I could not be trusted with roof mounted bikes. I did reverse my bike trailer into my wife’s car last year. Trailer needed a bit of straightening and some new lights, car cost us £1000 to fix.

Important lesson learned there. Parking sensors don’t work through bike trailers 😉

Parking sensors don’t work through bike trailers

Mine switch off when I connect the bike rack electrics.

You get used to listening for the pinging so I’ve gotten a bit blase about reversing and had a near wall experience the other week when I had bikes loaded up and the sounder didn’t go off.

I once asked Wombat Jr (13) to watch me back while I reversed up to a dry stone wall with a loaded towbar mounted rack on….

Me: Am I close to the wall?
W Jr: You can come back a bit more if you like
Me, thinking I was already pretty close: um, OK
Reverse a further 10mm
W Jr (loudly): Stop now!!!!

I got out to look and I recon I could just about have got a sheet of tissue paper between the rack and the wall.

Me: That was a bit closer than I was expecting….
W Jr: Hmm, I suppose so, you didn’t actually hit it though

Wombat Jr has now been instructed in the art of guiding a reversing vehicle and informed that an interference fit with the imovable object is not the desired result 😆

Life skill being taught there mr_W

He’s pretty reliable for this type of thing now, a lot moreso than a number of adults I’ve dealt with….

The question is…

Will a new headset come with a new crown race?

Will a new headset come with a new crown race?

yes.

and it’d be easier to but just a race than a tool to remove the old one if you are scrapping the forks.

Hope races are split so go on and off easily (well, my Hope one is).

A charity ride I was at started from a carpark with a low beam across the entrance…

That was an expensive day for quite a few people if I remember…

years ago in a hurry i attached the rack and bike onto my old Seat Ibiza in a rush to get down to my mates place. upon leaving the estate onto the main road i thought i heard something “odd”. wasn’t until i checked my rear view mirror a few seconds later that i realised the bike AND rack were missing.
fortunately it was late at night.
returned to find the bike still attached to the rack on the verge. no damage other than a bent handle bar….

more recently whilst in Finale, and similar to Wombat, i was parking the van (LWB T5 with bike rack) in a tight spot on a one-way street. the back end was sticking out a fair bit so wanted to be as tucked in as poss. the GF got out and had a look and waved me in.
“go on. go on. keep going. go on. go on…. STOP!”
literally 2mm to spare before scuffing the bumper.

but to top it off i reversed into some guy in Milan on the way home.

Years ago, before sat-navs, I was driving along some back-roads in France while my mate had his head down, map reading:

“Turn left here..”

I turn left, heading down a short ramp towards a low tunnel under a railway line.

At this point, my mate seemed to have some sort of seizure – his body became rigid in the front seat, arching against the seat belt and he was frantically pounding the floor with his right foot while his mouth was repeatedly opening and closing, doing his best goldfish impression.

I was watching all this, wondering what the hell had happened to him.

He was emitting frantic little squeaks which slowly morph into “The bikes!… The Bikes!…”

Oh, shit!, yeah, the bikes are on the roof!

Cue emergency stop, coming to rest less than a car’s length from the tunnel.

Oh so close…

Mine switch off when I connect the bike rack electrics.

Same. That’s was the basis of my excuse. Along with ‘I didn’t expect your car to be there’.

Going through a known shortcut that included a tunnel under some kind of site railway that was about 6ft high and 6ft wide, on a corner that’s tight at the best of times. My mate was driving his Polo, we had two bikes on a rack at the back so we super carefully inched our way through making sure each wheel was clear of the sides when SPANG CRASH CLATTER! We’d both completely forgotten there was also a bike on the roof.

Fortunately, this bike rack was a crappy one that took bikes upside down and clamped the bars in these flimsy clamps, so it just let go without any damage.

I know someone who confessed to driving into his underground garage with bikes on the roof….twice

Yip – booths in Kendal. Luckily it has a swinging barrier and the old steel Gary fisher that was on the rack survived unharmed. Not done it again though (yet!) 8)

Drove into a council tip behind a big tipper truck emptied my van of rubbish drove out and ripped of a £500 chrome rack on my VWcamper damaged the roof!!!
Council paid out for the damage as the barrier was open when I drove in

I’ve witnessed first hand more than one person doing this. One of the them took the bike clean off the roof…

As such, I’d never buy a roof mounted rack. The risk is too great.

Way back in the mists of time the chair of our university MTB club managed to drive the student union van into a height-limited car park barrier with the entire club’s bikes on the roof rack, at least five or six of them as I recall. Trashed all the bikes and knackered the roof of the van. Fortunately the insurance paid out and everyone got new bikes.

wombats story reminds me of the time my FIL helped me reverse out of his very tight drive. You had to swing 90 degrees left,avoiding both the wall behind, and the edge/wall/drop by the drivers front wheel.
Me ‘hows it looking at the front’
FIL ‘fine, loads of room ‘
me ‘feels really close, are you sure’
FIL ‘yep, come on….’
CRUNCH!
FIL ‘opps…’
Car was stuck with only 3 wheels on the ground!

Drove round the local supermarket car park underground with a hire van a few weeks. Low beams buzzed on the roof aerial every 50 yards. Cue me panicking that it was going to get just 5cm lower. ‘No the excess waiver doesn’t cover the roof sir.’

was on a job in london years back with a mate in his brand new Transit (with a roof rack). parking on the job was in an underground carpark, with a gate gaurding the entrance…
on the way into the carpark, fully loaded we had about 5cm clearance.
at the end of the day, on the way out, after unloading all the gear… well needless to say we heard an almighty bang. jumped out and the roof was creased over and split where the roof rack had hit the gate.

(why there was gate (2,4m?) when the head height inside ws about 3.5m, i have no idea…)