rack that is very similar. I'll have to get some pics up. I chose not to weld to the frame and instead bolted it on. I'll have to remove it to fill the propane tanks, but it's only 4 bolts and I only have to fill tanks 1-2x per year.

[DocRob]

Looks Great and suspect you could hook your TV cable to it and get good reception. Sorry couldn't resist. Great work.

[Renderspud]

Ha...Probably could pick up deep space transmissions with it. :-)

I welded the mounts to the frame but the hitch mount itself is removable. I originally was going to attach the mounts to the
frame with u bolts and a mounting plate but there is so little space that welding the mounts to the frame made it a lot more compact and quite a bit cheaper. I also installed a pin lock as a rack theft deterrent.

[Renderspud]

Pin lock

[EDABEUT]

Looks really nice. I have thought about the same thing but was concerned about clearance to the truck. How close are the bikes to the back of the truck and does it limit your turning radius ?????

[HONDAMAN174]

Originally Posted by DocRob

Looks Great and suspect you could hook your TV cable to it and get good reception. Sorry couldn't resist. Great work.

I was thinking cell phone booster antenna myself 😝


2014 Evo 2850 "Woodstock"
2011 Toyota Tundra "Clifford"

[dustman_stx]

Here's mine. I canted mine forward in order to place the bikes as far back as possible. I have a camper shell on my truck, so clearance is definitely an issue. I experimented with placement of the bikes before building the rack, but haven't towed with it attached yet. Got my fingers crossed all will be good.

[Renderspud]

Hey dustman, that looks great! Very nice and tight to the front cap of your trailer. Love the fab on your mounting brackets. Very clean and space saving. Excellent!

[tstillman]

Originally Posted by Renderspud

After hearing about (and seeing) the aftermath to bumpers/frames from bike racks mounted to the rear bumpers of TT's, I decided to make a beefy 2" receiver mount over the battery and propane tanks. Here's some pics (before painting and capping the square tubing):

Very nicely done. You may want to copy right your design. It seems to answer many of the rear bumper mount issues.

[Renderspud]

Originally Posted by EDABEUT

Looks really nice. I have thought about the same thing but was concerned about clearance to the truck. How close are the bikes to the back of the truck and does it limit your turning radius ?????

Hey Edabeut, I haven't had a chance yet to hook it up and test the turning radius. I did some fairly primitive measurements and if I were to really need to crank the trailer around it looks like the forward rack 'might' be able to reach the tailgate of my TV before the bumper would touch the tongue.

Honestly, I don't think I would ever intentionally come close to that extreme of an angle, but I didn't want to take a chance so I made sure the rack has 4" of clearance over the top of my truck bed's hard shell.

As you can see in the pictures below, the double bike rack sits out quite a ways from the new mount. I actually had to move the mount away from the trailer nose cap because it had a "bump" between the hitch lights. :-)

Next time I hook up I'll test the turn radius. If it doesn't reach the tailgate I'll cut the mount legs 5 or 6 inches shorter.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I'm able to pull the rack out of the hitch on the trailer and then slide it back into the TV once we reach our destination. We are heading to Moab in a couple weeks and want to try out a bunch of different trails in various places. This should do the trick nicely. Also, I'm making an enclosed toolbox/lockbox that will slide into the frame mounts. This will give us a little more secure storage over the battery carriers (I'm thinking BBQ grill etc..)

[Renderspud]

Originally Posted by sji

Great to see you have a 1 Up USA bike rack. I have owned many different bike racks during the 40years that I have been a serious cyclist and 1upis one of the best ,if not the best made (but as you know they are not cheap). Another very good and innovative one is a Sea sucker fork mount rack. You did a nice job fabricating you receiver rack

Thanks! I love this bike rack! Can't say enough good things about it. Quality workmanship, clever function, and soooo easy to use! It was a hundred bucks more than the Thule we were looking at but I haven't once regretted spending just a little bit more!

[campnqueen]

Ok.... but how much extra weight are you adding to your hitch weight?

Make sure you are not exceeding your hitch weight limit

[Renderspud]

I'm not sure of the exact actual addition in tongue weight. The rack, mount, and bikes have a combined weight of 127 lbs. The additional tongue weight would be a high percentage of that (80-90%?). I'm 300 under max tongue so should be good. It would be interesting to put it on a scale to see what the % actually turns out to be. :-)

[dustman_stx]

Here are a couple of pics I took while doing a little turning test. Had it cut about as sharp as it will go while moving forward. Clearly you can get more angle while backing, but I never turn any sharper while backing because of the torque on tires/wheels/axles.