Hello,
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I can get four bikes under the bed in my van, front wheels off, standing upright and lengthways, bars turned parallel to the frame.
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I’ve got an old roof rack. It has a clamp/strap thing to hold the back wheel, and an arm which comes up and clamps the downtube (apart from on the TT bike which is a weird shape) I was going to use the bits off this to make my racks. I would also like to clamp the forks. These are good https://mtzoom.com/collections/tools-trick-bits/products/cycle-bike-fork-holder-mount-for-car-roof-rack-van-floor-4-adaptors as I have a variety of axles.
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So, question. A fork clamp is easy when the bars are straight. With them turned ninety degrees less so, the forward leg of the fork will be on the floor and the rearwards one an inch or two above it. If this was one bike I would just make a wedge to go under the clamp and screw it down in the right position. However, seven bikes (which may have changed over the lifetime of the van) all with different forks, loaded in various combinations and positions.
How do I do this?
Easiest option may be to make seven of those wedges I just mentioned, one for each bike, and just pop them in when I load the bike, great for mine with known height differences required, rubbish for giving folks a lift.
What I really need is one which goes up and down a bit at one end, and probably back and forth for different wheelbases, although back and forth is easier to do.
Any ideas?
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Cheers

Can you fit the middle two bikes in “normally”?

You’ll only need to find a solution for the end bikes then. Which solves the lift problem.

EDIT:
Some kind of fold down/up wooden arm and a bungee for each bike?

Use the clamp arms and the rear wheel clamp.

You can then create a small padded ‘box’ for fork legs to sit in, at whatever angle is needed.

Just loosen the stem bolts slightly and turn the bars, leaving the forks straight. Get one of the preset torque wrenches to do back up if you want peace of mind.

From many hours spent fitting bikes into too small vehicles, any attempt at using a rack or a clamping system will leave loads of wasted space and reduce your carrying capacity. It looks good, but it’s not efficient in terms of using the space.

Agree, I built a wooden sort of ladder for each of the forks to drop Into, stops them moving around too much and with the rear wheels all held down is rock solid.

Cheers guys.
Jimdubleyou, yes good point. If I can do bikes one and three, or two and four like that it halves the problem.
Frog’s idea works well and solves the problem but does introduce a bit of faff (anyone ever get stems straight straight away?)
Mat and NZCol’s ideas were more what I was thinking of, have either of you got a picture of yours please?

Or have the fork mount on a yolk central pivot soit can rock up and down?

Ram mount under the fork mount, adjust to angle and lock off?

Or have the fork mount on a yolk central pivot so it can rock up and down?

Probably the most elegant solution. Anyone got a picture of something similar so that I can try to copy it? @NZCol ‘s solution sounds like it might cope with different wheelbases too, rather than having to put the back wheel thing on a slider. Would love to see a pic of that if he’s reading this?

Sorry not any more as this was in my VW Van and i’ve sold it now and broken up the mounting plate since then. It wasn’t flash – just a base board and two sides with boxes for each fork to sit in.

Ah, OK, thanks. A bit like a series of what Matt is describing next to each other to take different forks? I wonder if I could attach just one of those to a drawer runner or something and have one adjustable one rather than a series of them for different bike… Worth a try

Hinge?

Can you mount them normally and offset them fore/aft relative to each other so the bars don’t clash?

Or, your solution is to turn the bars 90′ which sticks the front fork leg up in the air – what if you only turned them a couple of degrees? That’ll still stop the bars from clashing and the difference in leg heights would be nominal.

These are good

Get two, bolt them together with the tubes at 90′ to each other, run a bar through the bottom one?

probably back and forth for different wheelbases

Move back and forth adjustments to the back end?

Gotta say though, the notion of DIYing a bike carrier gives me the fear. There’s a lot of large forces at work there.

Skoda do some thing similar to what you describe but it doesn’t seem to be angled front to back. Can you not just mount and angle a bit and then wedge up under the rear wheel to compensate more if needed?

https://eshop.skoda-auto.cz/en_CZ/interior-bicycle-holder/p/3T9056700

That’s the kind of thing I was thinking of Fuzzywuzzy but I can’t see how that works, as you say it doesn’t seem to be angled at all. It would work flat if the rest of the bike was canted over but those in the pic don’t seem to be, very odd.
I did wonder if I could get a cheapo one of those and have a look to see how it works/take the bits I want off it but there is only one on ebay and it’s £200 and I would need two…

Few years ago I fitted out my then Berlingo to take 3 bikes and 3 of us for a couple of European roadtrips.

I made fork mounts for the back of the car.

They were very simple really. A wooden block of axle spacing length, with your axle diameter drilled through.

That was then mounted to a block screwed to the ply false floor which had a small upstand of ply each side and a single bolt all the way through and through the bottom of the axle block.

This allowed me to position it wherever I wanted on the ply floor, fit the axle through rotating the block to the right angle, then locking it off tight with the central bolt.

Of course if you have bikes with a sideways fork mount like this, there’s nowt to stop them falling over, so you want to tie them into the sides or have a central post type thing.